Ex-Cal Football Coach Sonny Dykes Voted AP National Coach of the Year

Former Cal coach Sonny Dykes, who led TCU into the College Football Playoff in his first season at TCU, has been voted the Associated Press National Coach of the Year.

Dykes, 53, received 37 of 46 first-place votes after directing the Horned Frogs to a 12-0 regular-season record before losing to Kansas State in the Big 12 championship game.

"It's the ultimate team award," Dykes said. "It's indicative of literally everybody in our office, coaches, players, everybody, because more so than ever in college football it is truly a team effort.”

Dykes coached the Bears for four seasons (2013-16), going 1-11 in his first season, earning a bowl bid in 2015 before being fired following the 2016 season with a record of 19-30.

"It's not always like this and I've been on both ends and so something like this probably means more to me than it might somebody," Dykes said. "I've been 1-11 and I've been fired. I've been kind of on top and then on bottom, too. I'm always thankful for those bad times because it really truly does make you appreciate the good times more.”

Cal is the only one of Dykes’ four head-coaching assignments at which he did not compile a winning record. He was 22-15 in three seasons (2010-12) at Louisiana Tech, and 30-18 in five seasons at SMU (2017-2021) before his current stint at TCU.

His career record is 83-64 in 13 seasons as a head coach.

TCU, seeded No. 3 in the four-team CFP, faces No. 2 Michigan (13-0) in the national semifinals on Dec. 31 at Glendale, Ariz. No. 1 Georgia (13-0) and No. 4 Ohio State (11-1) will square off in the other semifinal the same day in Atlanta.

Since this award was established in 1998, Dykes is the first coach to win the award in his first season on his fourth different FBS head-coaching assignment.

He is the third TCU coach to win AP Coach of the Year, following two-time winner Gary Patterson (2009 & 2014), who was fired by the school after going 5-7 in 2021.

Dykes did not entirely dismantle the TCU roster he inherited but added players from the transfer portal and executed a remarkable turnaround with a team that began the season unranked.

"Sometimes it's more about the chemistry of things and trying to get the chemistry of those rooms right as opposed to necessarily adding talent," Dykes said. "That part of it, I think, is really overlooked. Just the chemistry and creating competition and all that.”

Tulane coach Willie Fritz finished second in the voting, followed by Tennessee's John Heupel, 2021 winner Jim Harbaugh of Michigan and Georgia's Kirby Smart.

Six of the top 11 finishers in the AP voting are current or former Pac-12 coaches. Besides Dykes:

-- Harbaugh coached Stanford from 2007-10

-- Sixth-place finisher Lincoln Riley led USC to the Pac-12 regular-season title and an 11-2 record in his first season

-- Seventh-place Kalen DeBoer is 10-2 in his first season at Washington

-- 10th-place Jim Mora, who was coach at UCLA from 2012-17, led UConn to a 6-6 record in his debut this season a year after the Huskies went 1-11

-- 11th-place Jonathan Smith was 10-3 this season in his fifth year as coach at Oregon State, his alma mater.

Cover photo of Sonny Dykes by Jerome Miron, USA Today

Follow Jeff Faraudo of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jefffaraudo