Max Duggan’s recruitment: How TCU and the QB formed a match meant to last

COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa — East of the casinos and five miles from downtown Omaha on the south side of this lunch-bucket town, they serve chili dogs, gizzards and fried catfish at LPL’s Restaurant and Pub. It’s where Jim Duggan took Sonny Cumbie when he showed up late to the party in 2018 to recruit Jim’s son, Max, as a junior at Lewis Central High School.

Advertisement

Cumbie, raised in West Texas and a former star quarterback at Texas Tech, was set to enter his fifth year at TCU as the QBs coach and second as the full-time offensive coordinator. He was 37. Jim Duggan was nearing 60, one year from retirement as the Lewis Central football coach and a middle school gym teacher who played QB himself at South Dakota around the time Cumbie was born.

LPL’s, the little bar in Council Bluffs, fills daily around noon with contractors. Cumbie loved it, helping form a fast bond that finalized a roundabout path to TCU for Max Duggan.

“I was like, ‘You know what, this guy’s real,’” Jim Duggan said. “It wasn’t some fancy steakhouse. I knew he was a good guy at that point.”

Max Duggan started as a true freshman at quarterback for the Horned Frogs in 2019. He finished second in the Heisman Trophy voting last month before directing TCU to the College Football Playoff championship, Monday night in Los Angeles against Georgia.

His path to the big stage began in 2015, when Duggan threw for the first of some 15,000 yards and 132 touchdowns during his time in high school and college. The national championship will be the final game of his college career.

COMMITTED! 🐸 #GoFrogs

— Max Duggan (@MaxDuggan_10) April 16, 2018

Duggan, 21, is also the rare quarterback to stay put in college. Of the top 50 quarterbacks out of the Class of 2019 in the 247Sports Composite, 45 entered the transfer portal.

Why did it work out so well for Duggan, who overcame more than his share of trials in four seasons at TCU?

Because he picked TCU for the right reasons, according to the people close to him. Duggan, rated 229th nationally as the No. 1 prospect in Iowa at 6-foot-2 and 190 pounds when he signed, set priorities early. He didn’t succumb to impulses, the pressure to stay near home, the allure of a childhood favorite or draw of big coaching personalities — enticements for so many players in his position as a four-star prospect.

Advertisement

“He gravitated toward the schools that didn’t give him a recruiting sales pitch,” said Justin Kammrad, the successor to Jim Duggan at Lewis Central in 2019 who coordinated the offense and coached Max during his high school year.

Throughout, Max searched for “real, honest recruiting,” Kammrad said.

Fifteen months after his first scholarship offers arrived, Duggan found what he wanted in a lightning-fast attachment to Cumbie, who recently finished his first season as head coach at Louisiana Tech.

“Even to this day,” Jim Duggan said, “I’d trust Sonny Cumbie with anybody.”

But the road to get there was filled with twists.

It started innocently in October 2016, late in Duggan’s sophomore season, with a scholarship offer from FCS power South Dakota State. The Duggans planned a visit but wiped it off the calendar when Iowa offered.

And with that, the race began.

Duggan’s recruiting experiences, until TCU entered the picture, featured a series of mistimed connections and relationships that didn’t quite click. Iowa State offered three weeks after Iowa. Through the winter and spring that followed, it was primarily a two-school showdown.

Iowa followed its 12-win season in 2015 with eight wins in 2016. It had stability that Iowa State, with Matt Campbell as a first-year head coach, could not match.

Neither in-state program felt like a perfect fit for Duggan.

“There was nothing about me that I needed to stay home,” he told The Athletic last year.

In fact, Duggan made it clear that he didn’t set out to follow the path of others from his corner of Iowa who had ventured to Iowa City or Ames.

“He wanted to go his own direction,” Kammrad said. “I don’t think it had anything to do with offense, defense, whatever, Big Ten or Big 12. It was more, ‘I’m going to blaze my own path.’”

Still, he remained open to the Iowa schools. Campbell and quarterbacks coach Jim Hofher visited Council Bluffs. So did Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz and special teams coordinator LeVar Woods.

Advertisement

Duggan hit the road for camps in the summer of 2017. Ahead of his junior year, recruiting interest spiked. In came offers from Kansas State, Penn State, Georgia and Ole Miss over the summer.

The Duggans made a family trip through SEC country in July 2017. On the way into Atlanta before throwing in Athens, their rental car took a hard hit from behind.

“Oh, man,” Jim Duggan said, “it was not good.”

But Max, suffering from whiplash, performed well in front of Kirby Smart and Georgia offensive coordinator Jim Chaney, earning an offer. Georgia showed the Duggans a map of the United States in their football facility. It displayed a marker in every state that produced a player for the Bulldogs.

“Nobody from Iowa had ever played for Georgia,” Jim Duggan said. “It kind of caught Max’s attention.”

Later in that year, Ohio State offered. Urban Meyer stopped into Lewis Central. Tommy Rees, the Notre Dame quarterbacks coach, came, too. An offer from the Fighting Irish fulfilled a childhood dream.

Had a great visit at Notre Dame ☘️

— Max Duggan (@MaxDuggan_10) April 4, 2017

Jim grew up a fan of Notre Dame. He passed it on to Max.

“Most people would commit to Notre Dame or Ohio State,” Kammrad said.

But no school checked all the boxes. Duggan’s priorities had not wavered. He wanted to feel prioritized by the college that signed him. He wanted to play in a metropolitan area. He wanted a warm climate.

Two programs came close to winning him over: North Carolina and Nebraska. Their appeal involved strong, genuine relationships, the piece of the recruiting puzzle that Duggan prioritized most.

Wisconsin native Keith Heckendorf, the quarterbacks coach for Larry Fedora at North Carolina, hit it off with Duggan. In the spring of 2017, Heckendorf ran a QB camp as Duggan visited Chapel Hill.

Advertisement

“It was a full, 12-hour day,” Kammrad said. “He came back with a big manual. He loved how that was drilled.”

Heckendorf traveled to Iowa to watch Duggan in the state playoffs in 2017. Lewis Central lost to Ankeny Centennial. Duggan suffered a fractured left fibula and ligament damage to his ankle.

Surgery followed. Meanwhile, North Carolina tumbled from 8-5 in 2016 to 3-9 in 2017 and 2-9 in 2018 before Fedora was fired.

A similar story unfolded with the Huskers. Danny Langsdorf, the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach for Mike Riley, visited to watch Duggan throw in the high school gym in the spring of 2017.

Nebraska offered in June, and the relationship progressed.

“Max really liked them,” Jim Duggan said.

The Duggans made the one-hour drive to Lincoln several times. If 2017 had gone well for the Huskers, Duggan might have picked Nebraska. But it did not. Three games into September, after a home loss against Northern Illinois, change was afoot with the firing of athletic director Shawn Eichorst.

Riley and the whole staff were next to go. Scott Frost took the job and secured a commitment quickly from Adrian Martinez, a Class of 2018 QB. Frost talked to Duggan, but Nebraska’s quarterback picture featured three holdovers from the old staff and two Frost newcomers, including UCF transfer Noah Vedral.

“He was worried that he wouldn’t even get reps with the scout team if he’d gone to Nebraska,” Kammrad said.

By September 2018, two quarterbacks had transferred. But the timing didn’t allow for a match.

Duggan had already found where he belonged.

TCU needed to get this one right.

The Horned Frogs had pulled off an 11-3 season and played for the Big 12 title in 2017. They were ready to roll with Shawn Robinson as their sophomore starting QB after Kenny Hill graduated. They’d just signed Justin Rogers, a top-100 recruit out of Louisiana, in the previous class, but a significant knee injury during his senior year required a long recovery. He was no sure thing, and neither was Robinson.

Advertisement

Cumbie felt a sense of urgency to find the next one. But it was a down year for quarterback prospects in the state of Texas.

Texas signed Roschon Johnson and moved him to running back. Texas A&M had an early pledge from Grant Gunnell, who later signed with Arizona. Baylor beat Texas Tech for Jacob Zeno and Grant Tisdale chose Ole Miss. They were the only four-stars in the state.

In his search for QB targets, TCU analyst Jake Brown first found Duggan in January 2018 by stumbling upon his Rivals page and looking up his Twitter account.

“I pull up Max’s Hudl, and I’m like, ‘Man, this kid is good,’” Brown said. “So I follow him on Twitter. If he follows me back, I’m gonna DM him. That’s really how it started. If he doesn’t follow me back, he’s not interested and I’m not going any further.”

What made Duggan’s film stand out to Brown? He’s a big believer that a recruit’s body language and the way he plays tells you whether he loves football.

“You could tell he was a winner by the way he played and his toughness,” Brown said. “He could throw the football really well and he had a good, live arm, but he was gonna make things happen. If it was third-and-1 or third-and-2 and he had to run, he was gonna run.”

When Brown first asked Cumbie to take a look at Duggan and give him a call, the offensive coordinator understandably asked: “Would he come here?” Brown knew he couldn’t bring this one to head coach Gary Patterson unless he could make the argument that Duggan had a Texas connection. And he sort of did: Jim Duggan had a brief six-month stint at Duncanville High School in 2009 and has relatives in the state. It wasn’t much, but it was enough.

GO DEEPER

Retracing TCU's unlikely, one-of-a-kind path to the College Football Playoff

From there, Cumbie moved quickly. He liked Duggan’s strong arm, quick release and ability to make plays with his feet. He called Jim Duggan on a Friday, they talked again Saturday and he boarded a Southwest flight from Dallas Love Field to Omaha on Sunday.

Advertisement

On Monday morning, he arrived at the middle school before it opened and spent the morning getting to know Duggan and Kammrad.

“Jim was the PE teacher,” Cumbie said, “so I would go hang out with Jim while he rolled out the dodgeball and had a bunch of junior high kids playing dodgeball.”

For recruiters, this next step is always interesting. How does the video evaluation hold up when you see the prospects throw in person? Cumbie could tell Duggan’s arm talent was legitimate and loved the intangibles: son of an old-school coach, high football IQ, determined to study and improve.

“You know, in recruiting, when you watch something on film and then you go watch the kid, you’re either like, ‘Ooh, yes! It’s better than what I thought,’ or you’re like, ‘Ooh … this kid is not as big, this kid is not as good, uh …’” Cumbie said. “But when you watched him in person, you’re like, ‘OK, we’ve got something here.’”

The Duggans traveled to Fort Worth for a weekend visit in late March 2018. Max came in when students were on campus and got a real sense of the community. He went to a TCU baseball game. Most importantly, he watched a spring football practice. And he fell in love.

Cumbie says the staff always considered that a litmus test. They wanted recruits who saw how intense their practices got and were still interested.

“We were doing our middle drill, it’s O-line vs. D-line, we’re running the football, and it’s just a very physical, get-after-it, very high intensity drill,” Cumbie said. “And Max is right in the middle of it. You could tell he was digging what was going on.”

The Cumbies hosted the Duggans for dinner at their home and served local favorite Heim BBQ, which Cumbie believes helped seal the deal. He felt like he’d won over everybody in the family, with one exception. He could tell Max’s older sister, Megan, wasn’t warming up to him or interested in talking during the visit.

Advertisement

“We thought, gosh dang, this sister freakin’ hates us,” Brown said. “I’m trying, and I’m like, man, I get along with everybody, but this girl is just not talking to me at all.”

After the trip, Cumbie followed up with Jim Duggan and asked why. The dad explained that, at the end of their Ohio State visit, the family was getting ready to leave and offensive coordinator Ryan Day stopped by to say farewell.

“He asks, ‘Hey, Megan, did you enjoy the trip?’ And she just looks at him and says, ‘No, I didn’t like the trip,’” Cumbie said with a laugh. “So they said on the way home, they schooled her up like, ‘Megan, you can’t say that!’ They told her on the way to Fort Worth that when you go in there and they start talking to you — whether you like it or not — you can’t say that.”

GO DEEPER

How did TCU get to the CFP title game with a new coach and coming off a 5-7 season?

Cumbie felt good about his chances after the visit and believed he was competing with Ohio State and Minnesota. The Gophers were thought by insiders to rate as a favorite for Duggan. Minnesota coach P.J. Fleck turned heads in his maroon suit and yellow tie on a visit to Council Bluffs. The quarterback made a trip to Minneapolis, but TCU remained the team to beat.

Two weeks later, Duggan was ready to make his decision. Cumbie wasn’t surprised by the timing.

Duggan knew the spring evaluation period started on April 15. Recruiting would heat up again as college coaches hit the road to visit high schools. Duggan wasn’t interested in dragging out this process any longer.

“He wanted to be committed before the spring so nobody would bother him, basically,” Cumbie said.

Duggan called Cumbie and Patterson on April 13 to deliver the good news. Cumbie got on another flight up to Omaha the next day to go see him. He sat in ice-cold metal bleachers, wearing a team-issued hoodie, and watched his new QB commit compete in a track meet.

Advertisement

“Man, it was some of the coldest recruiting trips I’ve ever been on,” Cumbie said. “I spent a lot of very, very, very cold hours in Council Bluffs, Iowa. I’m just freezing, and his dad is just laughing at me like, ‘You want a jacket, Sonny?’ I was like, ‘Uh, I’m good, Jim.’”

Throughout the 2018 season, Cumbie kept checking in on Duggan. The coach was nervous he might lose him.

The Horned Frogs struggled and finished 7-6, closing the season with a win over Cal in an infamously bad Cheez-It Bowl. Cumbie would call twice a week. Eventually, Duggan told him that wasn’t necessary.

“He told me, ‘I’m committed. I’m not going anywhere. You can keep calling me, and you can keep recruiting me, but I’m not going anywhere,’” Cumbie recalled. “He’s just a loyal dude.”

Cumbie still wondered whether Iowa or Iowa State might come back into the picture late and flip Duggan. Both programs were searching for their next great QB. Iowa went with Spencer Petras over Zach Wilson for its 2018 signing class and ended up taking a commitment from Alex Padilla over Connor Bazelak in the Class of 2019.

Had a great time in Iowa City today

— Max Duggan (@MaxDuggan_10) September 11, 2016

Iowa State accepted an early commitment from D’Wan Mathis for its 2019 class, but he backed out four months later. The Cyclones eventually lucked out by signing Brock Purdy in February 2018. They didn’t think they’d get Duggan and chose Easton Dean, who now plays tight end, as their 2019 signee. Coincidentally, it was Meyer and Day who ended up securing a pledge from Mathis. He flipped yet again on signing day to Georgia.

In the end, TCU had nothing to worry about. And though Duggan was never afraid to compete for a starting job, the situation in Fort Worth ended up becoming ideal for the early enrollee. Robinson, TCU’s young starter, transferred to Missouri at the end of 2018. Now there was a clear path to playing right away.

Advertisement

Three games into his true freshman season, Duggan was QB1. He’s gone through an awful lot, as has now been well-chronicled, in four years and 42 starts. All the rough defeats, the injuries, the heart surgery, the firing of his coaches and the loss of his starting job — none of it was enough to get him to leave. Duggan just kept competing.

Cumbie and Brown, who’s now Cumbie’s co-offensive coordinator at Louisiana Tech, still believe it all goes back to fit. Duggan found where he wanted to be and stuck with it no matter how much everything changed around him. The coaches who found him have no doubt that these good times haven’t changed Duggan one bit, either. Cumbie says he’s certain Duggan is still wearing his usual Carhartt hooded flannel jacket, blue jeans and boots on campus to this day.

“He’s what you want,” Brown said, “and they’re hard to find nowadays.”

(Photo: Rob Jenkins / Getty, courtesy of the Duggan family; Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic)