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| Sonny Dykes (right) replaces Gary Patterson (left) as TCU's head football coach. |
Sonny Dykes has been named the head football coach at TCU.
Dykes was introduced during an evening event at TCU's Amon G. Carter Stadium on Monday, November 29. He and his family arrived in the stadium in a TCU helicopter. Watch: here
Dykes replaces TCU interim head football coach Jerry Kill, who replaced longtime head football coach Gary Patterson, who resigned on October 31 after being told he would not be retained as the Frogs’ head coach in 2022.
Kill,
who went 2-2 as TCU's interim head coach, has been named the head
football coach at New Mexico State (Las Cruces, New Mexico), replacing
Doug Martin, with whom the school parted ways after the Aggies' season
ended on Saturday, November 27.
Patterson had been with the TCU
football program for 24 years, the last 21 years as head coach. He was one of college football’s longest-tenured head coaches,
ranking behind only Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz.
Patterson joined the TCU football program in 1998 as the defensive coordinator on head coach Dennis Franchione's staff. He took over head coaching duties in 2000, when Franchione became Alabama's head football coach.
Patterson accumulated a 181-79 record at TCU, becoming the Horned Frogs' winningest head football coach.
In 2016, Patterson was honored when TCU unveiled within the school's athletic complex a statue of him and statues of former TCU quarterback Davey O'Brien and former TCU football coach Dutch Meyer.
TCU Director of Intercollegiate Athletics Jeremiah Donati now has transformed the leadership of the TCU football program and the TCU Frog Club, which is the fund-raising arm of the athletics department. TCU supporters wonder if Donati now will turn his attention to the leadership of the school's men's basketball program, the women's basketball program and the volleyball program. After all, in addition to its football program, a university's athletic department cannot thrive on just the success of its women's soccer and rifle programs.
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| Tom C. "Midnite" Burke |
On Monday, November 29, volleyball head coach Jill Kramer took some pressure off of Donati. She resigned after seven seasons.
This season, TCU volleball went 8-18, including a 2-14 mark in Big 12 play, which placed them last in the conference. The Frogs finished the season by losing nine matches in a row. The Frogs were shutout in eight of their 18 losses. Seven of the nine Big 12 volleyball teams made the NCAA Tournament. Only TCU and Oklahoma missed the tournament.
Meanwhile, back to the football program.
Dykes was hired following a national search. Candidates reportedly included Louisiana's Billy Napier, Iowa State’s Matt Campbell, Jackson State’s Deion Sanders, Clemson offensive coordinator Tony Elliott, Dallas Cowboys offensive coordinator Kellen Moore and Denver Broncos running backs coach Curtis Modkins, who is a TCU football alum.
In addition to a coaching search firm, Donati reportedly received input on the hire from a selection committee that included TCU Deputy Athletics Director Mike Sinquefield and TCU Board of Trustees members LaDainian Tomlinson, Eddie Clark and Hunter Enis.
Some TCU supporters and fans are less than thrilled with the hiring of Dykes. They believe the attractiveness of the TCU job should have attracted candidates with a much higher profile and level of success than Dykes. They also believe that TCU could have, and should have, made much more of a splash on the national scene when replacing such a football coaching legend as Patterson.
News of Dykes' hiring at TCU largely was met with indifference on the national scene, although there were unsubstantiated reports that after Lincoln Riley announced he was leaving the University of Oklahoma for USC, the Sooners had talked with Dykes about their head coaching opening. However, higher profile names quickly were attached to the opening.
Reportedly, Dykes received from TCU a six-year agreement with compensation nearing $30 million. In an attempt to retain Dykes as its football coach, SMU reportedly offered him a renewal package with a salary of up to $4 million annually.
Patterson's annual salary of nearly $6 million ranked among the top-10 highest salaries in the country for a college football coach.
Including Kill on an interim basis, Dykes becomes TCU's 32nd head football coach since 1897 (see list below).
Dykes went 30-17 at SMU, including 25-9 the past three seasons. The Mustangs achieved rankings in the AP top 25 in each of his last three seasons. That hadn’t happened in Dallas since the 1980s.
As the Ponies’ head coach, Dykes went 2-1 against TCU, including two consecutive wins.
The Frogs defeated Dykes and SMU, 42-12, in 2018. Dykes and SMU defeated the Frogs, 41-38, in 2019, and 42-34 this past September 25. The 2020 game between the two teams was canceled because of COVID-19 protocols.
After the loss to Dykes and the Mustangs this year, Patterson whined about the Ponies trying to plant an SMU flag at Amon G. Carter’s midfield after the game.
The flag-planting attempt resulted in a scuffle between TCU and SMU players. During the pushing and shoving, Kill, who at the time was a special assistant to Patterson, went flying to the turf and reportedly suffered a concussion.
For several days after the game, Patterson whined to anybody who still was listening to him that the flag-planting was pre-meditated, that Kill had been plowed into the turf by SMU players and that furthermore, Kill had been slugged in the head with a helmet by an SMU player.
Video of the incident showed Kill falling to the turf after inadvertently being run into by two TCU players.
No video evidence surfaced to support Patterson’s claim that Kill was hit in the head with a helmet swung by a SMU player, although Patterson claimed he wouldn’t rest until he identified the culprit.
During a later news conference, Patterson said he couldn’t substantiate claims that an SMU player used a helmet to hit Kill.
Patterson, however, continued to whine that SMU staged the flag-planting incident by its players that started the incident.
As the season played out, that may have been the beginning of the end of the Patterson era at TCU.
In 2019, Dykes led SMU to a 10-2 season, becoming the first Mustangs coach to win 10 games in a season since Bobby Collins in 1984, prior to the NCAA's "death penalty" for the program. His .659 winning percentage is the second best in school history behind Collins among coaches who worked at SMU for more than two seasons.
SMU hired Miami offensive coordinator Rhett Lashlee to replace Dykes. Lashlee was the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at SMU, under Dykes, from 2018 through 2019, prior to joining the University of Miami football program.
Dykes is regarded as an offensive-minded head coach. The Mustangs averaged 39.7 points and 483 total yards over 35 games since the start of the 2019 season.
Ironically, prior to joining the SMU football program, Dykes was an offensive analyst at TCU during the 2017 season, when the Horned Frogs posted an 11-3 record, reached the Big 12 Championship Game and finished ninth in the country after a 39-37 victory over Stanford in the Alamo Bowl.
TCU is Dykes' fourth head-coaching job. In addition to SMU, Dykes has led the football programs at Cal and Louisiana Tech.
Dykes came to Fort Worth for the 2017 season from Berkeley, California, where he had been head coach of Cal, 2013-2016.
Dykes went 19-30 as head coach of the Pac 12 Golden Bears, progressing from one win in 2013 to an 8-5 finish in 2015. He was fired after going 5-7 in 2016.
As head coach of Louisiana Tech, Dykes went 22-15 over three seasons (2010-2012). He was the 2011 Western Athletic Conference (WAC) Coach of the Year.
TCU and Patterson defeated Dykes' Louisiana Tech team, 31-24, in the 2011 Poinsettia Bowl.
Dykes, a native Texan, is the son of former Texas Tech football coach Spike Dykes.
Sonny graduated from Texas Tech and earned a master’s at Kentucky. In Lexington, Dykes was a graduate assistant and later an assistant coach at wide receiver. After stints at Texas Tech and Arizona as offensive coordinator, he began his head-coaching career at Louisiana Tech.
At least four coaches on Dykes’ SMU staff reportedly will follow him to TCU. They are running backs coach Ra’Shaad Samples, wide receiver coach David Gru, defensive line coach Chidera Uzo-Diribe and strength and conditioning coach Kaz Kazada. SMU offensive coordinator Garrett Riley also may join Dykes at TCU.
Dykes may retain some coaches from TCU's current staff, in particular, wide receivers coach Malcolm Kelly and safeties coach Paul Gonzales.
With TCU “reclaiming” Dykes from SMU, added intensity is certain to be added to the Iron Skillet rivalry between the two Metroplex schools.
The 101st Iron Skillet game is scheduled to be played next year in Dallas, on September 24.
If victorious, perhaps the Frogs will plant a TCU flag at midfield of Gerald R. Ford Stadium.
TCU's Head Football Coaches:
- 1897: Joe Field: 3-1-0
- 1898: James Morrison: 1-3-1
- 1902: H.E. Hildebrand: 0-5-1
- 1904: C.E. Cronk: 1-4-1
- 1905-1907: Emory J. Hyde: 10-11-2
- 1908-909: Jesse R. Langley: 11-5-1
- 1910: Kemp Lewis: 2-6-1
- 1911: Henry W. Lever: 4-5
- 1912: Willis T. Stewart: 8-1-0
- 1913: Fred Cahoon: 3-1-2
- 1914: S.A. Boles: 4-4-2
- 1915: E.Y. Freeland: 4-5-0
- 1916-1917: Milton Daniel: 14-4-1
- 1918: Ernest M. Tipton: 4-3-0
- 1919: Ted D. Hackney: 1-7-0
- 1920-1921: William L. Driver: 15-4-1
- 1922: John McKnight: 2-5-3
- 1923-1928: Madison A. Bell: 33-17-5
- 1929-1933: Francis A. Schmidt: 47-5-5
- 1934-1952: Dutch Meyer: 109-79-3
- 1953-1966: Abe Martin: 74-64-7
- 1967-1979: Fred Taylor: 15-25-1
- 1971: Jim Pittman: 3-3-1*
- 1971-1973: Billy Tohill: 11-15-0
- 1974-1976: Jim Shofner: 2-31-0
- 1977-1982: F.A. Dry: 12-51-3
- 1983-1991: Jim Wacker: 40-58-2
- 1992-1997: Pat Sullivan: 24-42-1
- 1998-2000: Dennis Franchione: 25-10-0
- 2000- 2021: Gary Patterson: 181-79-0
- 2021-2021: Jerry Kill (interim): 2-2
- 2022: Sonny Dykes
*Jim Pittman died during the Baylor game during the season
**No coaches listed by TCU for 1896, 1899, 1900, 1901, 1903
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