Former TCU coach F.A. Dry is 95 years old, and he has lived long enough to watch a strange turn in Fort Worth: a chunk of the Horned Frogs fan base now wants to move on from a coach who has won 39 games in fewer than five seasons.
That is the backdrop for the current mood around Sonny Dykes, who has taken TCU to heights the program almost never has reached. He delivered a national championship game berth in 2022, then followed it with back-to-back nine-win seasons and bowl wins. For TCU, that kind of run is rare enough to feel almost out of character.
And yet here the Horned Frogs are, staring at a 24-20 loss to West Virginia at Amon G. Carter Stadium and an offense that has not scored more than two touchdowns against a Power Four opponent. Dykes is 15-16 in the Big 12 since that magical 2022 season, and that is where the frustration starts to creep in.
The tension is easy to understand if you know TCU’s history. The program has not been Alabama, not even close.
Its signature names are Sammy Baugh, Davey O’Brien, Dutch Meyer, Bob Lilly, LaDainian Tomlinson and Gary Patterson. Three of those figures belong to an era before World War II.
I was born in 1978, in the middle of Dry’s tenure, though thankfully I was too young to remember it. My first real awareness of TCU football came in 1984, when Jim Wacker led the Horned Frogs to an 8-3 regular season and a Bluebonnet Bowl loss - the school’s first bowl trip since 1965. I remember “Wacker Backer” gear and a real buzz around the city.
That success, though, was modest. Wacker won 40 games in nine seasons, and Dykes will pass that total in his fifth year unless this season goes completely off the rails. Wacker had two winning seasons; Dykes has already had three.
By the time I left Fort Worth for college, TCU still had not won a bowl in my lifetime and had only appeared in one other one, the 1994 Independence Bowl. Then came Dennis Franchione, who helped set the stage for Patterson’s Hall of Fame run.
Patterson’s legacy is enormous, and that is part of the problem for Dykes. His 21-year stretch included 11 10-win seasons, 11 bowl victories and seven top-10 finishes in the final Associated Press poll.
But the full picture matters too. Eight of those 10-win seasons, seven of the bowl wins and four of those top-10 finishes came in Conference USA or the Mountain West, not the Big 12.
In Patterson’s 10 years in a power conference, he had three 11-win seasons, then followed with a 6-4 COVID year, two 7-6 seasons and four losing seasons.
Seen through that lens, Dykes’ records of 13-2, 5-7, 9-4 and 9-4 do not look like the failure some fans make them out to be.
That does not mean this season feels good. It has been a frustrating one, with TCU losing 15-10, 21-13, 17-10 and 24-20.
The Horned Frogs could easily be 6-1 or even 7-0 instead of 3-4. The defense has held up.
The offense, especially the new quarterback-offensive coordinator pairing, has not.
Dykes made both of those moves himself, bringing in Jaden Craig through the transfer portal and hiring Gordon Sammis. Those choices are on him.
But at the time, they made sense. Craig was highly rated, and the idea of becoming more physical with Sammis’ pro-style attack fit a Big 12 where teams built in the trenches - like Texas Tech, BYU and Utah - have become increasingly important.
It just has not clicked. More and more, TCU’s issue looks like an offensive line problem and a lack of a running game, not a quarterback problem.
Injuries to Jordan Dwyer and Jeremy Payne have not helped. Sammis came in with a reputation as an offensive line guru, and it will be worth seeing what he can do after a full offseason and another recruiting and portal cycle.
Of course, I can say all that from the outside. I am not a TCU alum, and my self-worth does not rise and fall with the football team.
That kind of pressure is everywhere in college football. Looking only at Power Four teams in Texas, Willie Fritz at Houston and Rhett Lashlee at SMU appear to have the clearest support from their fans.
Dave Aranda is essentially gone at Baylor. Texas A&M’s Mike Elko will survive this season, but last year’s playoff berth has bought him less comfort than you might think.
And as wild as it sounds, Texas’ Steve Sarkisian and Texas Tech’s Joey McGuire could both face real heat with one more loss.
So the warning for TCU fans is simple: be careful what you wish for. You could do a lot worse than Sonny Dykes. You already have.
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