CINCINNATI — Every morning as he drives into the Cincinnati football offices, Kerry Coombs listens to 700 WLW on his car radio. Even when Coombs was coaching out of town, at Ohio State or with the Tennessee Titans, he listened to Cincinnati’s flagship AM station whenever possible.

“It keeps me connected to the town,” Coombs said.

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Few love Cincinnati the way Coombs does. Even fewer appreciate and understand the history and importance of high school football to the fabric of this city. And perhaps no one is more synonymous with those two things than Coombs.

“Mike McConnell was on 700 this morning talking about the weather, and he says, ‘Yeah, we gotta check in to see what the weather is like for tomorrow night’s high school games,” Coombs said. “That stuff only happens in Cincinnati. People will say that happens in Texas, and I’ve been there recruiting, so I know it’s a big deal, right? But Friday nights around here, even going back to when I played, have always been special. I think it’s different from anywhere else that I’ve seen.”

Coombs is happy to be back in that familiar environment. Luke Fickell hired him in January as the Bearcats’ special teams coordinator and defensive backs coach, bringing a beloved local son and one of the city’s most successful and decorated high school coaches back to his hometown. Coombs rose to prominence as the head coach of Colerain High School from 1991-2006, leading the Cardinals to 10 state playoff appearances in 16 seasons, including a perfect 15-0 record and Ohio Division I state championship in 2004. He also spent four seasons as an assistant for UC from 2007-11 under Brian Kelly and Butch Jones, now joining the likes of offensive coordinator Gino Guidugli, defensive line coach Walt Stewart, recruiting coordinator Pat Lambert and a handful of others as former Bearcats players and/or coaches who returned under Fickell.

“I do believe that there are right fits,” Fickell said at Coombs’ introductory news conference in February. “You can go anywhere and be a good coach, but when you put a person into a really good fit, boy, it gives him an opportunity to really excel. And not just for himself but for the whole program. Coach Coombs is one of those situations.”

Fickell has prioritized hiring those with ties and equity in the program who have a certain pride in repping the C-paw. Coombs’ roots run even deeper than that, having witnessed the decades-long growth of UC football first as a hometown kid and fan, then as a big-time area high school coach, then as an assistant during the team’s initial rise to prominence.

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“I think people sometimes forget how good we were those three years with BK. That was good football, the Big East was a good league,” Coombs said. “But I also remember when I first got here as a coach that they hadn’t sold that stadium out in I don’t know how long. Now the season tickets are sold out, and student tickets sell out in 10 minutes. I give 1,000 percent credit to Luke and this staff — this is a really good football team. We were trying to get there. Luke achieved that, and the people of Cincinnati have embraced this team, this environment.”

All of it has provided Coombs with a unique perspective on the Bearcats’ trajectory, something he has felt since returning to Cincinnati. He goes to work every day in the same seventh-floor football offices he was in a decade ago, where Sherry Murray — who was his assistant at Colerain for 10 years before Coombs helped bring her to UC — still sits at the front desk. He’s still right next door to old Nippert Stadium, too, but those friendly confines have received a makeover since he left for Ohio State in early 2012.

“Every day, something is exactly the same as it was 10 years ago. Every day. It will startle me. I park in the same spot in the same garage I parked in 10 years ago,” Coombs said. “But every day, something is totally different. It’s really weird because I’m caught between those two things. It’s cool — I like it, I enjoy it — but it is weird.”

One thing that’s definitely different for Mr. Colerain, a man known about town and referenced in some corners of Bearcats fandom as Westside Jesus? He’s not living in Colerain this time around.

“That’s true. And tough,” Coombs said with a chuckle.

He and his wife, Holly, are both Colerain natives, and it’s where they initially returned when they moved to Cincinnati this winter, temporarily staying with Holly’s parents in the basement of their Colerain home for two months.

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“I love my in-laws, but that’s not the optimal thing,” Coombs joked. “I’m sure it wasn’t fun for them either.”

Returning to Cincinnati in the midst of a bustling housing market left options scarce, so when the Coombs managed to find an available home in Symmes Township, near Mason, they jumped on it. Yet for anyone well-versed in Cincinnati’s east-west divide, that move is far more than a 25-minute drive across town.

“I stopped in somewhere on the west side pretty early on after we came back here, and someone I didn’t know, this older guy, says to me, ‘Hey, I heard you didn’t move back to the west side. You too good for us now?'” Coombs said.

Make no mistake, Coombs is still Colerain through and through. He and Holly grew up there. As a kid, Coombs lived close enough to Colerain High School that he could hear the public address system of football games in his backyard. Years later, the couple found its way back and both worked for the school district, raising three children — Cortney, Brayden and Dylan — as Cardinals.

“For anybody to find success or build a legacy in the place that raised you, that’s very special,” said Brayden, Coombs’ oldest son. “I think Colerain definitely is proud of him, but he’s just as proud to be from there.”

The enduring Colerain persona, of tough-nosed kids who are often underrated but win with extra effort and a chip on their shoulder, largely was fostered and established under Coombs’ tenure. It’s the same culture Fickell has instilled at Cincinnati, which is why so many of those under-recruited and overlooked prospects have blossomed at UC — there are six on the current roster — and what made Coombs such an ideal fit for Fickell’s staff.

“That’s comfortable to me because that’s how we coached (at Colerain). It was our neighborhood. We would take our guys and make them tough and grind them in the weight room and the practice field, and on Friday nights, they were going to show up and play fast and physical,” Coombs said. “That’s what Luke has developed here. We want hungry guys who have something to prove.”

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As much as Coombs was happy for any excuse to return, his connection with Fickell was integral. During Coombs’ first stint at Ohio State from 2012-17, he worked alongside Fickell for four seasons as a defensive and special teams assistant under Urban Meyer, with the two developing a lasting bond.

“Luke is a great football coach. He’s a better man,” Coombs said. “I learned a lot from him and coaching with him about player relationships and preparation.”

Fickell left the Buckeyes for Cincinnati ahead of the 2017 season, and Coombs left Columbus a year later, spending two seasons as defensive backs coach with the Tennessee Titans under Mike Vrabel, a former Ohio State defensive lineman and assistant and close friend of Fickell’s. Coombs then retraced his steps from the NFL back to the Buckeyes for two years as defensive coordinator, then back with the Bearcats and Fickell this offseason.

“He thinks the world of Luke,” said Brayden, himself a former NFL assistant with the Bengals and Lions. “The whole Cincinnati thing is awesome, and I don’t want to speak for my dad, but had it not been for Fick, I don’t know if it’s a guarantee he would have ended up there. He certainly had other opportunities whether it was going back to the NFL or other programs, but Luke being there made it a slam dunk for him.”

Coombs’ journey home wasn’t purely a voluntary or enjoyable one. He was hired as Ohio State’s defensive coordinator under Ryan Day in 2020, but after the Buckeyes struggled defensively to open the 2021 season — including a Week 2 loss to Oregon — Coombs was stripped of his play-calling responsibilities and essentially demoted for the remainder of the season. It was a rare disappointing and humbling development for Coombs in a sterling coaching career and carried with it plenty of public ridicule in a fish bowl such as Ohio State. Talking to reporters in October of last year, Coombs described the situation as “the hardest stretch of my professional career,” while at the same time earning a wave of collective respect from media, coaches and fans for the responsibility he took for it and humility with which he faced it.

“I was very proud of him and the way he handled it. It comes with the job description, he understood that. It doesn’t make it any easier, especially when you’re at a place like Ohio State, and it’s on a loop 24/7,” Brayden said. “But you can’t control that. All you can control is how you respond to it. He went out there with his chin up and chest out, and you never heard him point fingers or make excuses. As much as that sucked and I was hurting for him, I was very, very proud.”

Ohio State elected not to retain Coombs in January, and the Bearcats took advantage. Nearly a full year removed from much of it, Coombs doesn’t like revisiting or rehashing how it all unfolded, but he maintains the same constructive outlook.

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“I don’t like talking about it, but I said it in that press conference, and it’s absolutely true — I sat on this side of the desk across from a kid on many occasions and had to tell them something that was really disappointing for them to hear. ‘I’m going to put somebody else in your spot, somebody else is taking your job, this is what I believe I have to do,'” Coombs said. “What I always asked of those kids was to be as vital and valuable a part of the team in the midst of their disappointment as they were before. So if I had not tried to handle that in the same way, it would have made me a liar to every one of those kids.

“And I know that’s hard. There was absolutely nothing about it that was easy or fun, but I also believe very strongly that if you’re part of a team, you do whatever it takes to help the team be successful. So I tried to do that as well as I could, every single day I was there. Everybody is going to encounter disappointment. It’s how you choose to deal with it that is the measure of your manhood.”

The most defining thing about Coombs, perhaps aside from his proud Cincinnati heritage, is his constant and seemingly endless stock of energy. The man has built a reputation for exuberant sideline fist pumps, a booming, fast-paced voice and a wide smile. Anyone who spends time around Coombs knows that his coffee intake plays a role, with Bearcats cornerback Arquon Bush stating his coach has a styrofoam cup with him at all times of the day. But Coombs’ passion stems from more than caffeine.

“Not just energy but positive energy,” Brayden said. “He’s never had a bad day in his life, and that’s intentional.”

During his multiple stints at Cincinnati and Ohio State, that energy has helped Coombs exhibit himself as one of the pre-eminent recruiters and developers of secondary talent in college. He was the leading force behind Ohio State being dubbed “DB U” under Meyer, and he has recruited and/or coached more than a dozen NFL Draft picks dating back to the likes of Mike Mickens, DeAngelo Smith and Haruki Nakamura with the Bearcats. Coombs had a hand in at least seven first-round selections from Ohio State’s defensive backfield and brings that pedigree to a Cincinnati program that just produced the Jim Thorpe Award winner in Coby Bryant and a top-five NFL pick in Sauce Gardner.

“I can see why he has so many first-rounders. He pushes everybody. Everybody gets the same treatment, same coaching,” cornerback Ja’Quan Sheppard said. “He’s very energetic for sure, someone I want to be around. I can go to him with anything, and he’ll help me off the field if I need something. I really click with him.”

That last part is arguably the most important. Even at 61 years old, Coombs’ boundless enthusiasm — for football, for life — is what allows a lifelong coach from the west side of Cincinnati to connect and resonate with 17- to 22-year-olds from anywhere. Coombs usually has music blaring in the cornerbacks’ room when the players arrive for meetings, something he thinks they will like and readily admits he knows nothing about.

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“I don’t know Mean Mill or Meek Mill or whoever, but then I’ll say, ‘How you guys like this?’ They get a kick out of that,” Coombs said.

But he also knows that establishing real trust and relationships happens on a much deeper level.

“That’s really about showing them you care. I talk to them the way I would want my sons talked to. I try to teach them the way I would want my sons to be taught. I’m not their dad, but I want to be a person in their life who they can count on when things are great or when things are hard. It’s one of the reasons I got into this profession a long time ago and why I enjoy it so much,” Coombs said. “They probably go off and make fun of me as the corny old guy, and that’s OK with me because I probably did that when I was their age too. But I think they also know that I love them, and I hope they’re learning to love me back.”

Brayden describes that ability to connect as a product of his father’s unfailing authenticity, something he witnessed among his own friends and teammates when he played for his dad at Colerain. It extends beyond the players. Fickell and Coombs grew close during their time together in Columbus, and their friendship and mutual respect are easy to see when they talk about each other.

“For me as the head coach, you don’t always have some of those guys that you have a different relationship with. To have some of that (with Coombs) gives you some human elements, so you’re not just isolated and being a head coach too often,” Fickell said. “I know for me, it goes a long way, and I appreciate that. Obviously, I love the energy, but it’s deeper than those things. And in the long run, it’s not just good for me, it’s good for all.”

That mentality has helped make Coombs into the coach he is, taking him from Colerain to college and the NFL, and one of the many reasons Fickell brought him back home. It’s also why the reunion has the chance to be special. A lot may have changed at Cincinnati in the decade since Coombs last coached for the Bearcats, but for the most part, he hasn’t. And as far as he’s concerned, the city of Cincinnati — the town that raised him and defined him — hasn’t either.

“The people here are real, they’re genuine. I believe I’ve had some measure of success because I’m from Cincinnati because I grew up in a town where it was expected that you did a good day’s work for a good day’s pay. That you showed up on time and gave wherever you were working as much as you could,” Coombs said. “My mom and dad were not college graduates. My dad worked at Procter & Gamble from the time he graduated high school to the day he retired.

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“I grew up with the Big Red Machine. I went to Nippert Stadium. I saw the Bengals’ first game in Paul Brown Stadium. This is my life. That’s the treasure and pleasure of being from Cincinnati, and the great and comforting thing is that Cincinnati never changes. And it shouldn’t because that’s what is special about this town.”

(Top photo courtesy of Cincinnati Bearcats Athletics)

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