Report: Luke Fickell Agrees to Contract Extension With UC

The Bearcats head coach is on pace to become the program's all-time wins leader sometime next season.

CINCINNATI — UC just inked head football coach Luke Fickell to a fresh contract this week. According to The Athletic, Fickell and UC agreed on a deal that runs through 2028 worth $5 million per year. The contract is pending approval at the Board of Trustees meeting on Feb. 22.

The deal replaces his current contract, which pays him $3.4 million per season. On top of the significant raise, Fickell also has more money to work with when hiring assistants.

Sources told Justin Williams that the staff salary pool is increasing from $3.85 million per year to $5.2 million per year. The deal is no surprise to Fickell—who guided Cincinnati to a 44-7 record over the past five seasons.

“To be honest, John (Cunningham) 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 told The Athletic. “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.”

Cincinnati gets Spring Practice rolling at the beginning of March with a fully-secured coach in hand. Bearcats fans can breathe a sigh of relief for now after Fickell was (and will continue to be) one of the hottest head-coaching candidates in the country.

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