It’s time for a therapy session. College football followers at large are mentally unwell, but Horned Frog fans, specifically, are fragile right now. Full disclosure: I wrote an entire piece on the failures of the players, coaches, mindset, scheme, and execution regarding Friday night’s loss to the not-so-hapless Houston Cougars, but something about publishing it didn’t feel right, because it’s nothing that hasn’t been recently written by me, other local pundits, or even the national media about TCU’s meteoric rise and subsequent plummet since their national title appearance two seasons ago.
I’m no doctor, but I’m married to one, so I deem myself qualified to walk followers of the Frog through the process of loss — not an on-field L, mind you, but the loss of hope, identity, and pride. It began with the loss to Georgia in the national title game of 2022. During a season in which lightning continued to strike, stars aligned, and Hypnotoad seemed to be fulfilling a destiny paid for by numerous seasons of solid performances and being little-brothered by the national conversation, the historic shellacking at the jaws of the Bulldogs was akin to turning on the house lights and drawing back the curtain at a magician’s showcase: Exposed were every trapdoor, fishing wire, and sleight of hand, and it was embarrassing. Sonny Dykes’ psyche doesn’t seem to have recovered.
Fast-forward through one losing season as a letdown and onto the next that seems that it may go the same, and fanatics have to admit where we are in the progression of grief. If you’re an elder or regular millennial, then you’ve always been rooting for an underdog, hungry to be taken seriously. Ever since TCU’s relegation to the mid-majors when the Southwest Conference disbanded, purple students, players, and university stakeholders have been eager to prove the powers that be that they made a monumental mistake. Gary Patterson along with some special seasons did that, and now the Frogs aren’t an underdog anymore, and the role hasn’t meshed with the team thus far. In fact, the Frogs had been one of the most consistently winning programs in the state, and now we might be the worst one in a major conference.
To add insult to misery, two of TCU’s most disliked rivals — UT and SMU — are having special seasons in new-to-them conferences thus far. The Longhorns are sitting as the Associated Press top team, and the Mustangs cleared a major hurdle this weekend by beating ranked Louisville. Now they’re in the national rankings and control their own destiny toward reaching the ACC title game and a possible automatic bid to the newly expanded playoff.
Even as the Frogs are passed over, local pride could abound. When TCU and Baylor meet in this year’s Revivalry at the end of the season, it’ll essentially be to decide the worst and second-worst major football programs in the Lone Star State, two squads who enjoyed tremendous recent success under their current coaches. Maybe a swap is in order. Crazier things have happened.
Fans booed their Frogs — or just the coaches, but probably both — on Friday night. Not an action I condone, but supporters are demonstrably frustrated. Last week, I firmly believed that Dykes would still be the coach next season no matter what, but I’m questioning that as well now. Kendal Briles is gone — not officially — but you can take that prop bet to Vegas with confidence. Coaches, unless you’re at a majorly dysfunctional school with unrealistic boosters, are usually guaranteed three years to show improvement. Dykes’ situation is bizarre for two reasons: His first season was historic, and it’s already a different football era from the national championship run just two years ago.
Teams were formerly cyclical. They would recruit young talent and develop them, and sometimes — even if they knew what they were doing — there’d be a bumpy year but signs pointing to coming maturity and experience as the reward for patience. That progression is history. Schools must reload to be competitive, because if they’re not, their best players aren’t going to wait around. They’ll just go somewhere offering more money and hopefully exposure through winning. Coaches must win to be relevant, and stay that way, and TCU isn’t. When Dykes was hired, it was thought that his players-first mentality and a softer hand than Coach Patterson would be a better fit for the shifting meta of college football, but his greatest success came with a roster primarily of what are now hardened dinosaurs. Dykes and Garrett Riley didn’t even choose Max Duggan to start in that magical season. It manifested as an advantageous accident. If Chandler Morris hadn’t fallen injured, it could have been seven or eight wins and a lot of “This new coach is pretty good” from everyone.
Perhaps the most troubling issue is that it doesn’t seem the team, and definitely not us supporters, know what the Horned Frog identity is anymore, other than a squad who can beat only other bad teams, sometimes. The aforementioned is a tragedy, and damning to the staff, because there’s a tremendous quantity of currently squandered talent on the roster.
I don’t know that Sonny Dykes will be fired this season and am not confident that I want him to be. But this team has to recover and recreate a sense of identity to invite fans back to their corner and be able to go toe-to-toe with better teams, and I’m not really sure Dykes can create that. Sadly, I don’t know if he does, either.
TCU football has two weeks to complete their own soul-searching and decide who they can and want to be. They’ll travel to face now 16th-ranked Utah in a clash of old Mountain West rivals in a game Utes Coach Kyle Whittingham is no doubt relieved to be missing Patterson sweating profusely on the opposite sideline. Dykes will need to leave a lasting impression in Utah to start rewriting the narrative of a coach who has lost the team as well as the support of the community.
