Paul Daugherty

pdaugherty@enquirer.com

Good news, local high school football coaches. Luke Fickell knows you’re alive. He might actually show up at your school. Not just to speak at your stag, or walk the sideline for a few quarters at a home football game, but to talk to you in person. What a concept.

We’d say Tommy Tuberville was a ghost at Cincinnati high schools, but that’d be an insult to ghosts. Even they have to be around once in awhile. Otherwise, who’d do the haunting?

Put it this way: Brian Kelly once visited seven local high school games on one Friday night, via helicopter. Tommy Tuberville couldn’t name you seven local high schools.

“Tommy Tuberville never came to campus,’’ Elder coach Doug Ramsey said Friday. “Twenty years I’ve been the head coach at Elder. In that time, 15 Elder guys either walked on or were on scholarship at UC. Butch Jones has been here, Brian Kelly has been here, Mark Dantonio has been here.‘’

UC offered Ramsey’s son Peyton a scholarship. Tuberville never talked to Peyton. He signed with Indiana.

Colerain coach Tom Bolden said, “Tuberville never set foot in my office. He spoke at our stag, came to a couple games. That was it. There was a huge distance there.’’ This, even as Bolden’s son Kyle was a two-time all-state linebacker to whom UC had offered a scholarship. Bolden said Ohio State coach Urban Meyer and OSU assistant Kerry Coombs “would do 13 Cincinnati schools in one day.’’

Tuberville’s dismissal of the local talent was egregious and obvious. The area coaches “have been around a long time. They have pride in their schools and their city. They want that interaction,’’ Luke Fickell said Friday. “For the past two years, they haven’t had it.’’

Fickell has spent the past several days starting to fix things. He spent an hour talking with Ramsey on Thursday.

“Ohio State is going to take the top six or seven players from the state of Ohio,’’ Ramsey said. “When you start with players seven, eight, nine and 10, that opens the door some. A lot of kids end up going to other Big 10 schools, but you can sell them on staying home. That’s what those other three guys (Dantonio, Jones, Kelly) did. When the head coach makes an appearance at the school, it makes a huge difference.’’

Ohio is not quite the recruiting goldmine Florida is, or Texas or California. But it’s compact and easy to navigate. A recruiter can be at Lakewood St. Ed’s in the morning and Moeller that afternoon.

Fickell cites a stat that he’s not positive is accurate, but it’s close. He says since 1990, 36 UC players have been drafted. Of those 36, 26 have been from the Tristate. Thirteen Bearcats alumni are currently working in the NFL. Local attention must be paid.

“The state of Cincinnati,’’ Fickell calls it. “We gotta do our best job there.’’

Fickell is not familiar with southwest Ohio. At OSU, he recruited the northern half of the state. He might know how provincial we here in the Republic of Cincinnati can be. He definitely understands what happened when Kelly hired Coombs. An Orange Bowl followed by a Sugar Bowl was not coincidental. Some of us believed Fickell should have added Coombs as his defensive coordinator.

“Get a Cincinnati guy, make him the common denominator with all the coaches,’’ said Bolden. “That’s how I think coach Fickell will approach it. Your core at UC is Ohio kids. Your heart is Cincinnati kids.’’

Those of us who aren’t recruiting savants didn’t know UC might have had former Colerain linebacker Tegray Scales. Scales, a co-defensive player of the year in Ohio as a senior, got offers from Minnesota, Illinois, Boston College and even Ohio, but not UC. He was named third-team all-Big 10 as a junior this year, playing for Indiana.

Erstwhile Mount Healthy running back David Montgomery didn’t make UC’s short list, but he was good enough for Iowa State, where he ran for 563 yards as a freshman this year, finishing the season with a 141-yard game against West Virginia. And so on.

Fickell already showed he knows the score here. He circled back to nab Jarell White, the four-star recruit from La Salle. All it took was a home visit.

During the Kelly-Jones years, “It became kind of a cool thing around here to play at UC,’’ Doug Ramsey said. The Bearcats might not reach that level again soon, but at least they have a coach who understands it’s possible.