CINCINNATI – Cincinnati football head coach Luke Fickell was named to the midseason watch list for the 2021 Dodd Trophy presented by PNC on Thursday.
 
Fickell, in his fifth year at UC, is among 16 coaches on the list for the award which goes to the nation’s top college football coach. 
 
He has led the Bearcats to a 6-0 mark in 2021 and a No. 2 ranking in the Associated Press poll – the highest position in school history.
 
Cincinnati ranks in the Top 10 in both scoring offense (43.5 ppg, sixth) and scoring defense (13.7 ppg, third) and is coming off the back-to-back 50-point games for the first time ever.
 
The Bearcats are the only team in the country with two nonconference road wins by double digits this season after UC defeated Indiana, 38-24, and No. 9 Notre Dame, 24-13, before beginning AAC play.
 
Fickell, a two-time AAC Coach of the Year, is 41-14 (.745) in five seasons at UC. He led Cincinnati to back-to-back 11-win campaigns in 2018 and 2019, and an undefeated regular season in 2020, which was capped by an AAC Championship an appearance in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl.
 
Under Fickell, Cincinnati has cemented itself as one of the nation’s top programs in recent years. The Bearcats are 15-1 (.938) since the start of 2020 and 37-6 (.860) since the start of 2018.
 
Off the field, Cincinnati has won four of the last five AAC Football Team Academic Excellence Awards under Fickell, and posted a school-record GPA of 3.212 in spring 2021.
 
The Dodd Trophy midseason watch list was created through a selection process by the Bobby Dodd Coach of the Year Foundation and Peach Bowl, Inc., taking into consideration each program’s current performance during the 2021 season, Academic Progress Rate (APR), and each coach’s commitment to service and charity in the community.

COURTESY UC ATHLETIC COMMUNICATIONS