TCU’s Sonny Dykes at Home, Coaching 1st CFP Team From Texas

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — 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 teaching job and with three younger youngsters at residence, 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 wish to do to get an actual property license.

5 years later, the 53-year-old is settled in at residence, in Texas, nonetheless doing what he all the time wished to do and is now close to the height of his career with TCU (12-1) making it into the four-team Faculty Soccer Playoff.

“It’s been quite a lot of issues, a fruits of so much,” mentioned Dykes, The Associated Press Coach of the Year who’s in his first season as head coach on the faculty the place he was a marketing consultant for coach Gary Patterson in 2017.

The Horned Frogs, undefeated till an overtime loss to Kansas State within the Huge 12 championship recreation, play Huge Ten champion Michigan (13-0) within the CFP semifinal Fiesta Bowl on Saturday. They’re the primary Huge 12 group aside from Oklahoma – and first from Texas — to make the CFP.

“Being a Texas man, the state of Texas means so much to me, the historical past of faculty soccer within the state of Texas means so much to me,” Dykes mentioned.

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

“I used to be trying round, making an attempt to get a job and making an attempt to determine … taking a job some place that I didn’t essentially need to go, was that the route I wished to go in,” he mentioned. “I’ve clearly all the time wished to teach.”

Then SMU supplied its head teaching job, solely about 40 miles and 4 years away from a return to exchange Patterson at TCU. Dykes, whose first head teaching job was at Louisiana Tech, led SMU to 30 wins in its finest four-season stretch because it turned the one program ever shut down by the so-called NCAA loss of life penalty three a long time 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 exchange him, which occurred after the common season.

“I didn’t need them to consider coming in and assume this was alleged to be a rebuilding yr,” Heisman Trophy-finalist senior quarterback Max Duggan mentioned, recalling his preliminary dialog with Dykes. “We are able to win now. We’ve simply to repair quite a lot of our points, culture-wise and self-discipline and accountability.”

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 employees 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 college’s solely Heisman Trophy winner. The Frogs, then nonetheless within the Mountain West, have been 13-0 through the 2010 season that ended with a Rose Bowl victory and No. 2 nationwide rating.

“Felt him type of all yr with me,” Dykes mentioned. “He would definitely get a kick out of our guys … what sort of individuals they’re, as a result of it’s a heck of a gaggle and guys that I’m actually happy with. I do know he’d really feel the identical approach.”

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