Charisma is impossible to measure. It’s something that’s been missing from the Texas Tech football program for a long time, as the last three head coaches to lead the Red Raiders took passion and grit out of the program. Fortunately, charisma and passion are the attributes of new head coach Joey McGuire in games. In fact, his infectious personality and ability to win over his fan base is reminiscent of the Texas Tech guy.
With his infectious personality and the way he endeared himself to the crowd in Riderland before he even coached a game for the program, it’s fair to wonder if McGuire could be this generation’s Spike Dykes. If so, your time in Lubbock will be a wild success.
There are very few similarities between McGuire and Dykes. The most obvious is disarmament and real chaos.
Many of today’s younger Red Raider fans may not know what a character the late Dyke was, but make no mistake, he was one of a kind.
Born in Lubbock and raised in tiny Bollinger (located between San Angelo and Abilene), the true West Texan was famous for his country wizards. Expressions known as “Spike-isms”. Some of the most memorable include:
- A lot of people want to be around when you’re pitching, but most don’t want to serve as brokers.
- “They beat us like a bound goat.”
- “Oh, we played about three tons of buzzard puck this afternoon.”
Yet, Dykes wasn’t just an old-school verse machine. In the year As McGuire, he was a prolific football coach who cut the high school football ranks before landing his first (and only) college head coaching job at Texas Tech in 1986.
Former Texas and current North Carolina head coach Mack Brown said following Dyke’s passing in 2017: “You go back and study what he did in football, I never thought he got credit for being the innovator that he was.” “They run a lot of plays very quickly and get close to the line of scrimmage and get up (to the stand) very quickly. He was doing things like this before anyone even talked about temporary damages.
Overall, Dykes led Tech to an 82-67-1 record and seven bowl appearances in 13 seasons. He was a 3-time Southwest Conference Coach of the Year and the 1996 Big 12 Coach of the Year and was inducted into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame.
Dyke’s greatest legacy is that he helped Texas Tech football recover from one of the program’s darkest times. From 1979-1985, the Red Raiders went through seven consecutive losing seasons under Rex Dockery and Jerry Moore. Dykes was Moore’s defensive coordinator for his final two years, but it was in 2012 that he began to emerge as a Red Raiders legend. The Independence Bowl (a game where McWilliams served as interim head coach after leaving for Texas).
Dykes was then named the permanent head coach at Tech for the 1987 season. It was only leading the program to seven winning seasons that made him a Lubbock icon, given how terrible the program had been in the seven years prior to his arrival.
In short, Dykes took Tech from the depths of the college football world to a place where it could once again be celebrated on the national scene. And his success helped Tech earn a spot in the Big 12, something that changed the image of the football program and the university. What’s more, along the way, he pulled off several upsets of Texas and Texas A&M, making it fun to be a Red Raider fan again. See where I’m going with this?
A former highly-successful high school head coach taking over a program coming off a nearly decade-long decline? A great personality charged with making Tech football exciting and nationally relevant? Has anyone considered tech as their destination career? A coach leading the program in college football reform? All of the above applies to Spike Dykes. And now, it all applies to Joey McGuire.
Tech fans are certainly hoping that McGuire can do what Dykes did three decades ago and take this program from a conference doormat to a title winner. Along the way, we hope he brings the excitement back to Jones Stadium.
Fortunately, he is off to a strong start. He is well-liked by supporters and (especially) influential boosters, and his short tenure has seen nearly a quarter of a billion dollars pledged to the program for institutional improvements. It’s a big step in taking Tech football to a new level of competition. Additionally, Tech is working on a top 25 recruiting class, something it hasn’t had in over a decade.
Now the field success must come. Without that, McGuire wouldn’t be a Texas Tech icon, no matter how popular he is as a person.
Moreover, most Tech fans say they expect McGuire to take Tech to the heights that Dykes did. After all, Tech finished the year in the Associated Press Top 25 only twice during Dykes’ tenure.
We’re just a week away from finding out how McGuire’s legacy works out. It’s the dawn of a new era in the program, all of it brimming with unbridled optimism courtesy of the new man at the helm. And if all goes according to plan, new Texas Tech football fans will have a legendary coach to point to as their favorite personality in program history. And maybe, if we’re lucky, McGuire will have some memorable “Maguire-isms” to share with us along the way.
