After arriving this week to a Horned Frog-style celebration as the new head football coach, Sonny Dykes laid out his plan for success at Texas Christian University. Dykes said the goal is to win championships, and he sees three keys to doing so: talent acquisition, player development and, most importantly, building a culture.
“That’s what we have to do here at TCU,” Dykes said. “Players come and go, guys graduate, people move on, but the culture sustains itself. The way you build a culture is by getting young people to be unselfish – getting young people to realize that the team is bigger than the individual. That’s easier said than done. In today’s world a lot of times people think it’s all about them. We intend to make sure that everybody knows it’s all about ‘us’. That’s something that we’ll talk about from the very beginning to the very end, and that will be a big part of the success that we’ll have.”
The arrival of Dykes by helicopter was full of pomp and circumstance at a purple-lit Amon G. Carter Stadium Nov. 29, as the TCU community celebrated with fireworks, purple carpet, the TCU band and other festivities. An official press conference was held Nov. 30.
Chancellor Victor J. Boschini, Jr. said he is extraordinarily excited to announce Dykes as TCU’s newest Horned Frog and head football coach.
“Sonny is passionate about joining TCU and leading our football program and our incredible student-athletes,” Boschini said. “Sonny is lauded as a respected and focused leader of teams, for his exceptional recruiting strategies and for his ability to build relationships that run deep. Dykes’ talent, success and passion, matched with TCU’s award-winning athletics program, positions us for a new era of Horned Frog football. Welcome home, Coach Dykes!”
After serving the last four seasons as head coach at Southern Methodist University, Dykes returns to TCU, where he served as an offensive analyst in 2017. He was instrumental in the Horned Frogs posting an 11-3 record, reaching the Big 12 Championship Game and finishing with a No. 9 national ranking after a 39-37 victory over Stanford in the Alamo Bowl.
Dykes completed one of the more remarkable turnarounds in college football at SMU. Behind an offense that consistently ranked among the nation’s best, Dykes guided SMU to 19 weeks in the national top 25 and three consecutive winning seasons for the first time since the mid-1980s.
Jeremiah Donati, TCU’s director of intercollegiate athletics, said the criteria considered included someone with proven success as a head coach, a recruitment plan, a holistic plan for conditioning and injury prevention, skills to navigate the transfer portal and name-image-likeness, a history of developing student-athletes on and off the field and the potential to compete for a championship.
“We were fortunate to generate a lot of interest from many great candidates,” said Donati. “Many of those candidates did possess these qualities. But in Sonny Dykes, we found someone who not only met every one of those desired criteria, he was far and away the best fit for TCU football and this university.”
Read more about Dykes at gofrogs.com.