CINCINNATI — Bearcats football has thrived in the Luke Fickell era under a few deliberate and steadfast recruiting tentpoles: a focus on local and regional prospects (the “state of Cincinnati” as Fickell refers to it), establishing an offensive- and defensive-line driven program and pursuing the best possible fits regardless of how big-time and plentiful their other offers might be.
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That philosophy that has not only helped to improve the product on the field and revive the fanbase but also reintegrate the program into the community and rebuild all those Tuberville-burned bridges with local high schools.
“It all starts with getting the best players in that 300-mile radius first,” defensive coordinator Marcus Freeman said Wednesday. “We identified 15 of those kids early in the year who were at the top of our list, and I think we ended up with six or seven of them.”
It’s an approach that looks to have paid off again in 2020, landing the Bearcats the 40th-ranked recruiting class in the nation, according to 247Sports, the best in the university’s history and an astounding accomplishment for a non-Power Five school within the current college football landscape. UC owns the highest-ranked class of any American Athletic Conference and Group of Five program by a wide margin. The Bearcats are a welterweight taking out giants.
“We’re fortunate in that we’ve got a good product to sell,” offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock said. “We’ve got back-to-back 11-win seasons we’re building on. We have an unbelievable culture in the locker room. We have a fanbase that believes in this football program and where we’re headed. It’s palpable — you can feel the excitement surrounding Cincinnati football. Kids feel that.”
The 2020 recruiting class, which was largely finalized on Wednesday’s National Signing Day, features a slew of area prospects (including Daved Jones, Deshawn Pace and Gavin Gerhardt), plenty of beef in the trenches (including Justin Wodtly, Kobe McAllister, Sterling Miles and John Williams) and even reeled in a few four-stars (Jaheim Thomas, Sammy Anderson and star quarterback Evan Prater, the highest-rated recruit in UC football history). All of those names — and 16 of the team’s 20 signees — were actually secured in December’s Early Signing Period, perpetuating a growing trend in recent years.
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But we’ve also seen the Bearcats attack a specific area of need in the handful of weeks since: wide receiver. Denbrock recently told The Athletic that bolstering the receiving attack on the outside was a major emphasis this offseason, and after adding a pair of wideouts in December in Norman Love and Tyler Scott (who both project as inside/slot options), the Bearcats added another three receivers on Wednesday in four-star Jadon Thompson, Marquez Bell and Chris Scott.
Of course, all of this is suddenly occurring in the shadow of Mark Dantonio’s surprise retirement from Michigan State, and Luke Fickell’s immediate emergence as the top candidate for the job. It’s unnerving, no doubt, but hardly surprising for UC and its fanbase. You can’t win 11 games in back-to-back seasons, land a top-40 recruiting class and then expect your flourishing head coach to slide under the radar of all those power conference foes whose asses he’s been kicking for two years. He isn’t alone, either. Fickell’s is the name that makes headlines, but plenty of staffers have drawn outside attention for other jobs as well, including defensive line coach Chad Wilt, who took the same position at Minnesota. It’s the blessing and curse of success.
How this issue gets resolved — whether Fickell stays or leaves — remains to be seen, at least for another day or two, or until the next gig opens up. In an interview with ESPNU Radio on Wednesday, when asked about the Michigan State rumors, Fickell stated, “I have talked to nobody. That’s the truth.
“Obviously I’m very good friends with Mark Dantonio, I have been for a while,” Fickell added. “I have stayed in contact with him — we always do. But I have not communicated or talked to anybody besides Mark Dantonio in the last three or four weeks from Michigan State. So I haven’t been thinking about it, I haven’t been focused on it.”
In the same interview, Fickell also mentioned that the benefit of the two separate signing days is that it gives programs a better opportunity to reevaluate rosters late in the season or during bowl practice and assess what areas need more attention during the second period. The Bearcats received commitments from defensive lineman Dominique Perry and defensive back De’Arre McDonald in recent weeks, as well as defensive back Carson Hinton, who is planning to attend school as a walk-on despite earning a high three-star rating from 247Sports. (He reportedly loved the staff, campus and had solid connections with current players, including fellow Detroit native Ahmad Gardner, and was willing to walk-on as a result. How’s that for recruiting?) Yet it was the addition of those three wideouts on Wednesday that sent the clearest message on the 2020 recruiting class and the state of UC’s roster moving forward.
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Prater, the local talent and the outrageous national ranking are what will continue to garner attention for this class, and deservedly so. But bolstering the receiving corps signals how intently the Bearcats identified and addressed a position in need of elevated competition in period’s final weeks, and not merely with warm bodies. The trio currently makes for three of the class’s top seven prospects, according to BearcatJournal.com, while conveniently illustrating the breadth of UC’s recruiting prowess at the same time.
Thompson is a four-star out of Chicago, which has been a fertile region for Denbrock and quarterback coach Gino Guidugli. The Bearcats even convinced him to flip from a previous commitment to Illinois.
“We love his length and catch radius,” Denbrock said. “He’s a kid that we never stopped recruiting, even though he was committed. It happens a lot. Over time, he really felt that we were obviously serious and that we were presenting him with an opportunity he wanted and needed to be part of. You love it when those two things come together.”
With Bell, who de-committed from South Florida in December, Denbrock characterized him “as complete a receiver coming out of high school as you will run across.
“Route running is really good,” he added. “He has really solid ball skills, ability to break people down in space, and he can also take the top off the coverage.”
What sealed the deal for the Bearcats on Chris Scott, in addition to a really strong senior season on the gridiron, was actually sending a few coaches to watch him play high school basketball for Pickerington North.
“That’s really what tipped the scales for us,” Denbrock said. “Anybody who is thorough in what they do looks at everything.”
By hook or by crook, reinforcements were needed after a season in which Alec Pierce emerged on the outside but the overall receiving unit struggled to establish consistency, and after Malick Mbodj, who was in line for a starting role in 2020, made a surprise entrance into the transfer portal a few weeks ago. The newcomers, however, won’t arrive as plug-and-play replacements or a quick-fix cure, but rather a dose of the healthy competition that has defined Fickell’s tenure. The initial sense is that all five of the incoming freshman receivers will be physically ready to contribute right away, but will have to prove they have the maturity, drive and grasp of the system to earn snaps at a crowded position. The staff still believes in the roster’s returning potential as well — Pierce, Jayshon Jackson, Tre Tucker, Blue Smith, Garyn Prater and Trent Cloud, among others — and hopes the influx will help unlock that.
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“What we’re attempting to do and really addressed in recruiting with these wide receivers, in particular, was to up the level of healthy competition going on in that room,” Denbrock said. “Up the ante in order to get the type of performance we need to be successful.”
Considering the circ*mstances, the obvious next question will be who is ultimately in charge of that from a head coaching standpoint, whether this season or in the future. Even if Fickell is offered and turns down the Michigan State job, it wouldn’t shut off the outside interest. We now have two offseasons of proof against that. This is why Fickell has always welcomed the attention — “because if you’re 6-6, they’re probably not talking about it” — while always making sure to sell the program over himself.
When Fickell sat down with The Athletica few weeks back, he tiptoed around a possible next chapter: “If for some reason there is an opportunity, whether they get rid of me or I go, you want to be able to say that we’ve built something that is running really well and there’s a succession plan.”
There’s at least a chance that plan could spring into action sooner than anyone anticipated. Or maybe not. But it doesn’t mean the program has to break stride either way.
“It’s all about momentum. The kids we are recruiting, they’re competitors and want to play for good football programs,” Freeman said. “They know they can achieve every goal they have here at Cincinnati.”
(Top photo: Adam Lacy / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Justin Williams covers college football and basketball for The Athletic. He was previously a beat reporter covering the Cincinnati Bearcats, and prior to that he worked as a senior editor for Cincinnati Magazine. Follow Justin on Twitter/X @williams_justin Follow Justin on Twitter @williams_justin
