Sonny Dykes feels right at home coaching at TCU

FORT WORTH, Texas — Sonny Dykes was nearing the top of a season as an off-field offensive analyst, and pondering his subsequent transfer.

Fired from his earlier head coaching job and with three younger children at home, the son of longtime faculty coach Spike Dykes even thought of a profession change after greater than 20 years in soccer. He had researched what he would want to do to get an actual property license.

Five years later, the 53-year-old is settled in at home, in Texas, nonetheless doing what he all the time needed to do and is now close to the height of his occupation with TCU (12-1) making it into the four-team College Football Playoff.

“It’s been a lot of things, a culmination of a lot,” mentioned Dykes, The Associated Press Coach of the Year who’s in his first season as head coach at the varsity the place he was a marketing consultant for coach Gary Patterson in 2017.

The Horned Frogs, undefeated till an time beyond regulation loss to Kansas State within the Big 12 championship recreation, play Big Ten champion Michigan (13-0) within the CFP semifinal Fiesta Bowl on Saturday. They are the primary Big 12 workforce aside from Oklahoma – and first from Texas — to make the CFP.

“Being a Texas guy, the state of Texas means a lot to me, the history of college football in the state of Texas means a lot to me,” Dykes mentioned.

That season working for the Frogs, once they made their solely different Big 12 title recreation, was a possibility for Dykes to get home after going 19-30 in 4 seasons at California. The job out West was by no means actually a great match for the folksy, Texas-born coach.

“I was looking around, trying to get a job and trying to decide … taking a job some place that I didn’t necessarily want to go, was that the direction I wanted to go in,” he mentioned. “I’ve obviously always wanted to coach.”

Then SMU provided its head coaching job, solely about 40 miles and 4 years away from a return to interchange Patterson at TCU. Dykes, whose first head coaching job was at Louisiana Tech, led SMU to 30 wins in its greatest four-season stretch because it turned the one program ever shut down by the so-called NCAA dying penalty three many years earlier.

The Frogs went 23-24 throughout that very same time, and parted methods with Patterson even earlier than the top of his twenty first season. Dykes was instantly thought of the favourite to interchange him, which occurred after the common season.

“I didn’t want them to think about coming in and think this was supposed to be a rebuilding year,” Heisman Trophy-finalist senior quarterback Max Duggan mentioned, recalling his preliminary dialog with Dykes. “We can win now. We’ve just to fix a lot of our issues, culture-wise and discipline and accountability.”

The Frogs did win, and a yr after Dykes was formally launched, they have been again in the identical room for the playoff announcement.

Dykes grew up within the Lone Star State, the place his late father coached at a number of ranges over 38 years. That included Spike’s 14 seasons because the helm of Texas Tech, the place the youthful Dykes performed baseball, not soccer.

Sonny Dykes was a Texas Tech assistant for seven seasons, the primary seven after his father retired when on the workers of the late Mike Leach. He went west for the primary time as offensive coordinator at Arizona from 2007-09, then had a 22-15 document in three seasons at Louisiana Tech earlier than taking the Cal job.

Now, Dykes is main a TCU program that received its solely AP nationwide title in 1938, when quarterback Davey O’Brien was the varsity’s solely Heisman Trophy winner. The Frogs, then nonetheless within the Mountain West, have been 13-0 throughout the 2010 season that ended with a Rose Bowl victory and No. 2 nationwide rating.

When TCU wrapped up this common season with a win over Iowa State, it was Sonny’s 83rd profession win — yet one more than his father.

“Felt him kind of all year with me,” Dykes mentioned. “He would certainly get a kick out of our guys … what kind of people they are, because it’s a heck of a group and guys that I’m certainly proud of. I know he’d feel the same way.”