UA offensive coordinator Sonny Dykes is not about to become overconfident. "Aw, we haven't gained a yard here yet," he says.

James S. Wood / arizona daily star

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Everybody likes Sonny Dykes. Ask 'em. "People person," said UA receiver Anthony Johnson.

"Great guy," said quarterback Willie Tuitama.

"He understands the concept of getting along with people," said Larry Hays, who was Dykes' baseball coach at Texas Tech. "He's got a lot of personality."

Hired to coach football at his alma mater in 2000, Sonny Dykes found himself in a potentially awkward position. His father, Spike Dykes, Tech's football coach for 14 seasons, had been forced to resign in a bitter episode similar to Dick Tomey's Arizona exit.

Before Tech's new coach, Mike Leach, heard the first suggestion of nepotism/favoritism or any ism, he disarmed the subject, saying "even if I was coaching at the University of Alaska, I would have gotten Sonny up there."

So who doesn't like Sonny Dykes?

At 37, he is viewed within the college football industry as one of the Next Big Things, a dynamic young coach who is on every athletic director's Watch List.

Over the last three years he has been interviewed for head coaching positions at Stephen F. Austin, Rice and Southeastern Louisiana and has flirted with such faraway schools as Clemson and East Carolina, both interested in hiring Dykes as their offensive coordinator.

You ask him about those jobs, his popular profile, and he dismisses them.

"Aw," he said, "we haven't gained a yard here yet."

You ask him about the genius/guru stuff, and he cuts you off before the question is complete.

"There's not a thing we run that hasn't been stolen from someone else," he said. "Our stuff isn't sexy. It's just an emphasis on fundamentals and repetition."

It doesn't take long to see why people like him.

"When he gets a bit older," said Tech's Hays, "he's going to become a lot more like his dad. He's going to put that sense of humor to work for him more. There's a lot of charisma there."

Unlike those at Clemson and East Carolina, Mike Stoops was the most successful in getting to and persuading Dykes to leave his hometown and yield his position at one of America's most watched, copied and admired passing offenses.

But this is not about happy faces. Not yet. It is about doing trench work: gaining more yards and scoring more points at a place long viewed as a place where offensive coordinators have gone to get fired.

And, indeed, in the ultimate irony, Sonny's big brother, Rick Dykes was part of the John Mackovic regime, an ill-fated Arizona offensive coordinator, 2001-02, who left town in the spray of coaching turbulence.

The difference is that Sonny has been coupled with a skilled and experienced defense in a program feeling its first sense of momentum since 1998. In similar situations here — under Tomey, Jim Young and Larry Smith — all that was asked of the offensive coordinator was not to mess things up.

That is what is so intriguing about Dykes' assignment. He is being asked to launch an offense that for most of the past three decades would have been turned away at the door.

Although it belies Dykes' demeanor, installation of his offense is not Fun, Inc. This is, rather, heavy lifting.

Johnson, a fifth-year receiver who has been in Arizona's program since the Mackovic days, has enjoyed the eight months learning Dykes' offense. His reaction?

"Don't mistake Coach Dykes' kindness as a weakness," Johnson said. "He's demanding and precise. We work harder than we ever did, and we've become more consistent.

"People say he's an offensive genius. There's a good reason for that. He expects the best every play."

You do not see any riotous laughter (or any laughter) at Dykes' practices. He believes in running an economy of plays — "over and over," he said. To get the most from that preparation, you see little (or no) wasted time and motion at practice.

Two of his biggest (and least sexy) beliefs:

1. "Don't try to do too much; for everything we add, we subtract something else."

2. "Don't ask a guy to do what he can't do. Work on what he can do, and work on it again and again."

As a college baseball player, Dykes examined himself the way he evaluates the Wildcat offense.

"I couldn't run very well, didn't have a lot of talent, and I couldn't field very well," he said. "But I could hit a little bit so I became a first baseman and made the best of it."

Which is exactly what Mike Stoops is asking him to do this year.