A father fulfills his lost son’s biggest dream at Cincinnati

On Dec 28, 2021

Rick Flick is sitting in a conference room in the University of Cincinnati’s Richard E. Lindner Center, home base for Bearcats athletics. The swivel chair he occupies is pointed halfway toward the glass door and windows, and every few minutes a football staffer slows down his or her hustling gait to smile and wave in Flick’s direction. The 58-year-old returns the greeting, over and over, like homecoming royalty on a parade float.

No one outside the Cincinnati football program knows who Flick is. He’s not listed on any staff directory, he’s never in the spotlight and he doesn’t draw a salary from the school. He’s the CEO of a supply company that sells nuts and bolts and other hardware. But everyone inside the program knows him, and they adore him.

“I don’t know how to explain him,” head coach Luke Fickell says. “I thought he was just a maintenance guy when I first got here, but he is the most unique person. Whenever there is work to be done, Rick’s there. Whether it’s bringing stuff to my house for recruiting weekends, you look up and Rick’s there. Whether it’s fixing something at the facility, Rick’s there. When we need a truck, Rick’s there. I’ve known plenty of people who show up for the party after the work has been done. Rick is there for the work, and he’s usually the first one there and the last to leave.”

“He’s the mortar that fills in the cracks,” says Fickell’s personal assistant, Sherry Murray. “Wherever you need him.”

Courtesy of the Flick Family

“Bring in Rick,” says director of football operations John Widecan, “problem solved.”

Every college football program needs a Rick Flick—a game-day handyman, an advance roadie, a stadium operations savant. Not every program has that guy. And likely no program has a guy who attached himself for the reason Flick did.

The backstory begins in a display case a couple of floors down in the Lindner Center. That’s where the plaque resides that recognizes the annual winners of the Ben Flick Memorial Award. It’s given to a freshman from any Cincinnati varsity sport who “exemplifies the qualities of charisma, passion and dedication.”

Ben Flick came to UC in 2013 and never played a down for the Bearcats, his dream cut short on a rural road in Butler County, Ohio. But his impact lives on—in the award, yes, but more so in the form of his father’s unceasing devotion to the program.

“I’m going to fulfill Ben’s four-year commitment,” Rick told himself initially, years ago. And after those four years he kept going, returning to the Bearcats season after season, through a coaching change, offering himself as mortar to fill in the cracks of a program that continues to grow beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, to the point where it will face Alabama in the semifinals of the College Football Playoff this week.

Rick Flick needed Cincinnati football, he realized. It helped him heal a shattered life.

Turns out, Cincinnati football needed him, too.

On the night of Sept. 21, 2013, Rick Flick settled in at his home in Hamilton, Ohio, to watch a little college football on TV. He had attended Cincinnati’s afternoon road victory at nearby Miami (Ohio), the Bearcats improving to 3–1 in coach Tommy Tuberville’s first season. Ben and two other Bearcats freshmen who were also redshirting, and a high school friend of Ben’s who attended Miami, were also at the game.

Rick had met up with the group beforehand, then sat separately. He got home in time to catch Texas A&M star quarterback Johnny Manziel in action against SMU. Around 8 p.m., Ben texted Rick that the group was headed back to Cincinnati. “Be careful,” Rick texted back. “I’ll talk to you later.” Ben replied, “I love you.”

Around 10:30 p.m., Rick started feeling uneasy.

“I don’t want to say it’s a premonition, but I had this feeling,” he says. “I can’t explain it. But the only way to describe it, something was wrong. Like something just wasn’t right. It was very strange. But, you know, as a parent …”

Flick went to bed. A couple of hours later, he was awakened by a knock at the front door, and that vague uneasiness quickly morphed into palpable dread. Rick looked out the window and saw a law enforcement officer standing there. “He’s out of central casting,” Rick recalls. “He’s got the windbreaker on, the shirt and tie. It’s like, ‘S—.’”

Flick’s dog was barking, making it difficult to hear what the officer was saying, but the details didn’t matter. Rick knew why he was there.

The 6-6, 272-pound Ben Flick was a guard at Hamilton High School before committing to Cincinnati.

Courtesy of the Flick Family

A black Chevy that Ben had been riding in careened off Stahlbehner Road near the intersection with Morman Road in Hanover Township. The four passengers were returning from the Cincinnati-Miami game. Ben was in the front passenger seat. His high school friend, Sean Van Dyne, was driving. Ben’s teammates, Mark Barr and Javon Harrison, were in the back. Only the two in the backseat were wearing seat belts. Police estimate the car was going 85 mph five seconds before crashing. A nearby resident found it upside down and called 911. The front-seat passengers were ejected.

Flick was pronounced dead at the scene. Van Dyne died two days later from his injuries. Barr and Harrison, the two who were wearing their seat belts, were injured but survived. From the Butler County Sheriff’s accident report: “Although the final toxicology tests are still pending, investigators have stated the initial blood tests recorded a blood alcohol level for driver Van Dyne at .056. (Ohio’s limit is .02 for any person under the age of 21.)”

The devastating news spread quickly. A steady flow of friends and family came to Rick’s house through the night. By the following evening, a makeshift memorial had been set up at Hamilton High School, Flick and Van Dyne’s alma mater. People flocked there to express their grief over Ben’s passing—a 6’ 6”, 285-pound giant of a young man with a gift for making others laugh. “It wasn’t ever over the top,” Rick says. “But he was never very shy.”

The Cincinnati football program was rocked, as well. Offensive guard Austen Bujnoch told the Associated Press at the time that when the Bearcats went back to practice for the first time after the tragedy, there wasn’t a single spoken word among the players all day. “One of the hardest things we ever went through,” says Widecan, who has worked with Cincinnati football for 33 seasons.

Sitting in that conference room eight years later, Rick isn’t one to open up his emotional vault while discussing that awful night. He speaks matter-of-factly. But he occasionally squeezes his eyes shut while talking. Or looks up at the ceiling. Going there will always be hard.

A previous jarring tragedy already had deepened the bond between Rick and Ben—“We were just a pair,” Rick says—and in an instant they were torn asunder. The two closest people in Rick Flick’s life had been taken from him. How was he supposed to keep going?

Cincinnati coach Luke Fickell on Rick Flick: “He’s exactly what we want the culture of the program to be.”

Courtesy of Cincinnati Athletics

In 2008, Rick and Theresa Flick moved into their dream home in suburban Hamilton with their teenage son. Theresa lived there for a week.

She had lived a difficult life with brittle diabetes, suffering through multiple organ failures and had undergone multiple transplants. There were treatment trips to the University of Minnesota hospital, the Cleveland Clinic and elsewhere. On Aug. 23, 2008, she died at age 45.

That left a widower and his grief-stricken boy to lean on each other.

They were not biological father and son—a little-known fact that became increasingly obvious as Ben grew to tower over his diminutive father. Ben was born in 1994 in South Carolina to a woman who was originally from Cincinnati; in dire financial straits, she moved home and gave up Ben for adoption. With Theresa Flick’s diabetes, natural childbirth was a risk. So she and Rick opted for adoption, and on the appointed day arrived at a location to pick up Ben.

After Theresa’s passing, Ben and Rick became road-trip sidekicks. They jumped in the car to visit Civil War sites, flew out West—and, increasingly, took off to attend football camps as Ben developed a passion for the sport. “We were always going on these adventures,” Rick says. “I had a great, great, great time.”