How does Scott Satterfield plan on leading Cincinnati football? 'You've got to work hard'

ARLINGTON, Texas ― Scott Satterfield faces one of the toughest jobs in college football.

He is about to enter his first season as the Cincinnati coach just as the Bearcats enter their first season in the Big 12. Being a new head coach of a program making the transition to Power Five football for the first time is tough stuff.

But Satterfield is also replacing an extremely popular coach.

Luke Fickell was beloved at Cincinnati, and why not? His teams won at least nine games each of the past five seasons and thrice posted double-digit win totals, including 2021 when the Bearcats made the College Football Playoff. A Group of Five program had never done that before.

Still, Satterfield isn’t deterred by the work in front of him.

“Anything you do, you’ve got to work hard,” Satterfield said last week during Big 12 Media Days. “It’s gonna be a new league, a new team, a lot of newness. But the only way to attack … is just put your feet down and start working.”

That’s what Satterfield has done all his life.

Today continues a series looking at the football coaches at the Big 12’s four new schools. They are likely to be the first representatives of BYU, Cincinnati, Houston and UCF who will become well-known around the league. They will be the faces of their schools in many ways.

Satterfield is an unlikely face for Bearcat faithful, who expected (or at least hoped) Fickell would be the one leading Cincinnati football into the Big 12. But after turning away overtures from the likes of Michigan State and Florida State over the years, he decided to leave Cincinnati last November for Wisconsin.

“What he has done for this program in his time here has been remarkable,” Cincinnati athletic director John Cunningham told reporters on the day Fickell resigned. “It has set us up to be extremely strong going forward in all aspects of our program.”

Cunningham then hired Satterfield to carry on what Fickell began.

A big task?

Sure.

Some have wondered if Satterfield is up to it considering how things went during his four years at Louisville. Two losing seasons sandwiched between two winning ones. Many believed he was on the hot seat, if not on his way out, after last season.

But Satterfield knows what it takes to win.

He was the quarterback coach at Appalachian State in 2007 when it shocked the college football world, going on the road and beating No. 5 Michigan. The Mountaineers went on to win their third FCS national title later that season.

Then a decade ago, Satterfield was the head coach at App State when it transitioned to FBS football. He led the Mountaineers to the Sun Belt championship in three of their first four seasons of full FBS membership.

Satterfield attacked those challenges the way he was taught to work as a kid growing up in North Carolina. The small town of Hillsborough, less than 20 minutes northwest of the Raleigh-Durham area, is where he spent summers as a teenager working for his dad’s paving company. That meant shoveling asphalt and pouring concrete.

Such work is no joke anywhere, but in the North Carolina heat?

Whew.

Satterfield got the job done then and believes it can be done again at Cincinnati. He is undaunted by the work ahead of him, not just because of his background but because of the program's history, too. Hard work is baked into the football program.

“That’s the way our program is,” he said. “It’s the way it’s been built. I love that about the DNA in our program.

“We’ll continue to do that.”

Satterfield isn’t naïve about the challenges he and the Bearcats will face moving into the Big 12.

“I think it will take time,” he said of adjusting to the rigors of the league. “But we’re also in a world, the football world, where you don’t have a lot of time. You’ve got to be good now.”

He plans to do everything he can by working as hard as he can.

“We’re gonna have a lot of challenges, we know that, when start playing in this league,” he said, “but we’ll make the most of it, we’ll adjust, and then we’ll keep moving forward.”

Getting to work is the only way Satterfield knows.

Jenni Carlson: Jenni can be reached at 405-475-4125 or jcarlson@oklahoman.com. Like her at facebook.com/JenniCarlsonOK, follow her at twitter.com/jennicarlson_ok or on Threads at jennicarlson_ok, and support her work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Big 12 expansion: Satterfield attacks job as Cincinnati football coach