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Koch: Fickell Building From the State of Cincinnati
http://www.gobearcats.com/sports/m-footb...17aab.html
May 26, 2017
By Bill Koch
GoBearcats.com
CINCINNATI – During a recent interview in his Lindner Center office, University of Cincinnati football coach Luke Fickell casually referred to Ohio State University as “where I was before,” declining to name his alma mater and former employer.
He grew up in Columbus and played high school football there at DeSales High School. He played college football at OSU and spent most of his coaching career there, so the omission of the school’s name was striking.
“I do that consciously,” he said, when asked to explain. “We want to be competitors in everything we do.”
Fickell, who was hired in December to replace Tommy Tuberville, wants it known that he’s a UC guy now. While he’s only about a hundred miles from OSU, he’s in a different world as far as football is concerned. At Ohio State, he was part of a perennial national title contender. At UC, he’s trying to put the Bearcats back on the national map after two subpar seasons. On the plus side, the world he currently inhabits is one that includes a wealth of blue chip, high-school football talent that he’s determined to mine more successfully than any coach in recent UC history.
That means going head-to-head against the Buckeyes for players who otherwise might have gone to his alma mater. Fickell is adamant that he and his staff will fight for every quality player in the area, which he calls “the state of Cincinnati,” his verbal attempt to draw a recruiting fortress around it.
“We’re an entity amongst ourselves,” Fickell said, “and I think for us to understand what the core of our program is going to be, it’s from that state of Cincinnati and that we’re going to recruit every single kid. I don’t care if Alabama’s recruiting them. I don’t care if USC is recruiting them. I don’t care if Ohio State’s recruiting them. It’s not a waste of time. We should have an opportunity to be in with every one of those kids.”
The 43-year-old Fickell is off to an encouraging start. His first UC recruiting class included linebacker Kyle Bolden from Colerain High School, defensive back Jarell White from La Salle, and kicker Cole Smith from Middletown. Overall, 10 of the 23 players that UC signed in February are from Ohio.
His Ohio background, Fickell says, has had a lot to do with his early success, but that’s only part of the formula that also calls for hard work and the ability to build relationships with area high school coaches.
“I could say that every kid that we want to recruit within a 50-mile radius has been here,” Fickell said, “all the way from the highest ranked guy in the state. At least he’s been here. It’s work. It’s making sure you’re reaching out, making sure you’re building some type of relationship, making sure that they understand that this is a focus for us and that this is going to be the core and the crux of our program.”
It would be a mistake, Fickell said, to write off players as unreachable because they’re being recruited by so-called major programs, just as it would be a mistake to assume that local players have already formed unshakeable impressions of UC and its program simply because they live in the same city. That’s why he believes it’s important to get them and their parents on campus, to have them sit in his office, to walk them around campus and let them see for themselves that the school is not the same one their parents might have attended 10 or 20 years ago.
“I want them to see not just what our football program has done differently,” Fickell said, “but even to see what the university and the campus and housing have done over the last six, seven, eight years. I think it’s eye-opening to them. I sense that their parents are beyond surprised at the changes. I don’t just mean in the football program, but what the University has done from the schools to the programs.
“We want to get them on campus and show them what we have,” Fickell said. “The things that have been done around here have been really good.”
Cincinnati was never Fickell’s primary area during his time at Ohio State, but he did recruit local players from time to time. If he doesn’t know all of the high school coaches personally, he said, he knows a lot of them and they know him by reputation.
“The great thing about Ohio high school football is that it doesn’t matter if you’re from Cincinnati or you’re from Youngstown,” Fickell said. “They still are all connected in the Ohio High School Football Coaches Association. So you build those relationships, being at clinics and going to the state championship football games and hanging out with them. They’re so tight that they surely know how you’ve done your business, what kind of person you are. Your reputation of the way you do things in this state, these guys all know you.”
Because Fickell understands the state so well he can pop in film of a high school player, and instantly get a sense for the validity of his statistics because he knows the level of competition that player is facing. He also knows how much to trust a high school coach’s assessment of one of his players or even someone else’s.
It falls to Fickell and his staff to maintain the momentum they’ve established during the first few months of their tenure at UC and continue to build on it. He pursued the UC job, he said, for two primary reasons – the abundance of high school football talent in the area and the connections he has to help UC land its share of that talent. According to his blueprint, the Bearcats’ goal is to sign 75 percent of their players from a 300-mile radius.
“Then I think we’ve got a chance to be a really good football team,” Fickell said. “Our other 25 percent gives us an opportunity to be great. We’ll recruit in Florida and Georgia, and we’ll be around the Virginia and D.C. areas because we have five or six players on our team that are from there, so there’s some connection with kids that can see guys have success right here.”
The first local player to buy into Fickell’s vision was La Salle’s White, a star on each of the Lancers’ state championship teams in 2014, 2015 and 2016.
“The first one to jump in is a big deal,” Fickell said. “I knew that it would have a ripple effect.”
White then took it upon himself to share his – and Fickell’s - vision for UC’s football program with other recruits in the area.
“He did a marvelous job,” Fickell said. “These kids recruit each other every bit as much as we recruit them. We give the credit to the coaches, and we did, we busted our butts. But I would give every bit as much credit to Jarell, not just the ability to jump in first, but then to reach out to others on his own and share the vision he believed in.”
The hope at UC is that the ripple continues and the Bearcats recapture the imagination of the city, similar to the way they did in 2008 and 2009 when UC played in the Orange Bowl and Sugar Bowl behind talented local players like Tony Pike, Austen Bujnoch, Andre Revels, JK Schaffer, Ben Guidugli, Dominick Goodman, Kevin Huber, Brandon Underwood, and Terrill Byrd.
“Let’s make sure we understand that this is who we are and what we’re going to be about and the thing that we sell to our kids,” Fickell said. “We are going to recruit and (sell) the pride of his community and his ability to bring light and leave a legacy in his own community as opposed to someplace else.”
Bill Koch covered UC athletics for 27 years – 15 at The Cincinnati Post and 12 at The Cincinnati Enquirer – before joining the staff of GoBearcats.com in January 2015.
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Koch: Fickell Building From the State of Cincinnati
