Opinion: The Jury is Back on Sonny Dykes… He Still Stinks

We the people were blessed this past weekend with college football’s official kickoff. All around the country – and overseas – American youngsters (and some not so youngsters) got to take the field for the first time to open up the 2026 football season. Bettors everywhere watched as a Stanford team pulled off the most improbable cover in recent memory. Bill Belichick’s 20-something year old girlfriend got a notification on her Instagram that Bill finally won a meaningful college game. And a crowd of what appeared to be 30 people roared their loudest at the world-famous LA Memorial Colosseum to watch the Trojans take on San Jose State. Maybe lost in the lore of America’s favorite game returning at the collegiate level was a performance to forget for one Sonny Dykes, head coach of Texas Christian University (TCU). 

Sonny Dykes just began his fifth year as the head man of TCU’s program. Prior to his current role, Dykes coached at Louisiana Tech, Cal, and SMU before taking the job at a middling TCU program in 2022. Now, here’s the unpopular opinion. Dykes’s 2022 performance, which culminated in a national championship appearance, gets significantly more love than it deserves. Sure his team played for the national title (not a feat I am prepared to say does not matter) but take a look at the path that was taken to get there. Aside from Michigan that year, only one team that TCU beat won more than 8 games. In fact, the only team that won more than 8 times in the Big 12 that year (10-4 Kansas State) BEAT Dykes’s TCU squad in the conference championship game in a rematch from a regular season game. Alas, the then-college football committee, self-proclaimed all-knowers of ball, still placed TCU in the coveted four team college football playoff. TCU would go on to beat a formidable Michigan squad in a thriller of a game, advancing to the national championship game. They then went on to give onlookers everywhere one of the most boring college football national title “fights” in history, losing to the Georgia Bulldogs 65-7. To say Dykes was out coached would be a significant understatement. This is all background noise. But it’s relevant because the lone successful 2022 campaign continues to be what Dykes loyalists cling onto to justify their misery. 

Fast forward to August 29, 2026. Sonny Dykes takes the field in Dublin, Ireland to open up the season against the North Carolina Tar Heels. On the other side, Dykes faces one Bill Belichick, NFL legend, college dumpster fire of a coach in his second year. Dykes is fresh off of back-to-back 9-4 seasons, with the added pressure of the modern landscape of college football’s playoff system. Sadly for Sonny, that fateful Irish sky had nothing but rain in store for his Horned Frogs.

After using the offseason to slander former quarterback Josh Hoover, Dykes, likely fueled in part by his irritation at Hoover’s departure for Indiana, implored everyone to trust him and his new play-caller from Harvard, Jaden Craig. The pundits loved it. All of the major sports broadcasts talked about the new TCU QB’s future NFL draft stock, and how Dykes was at it again coaching up a young superstar. The only problem for Dykes was that we live in the world of reality, where games are actually won and lost on a field, not in a media tent. Sonny’s team went on to play like they had started practicing only a couple weeks before and were still learning each other’s names. Poor snaps, missed tackles, and what seemed like Sonny Dykes’s own lack of understanding of the clock rules ultimately cost TCU their first game of the 2026 campaign. 

Now, the point of all this. Sonny Dykes isn’t a good head coach. Saturday’s game against the Tar Heels was just a culmination of all the little things that Sonny can’t seem to get right. Whether it’s failing to teach his defensive line how to not egregiously jump offsides or not understanding that timeouts can be called before halftime, Sonny and his team were simply outdone in their first outing. It was astonishing to watch a North Carolina team – that had literally done nothing in the realm of competent just one year ago – be better on both sides of the ball than TCU for four quarters.

I’m not sure where TCU goes from here. Saturday’s game should serve as a splash of cold water in the face for the decision-makers at TCU. If the lackluster performances continue, and Jaden Craig doesn’t improve significantly in the next few weeks, a step back for the Horned Frogs appears inevitable.

Dykes is 102-80 over the course of his career as a head coach, clocking in a .572 winning percentage. Remove his 2022 campaign, and he sits just above .500. You tell me, was 2022 the real Sonny D? Or was it simply an anomaly, one which TCU fans should not expect to be replicated any time soon. In the new era of “we want to win now” and “it can be done,” Dykes may shortly find himself in the hot seat, where I for one, think he rightfully belongs.