Hot Seat or Hot Water: Sonny Dykes, TCU at a Crossroads

The calendar says that it’s been 1,370 days since TCU beat Michigan in the 2022 Fiesta Bowl and advanced to the national championship game in Year 1 of the Sonny Dykes era. The angst online about the trajectory of the Horned Frogs football program suggests it was a lifetime ago.  

That’s how college football works. The upside to becoming a head coach in college football is the millions of dollars in the bank account, the hero worship from fans, and the autonomy to run a multi-million-dollar operation without much oversight or pushback from administration when things are going well.  

The downside is the what-have-you-done-for-me-lately mindset among fan bases, the media, and the brass when the results sour. Lose and people will call for your head – loudly and publicly. The advent of the transfer portal and the reliance on the fan base for roster money has only amplified the lack of time afforded to fix any issues.  

Dykes and TCU are an interesting case study.  

On one hand, he led the Horned Frogs to a national championship fewer than five seasons ago. They’ve won nine games in back-to-back years. They’re one of the winningest programs in the Big 12 since Dykes arrived. The program was 23-24 overall with a 15-21 mark in the Big 12 over the last four seasons of the Gary Patterson era. TCU was 36-17 overall and 23-13 in the Big 12 in Dykes’ first four years in Fort Worth.   

But since 2023, TCU is 20-17 against Power Four opponents and 14-14 in the Big 12 following the road loss to UCF. The Horned Frogs were favored in six of those 17 losses, including both defeats this season. That includes Colorado (+21) and West Virginia (+12.5) in 2023, UCF (+2.5) and Houston (+16.5) in 2024. They’re 14-19-1 against the spread since 2023, as well.  

Maybe revenue sharing and the transfer portal make it harder to be a college football coach than ever before. But those same factors have made it easier than ever to judge how well or poorly a coach is doing his job. An athletic director can simply compare the payroll of the current football team to that of the payrolls in the conference and compare the results.  

If your team is the sixth highest payroll in the Big 12, for example, then a finish above sixth place warrants praise. A finish below sixth place creates unrest. A recent report by The Athletic suggested that TCU has the second highest payroll in the Big 12. My sources say that’s probably accurate. If the Frogs aren’t No. 2 behind Texas Tech, they’re not outside of the top four.  

But this TCU team won’t finish in the top four of the Big 12 standings. The Horned Frogs are 0-2 against P4 competition this season and 0-1 in Big 12 play with big, bad BYU coming to town on Saturday. The schedule concludes with Utah at home and Texas Tech on the road. Between that, they travel to Baylor (3-1) and Arizona (3-1) and host West Virginia, Kansas, and Kansas State.  

Dykes openly said this offseason that the goal was to be in the Big 12 hunt come November, something his program hasn’t achieved since 2022 – his first year in charge. Those goals seem dashed by the end of September and there is legitimate reason to worry that the Frogs won’t go bowling for the second time in four years.  

The offseason moves simply haven’t worked. Starting quarterback Josh Hoover caught the staff by surprise and transferred to Indiana after former offensive coordinator Kendal Briles moved to South Carolina. Dykes hired UConn’s Gordon Sammis to help create a rushing attack and limit turnovers, and he pegged Harvard’s Jaden Craig as Hoover’s replacement.  

Yet, TCU ranks 15^th out of 16 in the Big 12 in yards per rush and rushing yards per game. The offense has lost seven turnovers. Only Colorado has scored fewer points per game than the Horned Frogs and that’s including a 63-point effort over Grambling. Sammis’ unit is averaging 11.5 points per game in two losses to P4 opponents. And Craig has zero touchdowns to two interceptions in those games.  

Making matters worse is that rivals Texas Tech and SMU are thriving. I say it all the time but college football is only as fun as it is miserable for your rivals and SMU is winning the breakup against the Horned Frogs over the last couple of years. The Mustangs have joined a P4 conference, reached the CFP, and are 15-3 in the ACC since 2024. Texas Tech won the Big 12 last year and has money whipped its way into national prominence.  

Public relations off the field aren’t going much better. A locker room fight between a starting safety and a starting wide receiver ended with the safety off the team and charged with assault and the wide receiver in the hospital and unable to play. The ensuing coverage of that assault ended with the local newspaper momentarily barred from coverage while TCU traveled roughly 4,500 miles to Ireland to lose to North Carolina.  

Dykes can clearly coach. He won a conference championship at La Tech in 2011. He won eight games at Cal in 2015 – something that’s only happened twice since 2009. He registered SMU’s first 10-win season since the Death Penalty in 2019. And he took a program that was .500 in the four years before he arrived to a national championship game in 2022, beating a Michigan team that won the Big 10 that season and would win the national championship the next season along the way.  

That doesn’t happen by accident.  

But the downward spiral of the program since that win over the Wolverines is hard to ignore. Hiring Art Briles’ son at TCU probably wasn’t the smartest decision. Losing to Deion Sanders as a three-touchdown favorite in his first game with the Buffs didn’t help. And the .500 conference record and multiple losses as favorites over the last 3+ seasons have the fan base wanting a change.  

Dykes signed a contract extension in the summer, though sources in Fort Worth suggest that the buyout might’ve been lowered in the process. TCU is a private school so the number is unknown, but industry sources say it is north of $25 million. The AD that hired Dykes is no longer at the university.  

A loss, especially a blowout loss, at home on Saturday against No. 10-ranked BYU would put Dykes firmly on the hot seat. Right now, I think he’s just in hot water.  

Dykes proved he can lead the Frogs to extraordinary heights, but he hasn’t come close to the 2022 ceiling since. And with TCU investing toward the top of the Big 12, merely being competitive and going to a bowl game with 8-4 records isn’t sufficient. The post-2022 results create a legitimate question about whether Dykes can reproduce that type of run again.