USA TODAY International Edition
Fickell emphatically quiets chatter linking him to USC
University of Cincinnati head football coach Luke Fickell said he isn’t taking any calls about the vacancy at Southern Cal or any other job openings.
After USC on Monday fired Clay Helton, two days after the Trojans’ 42- 28 home defeat to Stanford, reports linking Fickell to the job began to surface.
FIckell on Tuesday emphatically shooed away the USC noise, saying he knows nothing about the job and has no interest in taking any calls from Trojans athletic director Mike Bohn.
“Look, I don’t talk to anybody. I barely talk to my own family during the season,” Fickell said during his weekly media availability session. “So I wouldn’t ever talk about it, nor would I even answer a phone call or anything like that. I know nothing, nor does it make me have any interest. It’s not a big deal. It’s nothing but distractions if people allow it to be, and for us, it can’t be.”
Fickell addressed the reports four days before he and the No. 8- ranked Bearcats ( 2- 0) face Indiana ( 1- 1) on Saturday in their first road test of the year.
“But I also want to say that this is the greatest thing that can happen for us because it is a reflection on what these guys have done on the football field,” Fickell said.
“It has nothing to do with me. It has to do with what Desmond Ridder and Myjai Sanders and Ahmad Gardner and those guys have done to put our program in the light. I hope that there are a lot of those calls and things like that at the end of the year, because at the end of the year, if you’re playing really good ball, those things are going to happen.
“We pride ourselves on people calling at the end of the year, whether it’s for me or your coordinators or those juniors that they want to come out for the draft because they’re playing really, really good football. It’s a compliment to all if somebody is bringing anything like that up.”
Fickell, who is 37- 14 in five seasons at Cincinnati, was hired in December 2016 by Bohn. Bohn served as the school’s athletic director beginning in 2014 and until leaving for Southern Cal in November 2019.
Fickell and his team’s success also helped pave the way for UC to be able to receive and accept an invitation to the Big 12 Conference on Friday. UC, which has been a member of the American Athletic Conference since 2013, will join the Big 12 by no later than July 1, 2024.