6-2, won 5 straight, on track for 9-3 in the regular season.
Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 2-1
2021Liberty BowlW 34-7
Louisiana Tech
2024Independence BowlL 6-27
2025Independence BowlW 23-14
This week Wed Nov 4
- Last gameW 35-20 at South Alabama Sat Oct 31
- This season6-2 won 5 straight
- On track for9-3 regular season
- Nextat Troy Sat Nov 7
- Stature103rd of 138 FBS programs
What the result changed
- Playoff odds 0.8% → 1% CFB Zeitgeist forecast, before and after
Saturday: at Troy
Sat Nov 7, 4 pm ET 
· Troy is 4-4 · First meeting between Cumbie and Gerad Parker as head coaches · Louisiana Tech’s chance to win: 80% (the site’s model)
His week
No headlines named him in the last 7 days
Offense: 63rd of 138 per play. Defense: 19th.
4 games left
- Sat Nov 7at Troy (4-4)80%
- Sat Nov 14vs. Southern Miss (3-5)87%
- Sat Nov 21vs. Arkansas State (4-4)83%
- Sat Nov 28at Georgia Southern (4-4)60%
Percent: Louisiana Tech’s chance to win, from the site’s model. Records are through today. Networks as announced; the rest are set closer to kickoff.
How the season got here
Where Louisiana Tech stood among 138 FBS programs by stature after each game (1st is the highest; the CFB Zeitgeist ledger).
- Oct 26–Nov 1W 35-20 at South Alabama0 headlines
- Oct 19–25W 26-0 vs. Old Dominion0 headlines
- Oct 12–18W 24-0 at UL Monroe0 headlines
- Oct 5–11W 32-31 vs. Louisiana1 headline · 83rd of 138
- Sep 28–Oct 4W 31-29 vs. Army0 headlines
- Sep 21–27 · rebuiltNo game0 headlines
Each week as this page showed it at the time. Weeks marked rebuilt came before this page existed: they were built afterward from only what was known by the end of that week.
Watch the biggest plays from Louisiana Tech’s games, ranked by how much each moved the chance to win.
Report card
Below the median on both sides of the ball — 38th percentile offense, 27th percentile defense.
Louisiana Tech, every completed season graded against the whole field, then averaged.
Offense
Defense
Each season is his team’s percentile among every team with that stat (the share it beat), averaged over his completed seasons here; a mid-season takeover year and the season in progress aren’t graded. Letters: A+ 90th percentile and up, A 80, B+ 70, B 60, B− 50, C+ 45, C 40, C− 30, D 15, F below.
Poach watch
This winter
Our poach model, on his record so far, the win chances for every game he has left, his program, his pay and his background. Ranked against the 132 FBS head coaches this season. The zone words describe the market’s interest; none of them says he is leaving.
What drives his number
The biggest factors in his profile, each against the typical FBS head coach today. The games he has left are priced into the number, not listed here.
- ▲ HigherHis team is 6-2, outscoring opponents by 11.8 points a game
- ▲ HigherAge 45 · neither at his alma mater nor in the state he was born in
- ▼ Lower13-13 over his previous two seasons here
How good is this number? It ranks a head coach who leaves for another head-coaching job ahead of one who stays 78 to 82% of the time, and its average came within a point of the share who actually left. What it can’t do
Tested on every FBS head coach from 2012 through 2025, each season scored by a model fit only on the seasons before it. From three games on, given one coach who left for a head-coaching job elsewhere or an NFL coordinator job and one who stayed, it ranked the one who left ahead 79 to 82% of the time; in a season’s first two games, 78%. Its average chance came within a point of the share who actually left. It counts a move a coach makes while he still holds the job; when his school ends it, that doesn’t count, even if another school then hires him.
- The live number prices the games he has left with the power model’s ratings from this season. The test priced them with each team’s rating from the season before, because ratings made during past seasons were not kept, so this live version could not be replayed.
- Programs new to FBS have no FBS record before this season in the data it reads, so their coaches are scored without one.
- It is frozen: it learns nothing from 2026 until a deliberate refit.
- A coach hired in December needs his background (age, alma mater, the state he was born in) added before his first game, or he shows as not rated.
Fans
Fan chatter
- Oct 31W 35-20 at South Alabama
FIRE CUMBIE!! I'm starting early after that first series.
Louisiana Tech fan - Oct 10W 32-31 vs. Louisiana
I'll start early. Fire Sonny Cumbie!!
Louisiana Tech fan - Oct 3W 31-29 vs. Army
They should have fired Cumbie then.
Louisiana Tech fan
Earlier weeks
- Sep 19L 19-36 at Baylor
Lmao pathetic. I'm so tired of these Cumbie teams
Louisiana Tech fan - Sep 12L 14-45 at LSU
If you don't like that you don't like Sonny Cumbie football!
Louisiana Tech fan - Sep 5W 80-6 vs. Northwestern State
Louisiana Tech is still Louisiana Tech... and Cumbie is still the coach.
Louisiana Tech fan
Several stories about him in the last 60 days
Sat Nov 7: Troy
from several outlets
Louisiana Tech head football coach Sonny Cumbie joins Aaron and Jake on the Morning Drive
KNOE Oct 6 · one outlet
Several stories about him this season
from several outlets
Louisiana Tech head football coach Sonny Cumbie joins Aaron and Jake on the Morning Drive
KNOE Oct 6 · one outlet
What was said at each stop
Stories we tracked, by school.
Louisiana TechSeveral stories2022 to now
Most about: press conference and quotes, contract and pay, game preview.
- Brian Kelly & Sonny Cumbie sound off | 3 must-watch Storylines for LSU vs. LA Tech!Sep 5
SicEm365In The Web: Aranda-Cumbie Reunion Headlines Louisiana Tech MatchupSep 17- LA Tech AthleticsSonny Cumbie Agrees to Restructured ContractFeb 5
- Lincoln Parish JournalTickets on sale for the Lincoln Rotary Club’s Fundraiser Luncheon featuring Sonny CumbieJun 12
247SportsSonny Cumbie Reflects on Dave Aranda, Baylor and Louisiana Tech’s Next ChallengeSep 15
Texas Tech2021not trackedCould another school hire him? What has he said?
Across his career
5 stories about him across 6 seasons
Stories are headlines grouped by what they are about, counted through Nov 4.
Stats
Big games
The big-game ledger
How he does in the games that matter most — rivalry record, performance broken out by real opponent tier, one-score games, and his toughest historical matchup.
1-2 against his rivals. Just 1-2 against Mike MacIntyre.
ATS is his record against the spread: did his team beat the closing betting line, winning by more than it or losing by less? Lines start in 2013; a dash means fewer than 6 of those games had one. One-score games carry no spread record: a big favorite that wins a close game has almost always failed to cover, so that number would say nothing about the coach.
Signature games
Tags describe each game; they aren’t scores. The weighting that picks these games is still being tested.
How he plays
Run/pass mix, by field position
Ran more than the situation called for under Franklin; passed more under Brown/Parr.
3,283 run and pass snaps at Louisiana Tech, 2022–2025, his own games, one row per offensive coordinator. Each cell is how much more often he passed than the rest of FBS did in the same situation (field zone, down, distance, score, quarter, same season), in percentage points.
Pass rate, stint by stint
Where each stint’s offense sat between run-first and pass-first, and how far it moved from one season to the next, against the FBS-wide average of 41% pass. The band is that stint’s real season-to-season range, not a fixed-width box.
Season-to-season pass-rate range for all 449 FBS coaching stints with at least three covered seasons, 2004–2025.
Building the roster
Five numbers on how he actually stocks a roster, from signing day to draft day.
His recruiting, really
His 5 ranked Louisiana Tech classes of his own have averaged #98 nationally — best #77, worst #113.
His class — he had the full signing cycle
Rank is each signing class’s national recruiting rank (#1 is best). Only a class he had a full signing cycle to build counts as his.
Followed him here
Texas Tech→Louisiana Tech2022Players who transferred from his old program to his new one through the portal in the same year he made the move. Name-matching across data sources misses some, so every count is a floor, not an exact number.
Roster ownership
Roster ownership
of his 2026 roster arrived on his watch — 112 of 112 players. Nobody is left from before he was hired.
Of his own players on this roster, 8% came through the transfer portal; the rest are non-portal arrivals (high-school signees, JUCO transfers, walk-ons).
14% of his 284 new players since 2022 came through the portal (FBS programs, same seasons: 23%). His share was 11% in 2022 and 6% in 2026.
Graded on the players who arrived and the players who left together, his portal seasons came out better than most FBS programs’ in 1 and worse than most in 3 of the 5 seasons graded. our read
Each player counts once, in the season he arrived. 2021, the first season of portal tracking here, is left off because its arrival records look incomplete (about 31 new players per FBS team, against 52 in 2022). Portal grade: the site’s position-value-weighted scoring (the same engine as the Portal Heat feed and the “Who won the portal” grade): the value of the players who came in minus the value of the ones who left, ranked against every FBS program’s grade that same season. A season with fewer than 4 transfers in and out is not graded.
“His own” means the player arrived while he was head coach; “inherited” means a predecessor brought him in.
Size up front
Size up front
Offensive linemen on his Louisiana Tech rosters have averaged within a few pounds of the FBS average (2022–2026). In the three seasons before he arrived, Louisiana Tech’s line averaged within a few pounds of the FBS average.
Average listed weight of every offensive lineman on each season’s roster, holdovers included, against every FBS roster that season (2010 on; a program needs 3+ seasons under him to appear). Weights are the ones programs publish, and programs list differently. This describes size only — not scheme, and not quality.
Where he recruits
is his biggest recruiting state: 42 of 108 signees (39%) across his 2022–2026 tenure, drawn from 11 states in all. Next: TX (36).
82% of his signees come from LA and its 3 border states (TX 36, MS 11).
Off this map: 9 signees to the west (CA 8, UT), 3 to the east (GA 2, MD) and 1 to the north (IA).
- median hometown distance
- 236 mi
- within 100 mi
- 25%
- within 500 mi
- 80%
- beyond 1,000 mi
- 9%
The map counts signed recruits across his tenure; the distance figures cover his current roster, transfers and walk-ons included. Two different groups, kept separate on purpose.
News
In his own words
Awaiting signal — no quotes collected from this staff yet this cycle.
Career
Coaching career
The arc of his career is on Now.
Steady no large move in either direction on our stature ladder
10th-best Louisiana Tech tenure of 11 by the numbers.
Followed Skip Holtz (2013–2021).
| Season | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | ||||||
| Record | 3-9 | 3-9 | 5-8 | 8-5 | 6-2 | |
| Postseason | — | — | L bowl | W bowl | — | |
| Coordinators | ||||||
| OC | Scott Parr / Jake Brown | Scott Parr / Jake Brown | Scott Parr / Nathan Young | Tony Franklin | Nathan Young | |
| DC | Scott Power | Scott Power | Jeremiah Johnson / Jeff Burris | Luke Olson | Luke Olson | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | ||||||
| Offense | 25 | 20 | 3 | 45 | 62 | |
| Defense | 9 | 24 | 75 | 69 | 96 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | ||||||
| 1st-down pass% | 51.4 | 51.0 | 41.8 | 37.0 | 40.1 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 52.0 | 46.8 | 36.4 | 30.9 | 33.3 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 38.6 | 47.1 | 28.1 | 35.3 | 50.0 | |
Underperforms his recruiting talent on offense and performs about as expected for his recruiting talent on defense.
Typical size for position, once adjusted for position mix.
Recruits older, more experienced transfers than most.
1 player-season honored (All-America / national award): Jakari Foster (2025)
Followed Matt Wells (2019–2021) · succeeded by Joey McGuire (2022–now).
Outperforms his recruiting talent on offense and underperforms his recruiting talent on defense.
A typical amount of portal roster-building.
Brings in bigger-than-position-typical players than most.
Recruits older, more experienced transfers than most.
2 NFL Draft picks: Erik Ezukanma (2022), Dawson Deaton (2022)
Was he good?
The data leans negative, where the data can separate from zero: every conclusive reading points the same way.
-8.2 pts at Louisiana Tech · #1149 of 1290 · bottom quarterCoordinator years
Offensive coordinator across 2 programs, 4 stints, before and after wearing the head-coach hat — every season measured on the same axis, whether he personally ran the unit or someone else did.
How to read this. Coordinator seasons come from our coordinator career records; head-coaching-era seasons are the same unit's FBS-relative percentile for those years, regardless of who coached it, read directly from the staff assignments record. A role change (a “hinge”) is a fact, never a performance verdict — only the season-by-season data itself is colored by outcome.