Alamo Bowl Reunion: Sonny Dykes and Lincoln Riley Meet Again, with Mike Leach’s Legacy Looming Large
When TCU and No. 16 USC square off in the Alamo Bowl, it won’t just be two high-powered programs going head-to-head under the lights in San Antonio. It’ll be a reunion-two longtime friends, Sonny Dykes and Lincoln Riley, facing off as head coaches, more than two decades after their football journeys first crossed paths in Lubbock, Texas.
This one’s personal, and not in the trash-talk, bulletin-board material kind of way. It’s personal in the way that only football lifers can understand-built on late nights in the office, shared philosophies, and a mentor whose influence still echoes through their careers.
From Lubbock to the Limelight
Back in the early 2000s, Dykes and Riley were just two young coaches trying to make their mark under the late, great Mike Leach at Texas Tech. Dykes was already on staff as a wide receivers coach from 2000 to 2004, eventually earning a promotion to co-offensive coordinator in 2005 and 2006.
Riley? He was still a walk-on quarterback in 2002 before transitioning into a student assistant and then a graduate assistant.
That time together in Lubbock wasn’t just formative-it was foundational.
“It’s great to compete against a great friend and somebody that has been great to me throughout my entire career,” Riley said this week, reflecting on their shared past. “When I was a younger coach at Texas Tech, we were both there during some great years.”
Dykes echoed the sentiment: “As Lincoln said, we’ve known each other for a long time. It’s fun when you get to play against people you admire in the profession. Lincoln obviously has had an incredible career.”
And he has. Riley helped turn Oklahoma into a perennial College Football Playoff contender, winning multiple Big 12 titles along the way. Dykes, meanwhile, developed a No. 1 overall NFL Draft pick in Jared Goff at Cal, revitalized SMU, and led TCU to the national championship game in 2022.
Different paths, similar roots. And those roots all trace back to Mike Leach.
The Leach Legacy
Leach, who passed away in 2022, wasn’t just a coach-he was a catalyst. His Air Raid offense reshaped modern college football, and his unorthodox, empowering leadership style launched a coaching tree that’s still bearing fruit.
“The cool thing about Mike Leach is Mike empowered young coaches,” Dykes said. “He gave me a ton of responsibility.
I think that’s why so many guys that worked on that staff have gone on to be successful. He probably gave us more responsibility than we deserved.
He believed in us. He empowered us.
He gave us confidence. He did the same thing for Lincoln.”
That belief paid off. Both Dykes and Riley have taken Leach’s offensive principles and made them their own, evolving the system while staying true to its core: spread the field, play fast, and trust your quarterback.
Riley recalled those early days at Tech with a grin: “It’s kind of wild, you think back to those teams, late nights in the office there at Tech, because Mike wasn’t there till about 1 in the afternoon anyway. There were a lot of late nights.”
Those long hours in the staff room helped build more than just playbooks-they built a bond. It’s the kind of bond that doesn’t fade, even when careers take you across the country.
Looking Out for Each Other
That connection stayed strong even when Dykes was out west at Cal and Riley was rising through the ranks at East Carolina. When Bob Stoops was looking for his next offensive coordinator at Oklahoma in 2015, he made a call to Dykes.
“I’ll never forget, I was coaching at Cal, Bob Stoops called me and asked me about Lincoln,” Dykes said. “What do you think about this guy? I said, it’s a home run, you need to hire him if you get a chance to do it.”
Stoops did. Riley took over as OC, then succeeded Stoops as head coach in 2017. The rest is history.
But the coaching carousel didn’t stop spinning. Dykes later hired Riley’s younger brother, Garrett, as his offensive coordinator at SMU and then brought him along to TCU. And just last year, Riley added running backs coach Anthony Jones from Dykes’ staff to help bolster USC’s ground game.
These aren’t just professional moves-they’re trust moves. And they speak to a level of mutual respect that goes deeper than X’s and O’s.
More Than Just a Bowl Game
So yes, the Alamo Bowl is a chance to end the season on a high note. It’s a chance to build momentum going into the offseason, to get a win on a big stage. But for Dykes and Riley, it’s also something more.
“This for a lot of us is a full-circle moment,” Riley said. “Being at this game brings back a lot of memories.
Certainly being here with Sonny and his family, all of us here together, it is a little bit surreal, to be honest. It’s been cool to see everybody’s success.
Obviously that all started with Mike.”
The game kicks off Tuesday night in San Antonio. One team will win.
One team will lose. But for both coaches, just being here-on opposite sidelines, leading programs shaped by the same roots-feels like a victory in its own right.
Because when the final whistle blows, what lingers won’t just be the score. It’ll be the story: two friends, two coaches, one legacy. And the lasting imprint of a mentor who saw something in them long before the rest of the world did.