Texas Football: 3 HC candidates that would be better than Tom Herman
1) Hindsight Texas football HC replacements for Herman
Luke Fickell, Cincinnati HC
Likely the grand prize candidate from the Group of Five coaching ranks next offseason around the college football landscape will be the Cincinnati Bearcats fourth-year head coach Luke Fickell. The former Ohio State interim head coach (from back during the 2011 season) had a fast rise to prominent of late. The heights for which he took this Cincinnati program in the American Athletic Conference in the last year or two is very impressive.
Of all of the surprise Group of Five teams this fall, the Bearcats might have the best chance to make the College Football Playoff. They currently hold the No. 6 ranking in the AP Poll, and they will soon figure out where they sit in the next version of the College Football Playoff Rankings this week.
Fickell took Cincinnati from winning just four games in his first year at the helm back during the 2017 season, to likely being a double-digit win team three years in a row. Granted Cincinnati only got to play in eight games up to this point (mostly due to COVID-19 related issues and delays). They still hold a record of 8-0 at this moment.
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Not only has the results in the win column improved for the Bearcats in four years under Fickell as head coach, the results on the recruiting trail have too. Cincinnati tends to be one of the more competitive Group of Five programs in the entire country on the recruiting trail at this point, and that would likely translate for Fickell if he were to land a blue blood job, like one in this hypothetical scenario with Texas.