Report: Sonny Dykes to ‘interview’ for NC State job on Wednesday morning

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SFN’s Tuesday morning coaching update highlighted that Lousiana Tech’s Sonny Dykes appeared to be the ‘clubhouse leader’ for the vacant NC State football coaching position.

After a day of significant rumors that see-sawed focus between Sonny Dykes and Clemson offensive co-ordinator, Chad Morris, the The News Star in Monroe, Louisiana is reporting that Sonny Dykes will ‘interview’ with NC State on Wednesday morning. Link to report

Louisiana Tech head coach Sonny Dykes will interview for the North Carolina State head football coaching job Wednesday morning, The News-Star has learned.

North Carolina State scheduled an emergency meeting of the board of trustees for Wednesday afternoon, according to the News and Observer, a newspaper in Raleigh, N.C.

Louisiana Tech athletic director Bruce Van De Velde hasn’t returned a phone call after The News-Star learned of Dykes’ interview, but he said earlier Tuesday evening that Tech’s coaching situation is “fluid,” but “as far we know, no decision has been made yet.”

Additionally, many fans on Louisiana Tech message boards are claiming that Dykes is NC State bound. (Link here)

Right now, the evidence appears to be piling up and the signs are pointing towards Sonny Dykes.

As a friend of mine said tonight, “We all know that you don’t ‘interview’ for a job if you don’t already have it.” We also know that it the interview isn’t made public if a deal is not close to imminent.

Additionally, the timing of this ‘interview’ is made more conspicuous by the emergency meeting of the NC State Board of Trustees that has been called for tomorrow afternoon after the interview.

One last tangential point of support regarding Dykes — Florida State Defensive Co-ordinator Mark Stoops accepted the Kentucky job today after Dykes was reportedly highly coveted by the Wildcats. We’ve heard today from some contacts connected in Lexington that the Kentucky people have reason to believe that Dykes is heading to NC State. Again, it is more anecdotal than concrete information; but, it is a data point worthy of introduction.

If you have some time you can take a look at every offensive play that Louisiana Tech ran in a 57-59 overtime loss to Texas A&M’s on October 13th of this season.

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60 Responses to Report: Sonny Dykes to ‘interview’ for NC State job on Wednesday morning

  1. Pack Mentality 11/28/2012 at 10:07 AM #

    “Is the quality of coaching sufficient to outweigh that the last name is a derogatory reference for a kind of group of women?”

    It’s not like his nickname is “The Bull”.

  2. theghost 11/28/2012 at 10:52 AM #

    well, he did beat Virginia this year. And he also broke into the Top 25. I’m not confident the Pack would beat La Tech.

  3. ryebread 11/28/2012 at 10:56 AM #

    Dykes is the type of name that I expected. I was hoping we could pull a miracle and pull in Golden (maybe he felt like he was sold a bill of goods at Miami), but it appears as if we’re trying to find the next candidate like him.

    We could do worse than Dykes. Any coach like this (including the ones at SJSU, Ball State, etc.) is clearly a risk. If this is the one we feel like is a good fit and is one who is excited to take the job, then so be it.

    I’ve been intrigued by LA Tech. They really put up the points and have done pretty well. The game against TAMU (and TCU last year in a bowl and Boise St) show that Dykes’ teams can almost pull off the major upset. Can they get over the hump?

    Potential pros:
    – Age
    – Contract: seems like we don’t have to break the bank, which to me is very important.
    – He’s clearly overachieved at a program that has historically done nothing
    – Adjustments: If you watch that video above, you’ll see LA Tech was misfiring until about the 6 minute mark in the second period. They went to the modified pistol set, gained some balance (added the run back in) and started moving the ball. We’ve had about 10 years (since Norm Chow left) of no “Plan B” for our offense in football so it’d be nice to have one.
    – Spread: love it or hate it, that’s where college football is going. It’s a great equalizer for teams with less talent (which, lets face it, is what we are).
    – Personnel match up: At least offensively, I think that this style would match up well with the players that we have. I could see year one going much more smoothly than if we tried to turn into a power I team.
    – Making our move early: As more time progresses, Arkansas, Tennessee, Auburn and Cal (which are all clearly better jobs than ours) are going to get more desperate, which is going to make the price of a hire just go up. It is better to get our candidate locked in early.

    Potential red flags:
    – Defense: clearly lacking
    – Recruiting: I don’t really know about this, but would suspect it’d be hard to recruit on the defensive side.
    – Can he up level?
    – Lack of ACC/NC ties: Seems like he’d be a better fit for a midwest or southern job.

    Other:
    – Tenuta: For those wanting to keep Tenuta and promote him to DC, I wonder if this is the right move. If the man struggles at recruiting (and with that style, I would think he’d struggle recruiting defensive players), then promoting Tenuta makes no sense at all. If Tenuta already doesn’t recruit, then giving him even more responsibility seems like a liability.
    – Going to need to hire strong assistants with ACC and NC ties. This will be critical for recruiting.
    – We need a slew of fast wide receivers who can catch. WR recruiting was pretty weak under TOB. This is the biggest personnel gap that I see.

  4. ADVENTUROO 11/28/2012 at 11:29 AM #

    ryebread,

    very insightful comments. You seem to have the gist of it and put it conciesly.

    I had one thought that I have not seen discussed here. Debbie Yow is a person that does not make quick decisions….or I should say that she gathers a LOT of information and then is quick to come to a decision. She has been noodling over this since the UVA game, maybe before. It was obvious that she wanted to give Coach O’Brien another year, but his comments on what and how did not make sense to her. Along the same vein, she also has contacts with some folks that understand the game. I would imagine that she reached out to some coaches as well as the “agent” to get an assessment of Dykes’ skill set and how it would fit here.

    This seems like a petty good choice….especially since he will get a whopping increase and if he is sucessful, we have the resources to continue rewarding him. After seeing Gottfried’s contract, I’ll bet it is really loaded so that if he does what he is hired to do, he will get some nice bonuses.

    Time will tell….but the fact that all the openings are trying to nail down the best talent was why Debbie made a quick, but well informed decision.

    But again, many think that this is only a smoke screen and we will announce one of the “banned” candidates….

    Stay tuned…..

  5. MP 11/28/2012 at 12:12 PM #

    Ooooo – Smoke screens! I forgot all about those!

  6. eas 11/28/2012 at 12:19 PM #

    What if DY hired Leach and Dykes is actually interviewing for a 1.5 million OC job under Leach.

    Yeah, that is impossible but I was thinking of a smokescreen…..

  7. tjfoose1 11/28/2012 at 12:35 PM #

    “”…she also has contacts with some folks that understand the game. I would imagine that she reached out to some coaches as well as the “agent” to get an assessment of Dykes’ skill set and how it would fit here.””

    Yep, true of whomever the hire is.

  8. packalum44 11/28/2012 at 2:54 PM #

    I had never heard of LA Tech until they beat UVA this year. Something TOB didn’t even come close to doing.

  9. brody191 11/28/2012 at 10:10 PM #

    packalum44

    Never heard of LA Tech? Then I guess you don’t watch Fox NFL Sunday b/c Terry Bradshaw says La Tech about a dozen times every Sunday.

    I guess ESPN regional coverage really does matter b/c a good majority of our games are on TV every year and the only NC State game I saw was the Fla State game.

  10. Pack1998 11/29/2012 at 6:41 PM #

    Derek Dooley came from La Tech as well. Keep that in mind.

    Success at La Tech is not terribly difficult to come by — my guess is they are Louisiana’s ECU. They probably let in a few top athletes that don’t qualify for LSU. Along with some stud skill players that are not big enough for LSU.

    Nothing against Sonnny, but the Dooley situation needs to be known.

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