Meacham, Cumbie say they turned down chances to leave TCU

Co-offensive coordinators Doug Meacham and Sonny Cumbie said this week at TCU Media Day they had chances to leave for other jobs this spring but stayed because of head coach Gary Patterson and the work environment.

“I’ve been in it long enough to know what a good thing is,” Meacham said. “Our boss is probably the best head coach in the country. The facilities are off the charts. The athletic director, Chris Del Conte, is progressive. And Fort Worth? I love it here. My wife loves it here, my kids love it here – in our business, you find all those combinations, it means a lot.”

For Meacham, 50, Tarrant County is home. He is an Arlington native.

Cumbie, 33, an Abilene native, said the potential to keep winning with last year’s co-Big 12 champ kept him in Fort Worth.

“Winning is fun,” he said. “And being part of a program in the Big 12, TCU, where the people have been phenomenal – great to my family – everyone, whether it’s alumni or the people who work at TCU.”

Meacham and Cumbie were hired last year to install the “Air Raid” offense. Neither has been a head coach. Meacham has been an offensive coordinator, offensive line coach, tight ends coach, receivers coach and quarterbacks coach at seven stops, including Oklahoma State and Houston, during a 26-year career. Cumbie spent the first three years of his coaching career at Texas Tech, coaching receivers then co-offensive coordinator in 2013.

Under Meacham and Cumbie, the Horned Frogs improved their scoring by 21.6 points per game last season, second-most in Big 12 history, and quarterback Trevone Boykin finished fourth in the Heisman Trophy voting.

“I don’t think I want to consume my mind with it right now,” Meacham said of a head coaching possibility. “If it happens, it happens. I think anyone would say, yeah, they’d like to run their own ship and put their own stamp on something. But for me, right now, it’s definitely not my focus at all.”

Cumbie, linked to OU in January, said there’s too much to pass up on right now at TCU.

“My quality of life here is very high,” he said. “I can go and recruit eight schools in spring and be home at night and see my family. That is very unheard of in this business. So it wasn’t that hard. You’re young in your career, you want to learn as much as you can. Being around Coach Patterson, Coach Meacham, Coach Anderson – it’s a good situation.”

This story was originally published August 5, 2015 at 6:42 PM with the headline "Meacham, Cumbie say they turned down chances to leave TCU."