Behind every great college football team stands a great coach. Behind every great football coach stands a great wife.
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Cincinnati Bearcats head coach Luke Fickell is just like any other coach, except he has six children. With a reported annual salary of over $3 million, Fickell needs to do everything he can to grow his net worth to support his growing family. While he's busy on the field, his wife is busy at home, managing the lives of six Fickell kids.
Luke Fickell's family is flying high into 2022, just like his football team. Who is Luke Fickell's wife Amy, and how does she take care of business off the field so that Luke can take care of business on it?
Luke Fickell's Wife Amy Fickell
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Cincinnati Bearcats head football coach Luke Fickell's wife Amy Fickell was born Amy Goecke, the eighth child out of 10.
Amy Goecke, like many children in Ohio, was raised around football. She was a high school cheerleader at Spencerville High School in Lima, Ohio, where her brothers played football. Her interest in sports and medicine led her to Ohio State University, where she studied physical therapy.
It was in Columbus, Ohio, that Amy Goecke met Luke Fickell, beginning her on a path to becoming Amy Fickell.
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Her life has been busy since, from mothering six children to supporting her busy husband to staying grounded to getting pranked by local pizza deliverymen.
In 2012, an Ohio pizza delivery man made fun of Luke's defense to Amy's face while delivering a pie. Whether he was just being playfully unprofessional or not, the man was fired soon after, and the Internet got busy with the finger-pointing. You can decide for yourself what happened.
How Did They Meet?
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Amy Goecke met Luke Fickell during her sophomore year at Ohio State University. According to The Columbus Dispatch, it was the same weekend that the Buckeyes played college football powerhouse Notre Dame. Ohio State played Notre Dame in both 1995 and 1996, with the Buckeyes stealing victories in both away games.
The soon-to-be-fruitful couple was introduced by Ohio State starting quarterback Bobby Hoying, who was dating Amy's sister, Jill. Bobby and Jill Hoying are still together today.
When Amy wed Luke in June 2000, they planned the wedding around Luke's already-busy coaching schedule. It's one of the many adjustments that Amy Fickell happily makes as the busy wife of a successful football coach with six children.
Luke & Amy Fickell's Children
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Life with six children is even more challenging than you might expect.
Still, no one seems better suited to the job than Amy Fickell, herself the eighth child in a 12-member family.
Being the head coach of a College Football Playoff-bound Division 1 program is a full-time job, leaving Luke Fickell with little time to spend at home during the season. Luckily for Luke, his wife Amy is more active than Cincinnati's defense and more than capable of covering all the children.
Fickell's six progeny include two sets of twin boys, a single boy and a single girl. Both their youngest twins, Lakyn and Lucian, and her oldest twins, Ashton and Aydon, are constantly attending football practices and games. Their daughter Luca is an accomplished volleyball player, and her oldest son Landon plays for his father at the University of Cincinnati.
Landon Fickell is not only leading the next generation of Fickell football stars but also following in his father's footsteps.
Luke Fickell Football Career
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Luke Fickell is an Ohio native born who was raised in Columbus.
Fickell was a first-team All-Ohio defensive tackle and a wrestling state champion at St. Francis DeSales High School. Fickell went on to play nose guard at Ohio State University and even helped lead the Buckeyes to a 1997 Rose Bowl victory over Arizona State despite a torn pectoral muscle. He spent less than one season in the National Football League as an undrafted free agent with the New Orleans Saints. His time as a football player in the NFL was cut short by a torn ACL.
Fickell has enjoyed an incredible college football coaching career since then. Beginning as a graduate assistant with his alma mater's athletics program in 1999, Fickell was soon hired by Akron University as a defensive line coach. Fickell then returned to Ohio State for 14 years, working his way up to interim head coach in 2011, when the Buckeyes went 6-7.
Fickell remained in Columbus as a co-defensive coordinator and linebackers coach until 2016. In December 2016, Fickell was hired away by the Cincinnati Bearcats and never looked back.
After a rough 4-8 start in 2017, Fickell's Bearcats have not lost more than three games in a season since and are undefeated as they head into the CFP as a heavy underdog to Alabama. If they do manage to roll past the tide, Cincinnati will have a perhaps even more daunting task ahead of them: beating the winner of Michigan-Georgia.
Though Cincinnati has yet to prove themselves on the big stage, they believe that now is their time. With a supporting cast like Amy Fickell and his six children, Luke Fickell seems to have all the approval he needs.
