Awesome news for the Bearcats.  Glad they got this done.

@Walter Any idea what his buyout is? 

The bump in pay for assistants is the most important piece of this, IMO. 

Really doesn't matter, if the right job opens up, he will be out of here.

7 hours ago, 4 Quarters said:

Really doesn't matter, if the right job opens up, he will be out of here.

So Notre Dame was not the right job or was it just not the right time??

38 minutes ago, 9068 said:

So Notre Dame was not the right job or was it just not the right time??

He made it clear he wasn't going to interview before UC went as far as they would in the CFP and ND wasn't willing to wait and lose Freeman to another job. They then may be stuck without either if things didn't go well with Fickell. 

They pulled the trigger quick enough with Freeman that I'm not sure how legitimate of a shot he had at the job anyway. That had to be in the works early. 

3 hours ago, 9068 said:

So Notre Dame was not the right job or was it just not the right time??

Only Luke can answer that question.

On 2/15/2022 at 9:19 AM, TheDeuce said:

The bump in pay for assistants is the most important piece of this, IMO. 

This. 

In a Q&A with Justin Williams on The Athletic, AD John Cunningham told Luke to name his price and they would give him whatever he wanted to keep him long term. 

Luke's response?

"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."

".....because we’re going to be in the Big 12, and when you walk in there, you want to be on the same playing field, at least to take care of your people. That’s where the big push is, to continue that. Nothing stops growing. This is not going to stop growing. Whether it’s your program, your staff, taking care of the people around you — to me, that’s all a part of taking those next steps and going to the Big 12. It’s not OK to lose a coach just because somebody in the Big Ten or wherever can pay him more. You kind of understood that three or four years ago. Now it’s not acceptable."

Fick is a different breed, for sure. Cares more about taking care of those around him and growing the program than his own selfish interests. 

Top priorities were an IPF and assistant raises. UC is giving him both with the new contract, while also taking care of him and his family with his salary increase.

 

On 2/15/2022 at 9:05 AM, Kenny Powers said:

@Walter Any idea what his buyout is? 

Not sure. That was one of the few things not mentioned in the articles I've seen on it.

On 2/15/2022 at 11:46 AM, 4 Quarters said:

Really doesn't matter, if the right job opens up, he will be out of here.

The bump in pay is to keep away the schools who are on the fringe of being "the right job" to Fickell from going to those schools.  I always use the example of when UK lost Guy Morris.  Baylor (back then at least) was not "the right job" by any means but it was good enough and paid enough to steal him away from UK.  UC wants his pay to be enough to keep anyone not named OSU/Bama/etc. from stealing their coach and to build goodwill and loyalty with Fickell.  So I would argue, it really does matter, if it didn't, UC wouldn't have done it, they know what there are doing up there.

On 2/15/2022 at 9:05 AM, Kenny Powers said:

@Walter Any idea what his buyout is? 

$3.5 million 

UC Board of Trustees officially approved his new contract today.

 

On 2/15/2022 at 7:17 PM, 9068 said:

So Notre Dame was not the right job or was it just not the right time??

Not the right time considering his team was in the playoffs competing for a National title. He wasn’t going to leave at that time, when he had a team with a chance to win a title. 
 

Now if UC had got snubbed and missed the playoffs. Then it would have been very interesting to see if he would have still stayed then. 
 

Which I am very happy for UC that he is still there and happy for Notre Dame about Freeman.