Sonny Dykes refuses to let himself reflect until after TCU's Thursday night clash with Texas Tech ends. Once the Jones AT&T Stadiums lights flicker off and the Red Raider faithful file out, Dykes will then think about what returning to Texas Tech as a head coach signified for his family, forever intertwined with the school. 

Sonny's history with Tech began as a high schooler in 1986 when his father was elevated from the team's defensive coordinator to head coach.

Sonny and Spike Dykes were toiling through yardwork days after the announcement. Spike said his lawn needed to be pristine now that he was the boss. His wife, Sharon, came outside and said Sports Illustrated was on the phone and asked if Spike could come and talk with them? Spike brushed off his hands, told Sonny to quiet down so he could speak, and grabbed the phone.

"This is John from Sports Illustrated," the voice on the other line said. "Would you like to renew your subscription?"

But Spike evolved from anonymity to a Lubbock legend.

He'd set the program record for most wins with a career 82–67–1 mark. And his family lived and breathed Texas Tech. Sonny's older sister, Bebe Petree, graduated from the school and lived in the area. Sonny was a three-year letterman on the Texas Tech baseball team. When Petree's son was choosing a college, he couldn't stomach attending Texas Tech because he'd felt like he already graduated from there.

Spike retired in 1999 and departed for Horseshoe Bay, and Sonny joined Texas Tech for the following season as a wide receivers coach. Spike even left his Lubbock house for Sonny to stay in. Then Sonny joined a coaching staff that was the polar opposite of what his father had built. 

"Sonny was with this rebel of a head coach," Petree said. "Mike (Leach) was the anti-Spike Dykes, and anyone could tell you that."

In DCTF's 2023 cover story, Sonny reveals for the longest time, he didn't want to be a collegiate coach like his father. But he became enamored with the Air Raid offense as a graduate assistant at Kentucky in 1997 under head coach Hal Mumme and offensive coordinator Mike Leach. When Dykes retired after the 1999 season, Leach got the Texas Tech job and brought Sonny on as wide receivers coach.

Spike was defense-oriented, holding opponents under 20 points a game on average in five of his last six seasons. Leach's teams gave up under 20 points a game on average just twice in a decade. Texas Tech's reputation as an offensive juggernaut that plays in shootouts is entirely of the Leach tenure's making. And Sonny played a considerable role in that. 

Sonny was one of many future head coaches in that Texas Tech building starting in 2000. Except for defensive coach Dave Aranda, then a graduate assistant, those men helped build the Texas Tech Air Raid before spreading it across the country. Kliff Kingsbury was the starting quarterback. Louisiana Tech head coach Sonny Cumbie was third string behind Kingsbury and BJ Symons. Art Briles was the running backs coach. Houston head coach Dana Holgorsen coached the inside receivers. Spike's tenure had been defined by establishing culture. This eclectic group, by and large, believed culture overrated, instead holding marathon practices, discussing movie clips with the team daily and revolutionizing offensive football.

"I was the boring guy because I was the only sane person in the room," Sonny quipped in a 2019 Athletic article.

But that didn't mean he was above some practical jokes.

In an appearance on Pardon My Take last fall, Dykes revealed he was the 'fake-script guy' on that Tech staff because he was the only one in the group who could type. Generally, in college football, teams have a script of 15 plays they'll run to start the game and get into a rhythm. Well, Dykes and Holgorsen would usually get together on Thursday nights and concoct fake sheets. The Texas Tech special teams unit would practice field goals hours before kickoff on the opponent's side of the 50-yard line, and Leach suggested they put the fake script under their ball bag. That way, when the specialists picked up the bag to return to the locker room, the counterfeit plays would sit in the open. Then, Dykes and Holgorsen watched as an opposing coach picked up the script, studied it, and brought it back to the locker room, thinking they had a competitive advantage.

"Most people were smart enough to know, 'Hey, these guys are just screwing with us. We’re not going to pay attention to this.'" Dykes said on the podcast. "But there were a couple of times we walked in the locker room after the game, and they had all the script written up, and they were trying to figure out what in the world this stuff meant."

Leach's staff was young, fun and mostly single. Everything about them was unorthodox for the time. Spike watched from Horseshoe Bay as the program he used to run morphed into something unrecognizable from his own, reaching heights he never did. Leach surpassed his career wins mark in 2009.

"My dad always said they (Texas Tech) really wanted different," Dykes told the Athletic. "Well, they got different. Mike was the perfect fit, at the perfect place, at the perfect time.”

There was never any animosity from Spike about the wholesale change Texas Tech made after his departure. Sometimes he'd tell Sonny how dumb it was to go for it on fourth down all the time like the Red Raiders did, but that was about it. Spike never looked back once he left. But Texas Tech did embrace the Mike Leach mid-2000s teams more than Spike's final years.

"They say you lose 10 percent of your fan base every year," Spike said late in his tenure. "And I've been here 11 years, so you do the math."

But when Spike died in April 2017 at age 79, Lubbock celebrated their once-winningest head coach again. Hundreds of people attended his memorial. Former Texas head coach Mack Brown spoke about the time his team traveled to Lubbock, and the referees shook his hand but turned and hugged Spike and asked him about his wife.

"When he died here, it was like the President of the United States died," Petree said.

Sonny Dykes has the 1990 Dave Campbell's Texas Football magazine cover that Spike appeared on framed in his office at TCU. Petree says ever since he took the job at SMU in 2018, he's become more comfortable admitting that he's similar to his old man. Sonny refers to himself in the 2023 cover story as a 'mutt' because of the two opposing influences of Mike Leach and Spike Dykes on his coaching identity. If Texas Tech was where he took the rebellious path, then TCU is where he's settled in as his father's son.

Just a couple days ago, Petree walked through Sonny's back gate and ran into two TCU football players playing video games in the pool house. Sonny and his wife had given them the gate code. The TCU football offices are rarely locked, the practices are wide open. This wasn't the Sonny that coached at Texas Tech. It was the Sonny who realized after he was fired from Cal in 2016 that his father was a solid example to follow.

So the Sonny that walks into Jones AT&T Stadium on Thursday night is more similar to the beloved head coach than he was when he coached wide receivers for six seasons.

It may be a little weird for Sonny at first. It's definitely going to be strange for Petree. Her friends have suggested she wear half purple, half red. That won't happen.

She'll be decked in purple, but when the Texas Tech fight song starts, she knows she won't be able to refrain from throwing her "Guns Up" hand signal. She'll always love Texas Tech. When the game starts, however, her loyalty will be apparent. Blood is thicker than alma mater pride. She'll forever be the big sister who socked someone in the stadium when Spike was the head coach, who was so defensive of her family she wasn't allowed to sit in the stands, instead having to watch from the top of the stadium so her mother could monitor her.

"I want Sonny to show 'em," Petree said.