Sonny Cumbie

Cumbie walked on at Texas Tech, where he had enrolled as a student. Cumbie was on the scout team during the 2000 season, and earned a scholarship to be on the team prior to the 2001 season. He served as third-string quarterback behind Kliff Kingsbury and BJ Symons during the 2001 season. Cumbie saw his first action during a 2002 win over New Mexico. He completed his first pass against Baylor University. After Kingsbury graduated, Symons was named the starter and Cumbie became the back-up. Tech blew out many opponents that year, giving Cumbie plenty of mop up time. He threw his first and only touchdown as a back-up against Baylor in a 62–0 rout in 2003. Prior to the 2004 season, he completed 40 passes out of 62 attempts for 374 yards and a touchdown with a 65.5 completion percentage.

Cumbie earned the starting spot for the 2004 season over highly recruited junior college quarterback Robert Johnson and Redshirt Junior Cody Hodges. Cumbie led the Raiders to 7 Regular season wins over SMU (27–13), TCU (70–35), Kansas (31–30), Nebraska (70–10), Kansas State (35–25), Baylor (42–17), and Oklahoma State (31–15). The Raiders were upset by New Mexico 27–24 and lost close games to Division rivals Oklahoma (28–13), an overtime loss to Texas A&M (32–25), and were also defeated by the University of Texas (51–21). The Raiders finished the regular season 7–4, with a 5–3 conference record tied for third in the Big 12 South, and were invited to play a top 5 University of California team in the Holiday Bowl. Cumbie finished the regular season as the national leader in passing yards and passing offense.

Cumbie lead #23 ranked Texas Tech to a win in the 2004 Holiday Bowl over Aaron Rodgers who led the #4 California Golden Bears. The Raiders were huge underdogs, but Cumbie went 39–60 (65%) and a career-high 520 yards and three touchdowns to lead the Raiders to the win.[1] His performance in that game earned him M.V.P. honors. Cumbie finished the season his Senior season with 4,742 passing yards, completing 65.6 percent of his passes for 32 touchdown passes and 18 interceptions, and became the third straight Red Raider quarterback to lead the nation in passing.

In 2009, Cumbie began his coaching career at Texas Tech as a graduate assistant under head coach Mike Leach where he was in charge of the defensive scout team and coaching the quarterbacks. In this role, he worked with quarterbacks Taylor Potts, Steven Sheffield, and Seth Doege. Cumbie served in this capacity for two seasons.

After Leach's departure, Tommy Tuberville was hired as the head coach for the team. He promoted Cumbie to inside receivers coach, a post held formerly by current University of Oklahoma head coach Lincoln Riley.[2] One of the receivers he coached was Eric Ward.

Following the hiring of coach Kliff Kingsbury after the subsequent departure of Tommy Tuberville from Texas Tech, Cumbie was the only assistant retained by Kingsbury. Cumbie was promoted along with Eric Morris to be co-offensive coordinator prior to the start of the 2013 season. During that season, Tech would score 465 points and win the Holiday Bowl over 16th ranked Arizona State. As a team, they threw for 5,107 yards and 35 touchdowns while running for 1,593 yards (including sacks) and 19 touchdowns.

Stefan Stevenson[3] reported that Cumbie would become the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Texas Christian University (TCU) for the 2014 season. Gary Patterson hired Cumbie hoping that he would implement the popular Air raid offense at TCU that he had run at Texas Tech. This marked a shift in philosophy as TCU had played a Pro-style offense before Cumbie's arrival. The move proved to be successful as TCU was in the top 3 offensively in his first 2 seasons. Cumbie interviewed in 2016 for the University of Texas offensive coordinator job, ultimately deciding to stay at TCU when he received a pay raise that made him the highest paid offensive coordinator in the country. The offense has struggled in his last two seasons as opposing teams adapted to an unchanging scheme.

On December 21, 2020, Cumbie was hired and returned to Texas Tech as their offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach under head coach Matt Wells.[4]