Spike Dykes carved an image as a college football coach and a folksy storyteller, and it was sometimes hard to tell which came more naturally. Either way, it added up to an unforgettable character.

A small-town kid who achieved beyond his wildest dreams, Dykes retired with a Texas Tech record 82 victories and won a legion of friends for a humor that he took from the stadiums to the banquet stage. Dykes died Monday at age 79.

Bill Worley, a former Tech player and close friend of the former coach, and former Tech player Bart Reagor, a Lubbock business partner of Dykes’ son Rick, said Dykes was stricken at his home in Horseshoe Bay and died shortly before 11 a.m. A heart attack was believed to be the cause.

"The memories of Spike make me laugh and smile," Reagor said, "but they also make me tear up, knowing that we lost him."

A longtime Texas high school football coach, Dykes joined the Red Raiders in 1984 as an assistant coach on Jerry Moore’s staff. He was promoted to head coach after David McWilliams’ departure before the Independence Bowl in 1986 and went 82-67-1 over 13-plus seasons. He was a three-time Southwest Conference coach of the year and the Big 12 coach of the year in the conference’s first season.

That was heady stuff, and maybe a tad unbelievable, for the little boy from Ballinger.

"I’ll always be very appreciative of Texas Tech for giving me a chance," Dykes said years after his career ended. "I’m an old high school coach and woke up one day and T. Jones was athletic director and Dr. (Lauro) Cavazos was our president. They offered me a job, so I took it. It was a lot of fun, a great ride."

Doyle Parker observed it firsthand as one of Dykes’ oldest and closest friends in coaching.

"He was just a small-town guy from Ballinger, Texas, who got the opportunity to coach at the highest level in college, and he loved every minute of it," said Parker, a member of Dykes’ staffs off and on from 1966 at Belton through 1998 at Tech. "He loved Texas Tech. He felt like it was a real honor to coach there."

Tech set out to become a prolific passing program after Dykes’ retirement, but the Red Raiders ran a balanced offense under Dykes that produced Doak Walker Award winners Bam Morris and Byron Hanspard. And Dykes, whose background was on defense, fielded gritty bunches led by All-Americans such as Tracy Saul, Zach Thomas and Montae Reagor.

"This one hurts," Montae Reagor said. "He was a true legend to me. He was more than a coach; he was a father figure. I don’t care how hard he coached us, at the end of the day, we knew he loved us from the bottom of his heart.

"There aren’t many like Spike. He’s just a gracious, loving man. I will never forget him."

The Red Raiders didn’t quite reach great heights under Dykes, winning more than seven games only twice. Then again, after seven consecutive losing seasons from 1979-85, the Red Raiders going to seven bowl games under Dykes constituted a commendable turnaround.

And that turnaround came with a bundle of satisfying victories.

Dykes’ teams beat rivals Texas and Texas A&M six times apiece — most memorably in 1989, when the Red Raiders beat both on late third-and-26 touchdown passes from Jamie Gill. That team, picked sixth in the SWC, beat four Top 20 opponents during a 9-3 season, the embodiment of Spike’s reputation for coaching overachievers.

Then-athletic director T. Jones viewed Dykes as such a perfect fit for the program that he gave Dykes a 10-year contract — not after the feel-good 1989 season, but four days after the Red Raiders finished 4-7 in 1990.

"I guess that’s why it meant so much," Dykes said in 2015. "He said, ‘I’m going to extend you a little bit.’ I had no idea.

"I didn’t even know how much I made. That was never a big deal for me. I nearly fainted when I saw it in the paper.

"It was a nice shot in the arm, a vote of confidence and I appreciated that."

Along the way, Dykes became equally well known for his humor, a self-deprecating wit that made him enormously popular with fans, fellow coaches and media who covered his teams. A loss wasn’t just a loss. In Spike lingo, it was "a bad day at Black Rock." Good teams weren’t merely good teams, but "a rollin’ ball o’ butcher knives."

Such was Dykes’ nature that even Texas A&M coach R.C. Slocum was among his closest friends.

The Texas Sports Hall of Fame inducted Dykes on the week of his 70th birthday in 2008. Slocum was there at the ceremony in Waco to see Aggies great Ray Childress go in, but said he would’ve attended for Dykes regardless.

"I did my best to try to beat him every time we played, and I know he did the same thing," Slocum said that day, "but I always respected him as an honest person, someone who cared about the kids he coached and someone that was respectful to the coaches he coached against. That was a pretty easy deal for me to like Spike Dykes."

Another inductee who shared the dais with Dykes that night, soccer great Mia Hamm, told the crowd she learned from Spike to eat the dessert first so she wouldn’t miss the tastiest part of the banquet meal.

During and after his coaching career, Dykes spent many nights as a popular featured speaker at banquets, never failing to leave crowds laughing.

Dykes’ last game in 1999 was Kliff Kingsbury’s first as a Tech starting quarterback. The Red Raiders beat Oklahoma 38-28 that afternoon at Jones Stadium, and Tech icon E.J. Holub helped carry Dykes off the field afterward.

Sooners coach Bob Stoops posted on Twitter, "Sad to hear the news on Spike Dykes — great coach, mentor, and person. My thoughts and prayers go out to his family & the Tech community."

William Taylor Dykes was born March 14, 1938, in Lubbock, at a hospital across the street from the Texas Tech campus. The son of a cotton ginner, he loved sports from an early age. Years later, upon becoming a coach in the SWC, he told the story of writing fan letters to SMU star Doak Walker.

Youngsters in his hometown felt similarly about Dykes, who was a standout center for the Ballinger Bearcats. Carlton Stowers, a renowned Texas sportswriter and author of true crime books, grew up in Ballinger a few years behind Dykes in school. He once wrote that Dykes’ slinging an arm over their shoulder would make the other youngsters feel special.

The enthusiastic greeting was a trait Dykes never lost.

"He’d put his arm around my neck and hug me," Bart Reagor said. "He didn’t care if I had a suit on and he messed my tie up. It didn’t matter. He was really a unique individual, for sure."

"I think the biggest thing I got from Spike that I try to use in my life today was Spike was very humble," Reagor said. "He had a gift for making other people feel good about themselves. He saw the good in people. When he saw someone doubting themselves, he was always there to lift them up."

Dykes spent 1959 through 1971 as a Texas high school coach at Eastland, Ballinger, San Angelo Central, Coahoma, Belton, Big Spring and Alice.

Along the way, he made a number of coaching friends who he later turned to as assistants for his Tech staff. Before that, he was a Darrell Royal assistant at Texas from 1971-76 and an assistant at New Mexico and Mississippi State.

He came back to West Texas to be head coach at Midland Lee from 1980-83, reaching a 1983 state-championship game with star players Isaac Garnett, Tyrone Thurman, Eddie Kittle and Michael Johnson who joined him at Tech.

Dykes’ wife, Sharon, died in 2010. His survivors include two sons, Rick and Sonny, and a daughter, Bebe Petree. Rick and Sonny both followed their father into coaching, and Sonny Dykes was head coach at California from 2013-16. TCU coach Gary Patterson hired Sonny Dykes in January as an offensive analyst.

Services for Dykes are planned for 2 p.m. Thursday at First United Methodist Church in Lubbock and at 2 p.m. Friday in Horseshoe Bay.