Additional details emerge on Luke Fickell contract extension

The staff salary pool at Cincinnati has jumped up to $5.2 million, up by nearly $1.4 million, to help with staff pay/retention following the contract extension of head coach Luke Fickell. The Athletic was the first to break the news.

“The Cincinnati Bearcats and football head coach Luke Fickell have agreed to a contract extension, Fickell told The Athletic,” revealed Justin Williams of The Athletic. The new deal runs through 2028 and will pay Fickell $5 million per year, according to sources.

The extension is still pending approval by the university’s Board of Trustees, which is scheduled to meet on Feb. 22, when the deal is expected to be finalized, according to the report. Fickell said Cincinnati athletic director John Cunningham was the one that approached him about an extension in the middle of last season.

“To be honest, John put it on my desk probably Week 7 of the season. Maybe Week 8, I don’t know. And out of respect, I said, ‘Thank you, but I won’t open it. I’ll stick it in my bag, maybe my wife will look at it, but I won’t open it until after the season. I’m not going to get into this, I don’t want to, I don’t want to be distracted,’” Fickell said. “So [John] did that, and then when the season ended, he said we needed to revisit the contract, but I wanted to take care of our [assistant] coaches first. I wanted to make sure we got that out of the way before we took care of my contract.”

When Fickell took over the Bearcats program in 2017, they were coming off of a 4-8 finish. They replicated that record in the coach’s inaugural season, but quickly turned things around. Since 2018, Cincinnati has finished with at least 11 wins in three of four seasons. The only year in which they didn’t was 2020, and that was because they played just 10 games.

Fast forward to 2021 where Fickell led the Bearcats to a College Football Playoff berth as the first non-Power Five conference team to ever do so. Many penciled him in for other more lucrative jobs, thinking the coach was leaving the Bearcats. Evidently, that’s not the case, and Fickell is in it for the long haul with the Cincinnati program.

With the news of his retention as headman of the Bearcats, Fickell will now help lead Cincinnati in their foray into the Big 12. The future is limitless for the Bearcats, and the potential is off the charts for Fickell and the Bearcats if he can build on a memorable 2021.