This is why former Arizona offensive coordinator Sonny Dykes is coaching TCU in the national championship game next week and not creating a football legend in Tucson the way he is at TCU:
One, Greg Byrne could have hired Dykes to be Arizona’s head coach in the late fall of 2011 but chose to hire unemployed Rich Rodriguez instead. Dykes, then 42, was in his second season as Louisiana Tech’s head coach, earning $700,000 a year. Arizona could’ve tripled his salary.
Dykes could not possibly have said no to an Arizona offer. A year later, Cal, whose talent pool was bankrupt, hired Dykes, and he soon recruited QB Jared Goff and went from 1-11 to 8-5 in two years.
Two, Dave Heeke could’ve hired Dykes in the winter of 2017-18 but chose to hire unemployed Kevin Sumlin instead. Dykes was available until mid-December 2017, a free agent after serving as an analyst on TCU’s coaching staff.
Dykes would’ve taken, oh, 10 seconds, to say yes to an offer from Arizona.
But Arizona didn’t fire RichRod until after SMU had moved quickly to hire Dykes.
I don’t blame Byrne or Heeke. Hiring a Power 5 head football coach usually works in the long term about 30% of the time. Plus, they were both early in their tenures as Arizona’s athletic director.
It wasn’t the Heeke of Year 4, with full knowledge of the UA turf, masterfully hand-picking Tommy Lloyd from Gonzaga.
Sonny Dykes had a way about him at Arizona that has helped him succeed as TCU’s head coach.
Neither Byrne nor Heeke could possibly have known that Dykes had all the positives to be a winning coach at Arizona, perhaps more so than any available candidate. They couldn’t have been receiving the best outside advice; executives from search firms and big-money donors invariably take the low-hanging fruit, like RichRod and Sumlin, men with big names who can win a press conference.
The Sonny Dykes of 2012 and 2018 didn’t have a hire-this-guy rep anywhere but in Tucson.
In their early UA days, Byrne and Heeke couldn’t have known what dedicated UA football fans knew: Dykes operated a highly effective offensive system he learned under Mike Leach at Texas Tech and put on display in Tucson from 2007-09.
Or that he had a winning and engaging personality, and that he had full knowledge of what it would take to make Arizona a consistent winner, as well as significant recruiting links in SoCal, Texas and within the Polynesian football community.
Dykes had the energy and purpose that Sumlin didn’t have, the recruiting chops and demeanor to embrace Tucson and connect with its fans that escaped RichRod.
I could have imagined Dykes coaching at Arizona for 10 or 15 years, beating the odds the way Dick Tomey did, having a reasonable chance to establish at Arizona what Kyle Whittingham has at Utah.
Before TCU shocked Michigan, eliminating Jim Harbaugh from the playoffs last week, Dykes, typically low-key and humble, told reporters he shouldn’t get an avalanche of credit for putting the Horned Frogs on the national map.
That’s the Dykes I remember, a modest leader who transferred credit from Arizona’s Holiday and Las Vegas bowl teams to those who did the dirty work, like QBs Wiilie Tuitama and Nick Foles, receivers Rob Gronkowski and Mike Thomas, and dominant lineman Eben Britton.
Dykes said TCU’s rise to prominence is partially the blessing of good timing.
“You used to rely on signing the recruiting class, you redshirted the class if your program is good enough to do that, so all the programs that were good historically had an advantage because they didn’t have to play freshmen,” Dykes said.
“Those teams went to bowl games, got those 15 extra practices and got a chance to work those young players. Had we not been able to add those 13 guys from the transfer portal, we would have been in trouble defensively. I do think that you’re going to start to see more teams like TCU get on stages like this.”
The seeds of Dykes’ road to TCU and the national championship game were planted even before Dykes was hired by Mike Stoops in 2007.
Sonny Dykes, left, excelled as Mike Stoops’ offensive coordinator at Arizona from 2007-09 but never got serious consideration for the head-coaching job.
About 15 or 20 years ago, when Chris Del Conte was the No. 2 man in Arizona’s athletic department, I sat at lunch with him and told him I thought he was a lock to be Jim Livengood’s successor as Arizona’s AD.
Del Conte said it probably wasn’t to be.
“I’ll be gone before Jim retires,” he said. “I’ll tell you who might be a great AD here someday — Jeremiah Donati.”
At the time, a young Donati was a fundraiser in the Arizona athletic department.
A year or two later, Del Conte left to become the AD at Rice, and later, in 2011, at TCU. That’s when Del Conte hired Donati to be his lead assistant. In 2017, Del Conte left to become the AD for the Texas Longhorns; Donati replaced him at TCU.
Thirteen months ago, Donati hired Dykes away from SMU.
In a lot of ways, an Arizona man getting an Arizona man has worked for TCU the way it has never worked for Arizona.
