Respect shared between Chidera Uzo-Diribe, TCU coaching comrades

LOS ANGELES — As Chidera Uzo-Diribe walked out of the locker room last Saturday night, he described his past couple of days as the best week of his life. On Wednesday his wife gave birth to twins, their first children. He missed Thursday’s media day session spending time with the newborns and their mother, but was back with the team by Saturday, just in time to see Georgia beat Ohio State 42-41 in a College Football Playoff classic. Winning it meant that Uzo-Diribe and the Bulldogs would match up against TCU for the national title, a game that has special significance to the first-year Georgia outside linebackers coach having been briefly employed by the Horned Frogs and working with first-year TCU head coach Sonny Dykes the year before at SMU.

“Absolutely man, he’s awesome,” Uzo-Diribe said, speaking about Dykes. “A player’s coach, coach’s coach. For him having been an assistant, an offensive coordinator, he understands the ins and outs of what assistant coaches need as well as other different departments. Definitely one of those guys that has that CEO mentality to hire the right guys to do the job and get it done. Definitely a lot of love for Coach Dykes.”

Uzo-Diribe described the decision to leave the comfort of coaching with Dykes as tough. After their year together at SMU, Dykes decided to keep Uzo-Diribe on his staff as he made the transition to TCU. However, the opportunity to come to Athens and work with the defending national champions was one he couldn’t pass up.

“Seeing the defensive product that Coach Smart has put on the field over the years, whether it be at Bama or at Georgia, I just kind of wanted to be a part of something like that,” Uzo-Diribe said. “Obviously I aspire to do some of those things so why not learn from a guy like Coach Smart. It’s not every day that you get to sit in a room with guys like Muschamp, Glenn Schumann, Tray Scott. You don’t get to hear from those kind of guys, so I definitely couldn’t pass up an opportunity like that.”

Despite Uzo-Diribe leaving Dykes and the Horned Frogs for Georgia in February and forcing them to have to find another defensive line coach, there are no hard feelings between him and the TCU staff. In fact, the coaches that had spent time with him had high praise for the up-and-coming coach.

“It’s really cool man. It couldn’t have happened to a great person,” TCU offensive line coach AJ Ricker, who worked with Uzo-Diribe at SMU, said. “That guy, I love him. The minute we found out we were playing Georgia I text him. He’s really busy with the twins, but what a great young coach … Just true passion for coaching man. So many guys get in this profession for the wrong reasons now, and I get it, there’s a lot of money. But him, you just watch him coach, he loves it. He has a passion for it. A lot of us coach because we feel we can play, but obviously physically we can’t play anymore. You see that for him, and he works his tail off. That’s a huge attribute.”

“He was one of those guys that you knew early, he was destined to be really good,” Dykes added on his former assistant. “He’s got a great disposition when it comes to coaching and communicating with players. Really, really effective communicator. Does a really good job of walking the fine line between having great relationships with players, but at the same time having that authoritative part of that relationship that’s important. So he’s really good, really bright. Got a really good future in front of him. He’s one of those guys, I expect him to be a coordinator, head coach pretty quickly. I think he’s on a really rapid rise, and I think a lot of him and got a great family. And he’s going to be a real star in our profession.”