Embarking on his first offseason as the head coach at Cincinnati, Luke Fickell has made a couple of veteran additions to his first UC coaching staff.
The football program announced in a press release the additions of Joker Phillips and Jon Tenuta to Fickell’s initial staff. The former will serve as wide receivers coach, the latter as safeties coach.
“I’m proud and excited about how our staff is coming together,” Fickell said in a statement. “Brady[and] Joker... are all great coaches and family men. We asked our team to have blind faith as we started this journey, and that has been true of the coaches as well. It has been amazing to see how many guys have taken that leap of faith. The caliber of coaches and people we’ve been able to attract here has been unbelievable and we aren’t done yet.”
The former head coach at Kentucky, Phillips is coming home in a roundabout way as he was a position coach at UC in 1997 and 1998. He has spent time as receivers coach at Minnesota (1999-2000), Notre Dame (2001), South Carolina (2002), Kentucky (2003-2009) and Florida (2013). Additionally, he was the receivers coach of the Cleveland Browns in 2015.
Last season, he was a quality control assistant at Ohio State.
Tenuta was last in the collegiate game as the defensive coordinator at Virginia from 2013-15. He’s also been a coordinator at Ohio State, Georgia Tech, North Carolina and Notre Dame.