How Jamie Dixon's return to Fort Worth secured TCU's place in the national spotlight
Jamie Dixon is already tied for the second-best winning percentage in TCU basketball history at 45-26.
It’ll take him a while to catch all-time wins leader Buster Brannon, who won 205 games (and lost 259) from 1949 to 1967.
He’s already won more games than 10 former TCU coaches, including famed football coach Dutch Meyer, who coached the basketball team from 1935-37.
A year after guiding TCU to the NIT championship, Dixon has the Horned Frogs in the NCAA Tournament, where they'll play Syracuse at 8:40 p.m. Friday at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit. It's their first March Madness appearance since 1998.
If he continues to win at this rate, Dixon, at 52, could easily coach 15 more seasons and become the school's all-time winningest coach.
Of course, that’s a lot of long practices, tough losses and a thousand recruiting trips away, but he’s off to a good start.
Why is this important? Because Dixon’s return to his alma mater was all about turning the program around, both for Dixon and for those who helped lure him back to Fort Worth.
The Horned Frogs' turnaround has kept TCU in the college sports spotlight all year long. In December, it was the only school in the nation with its football, basketball and baseball teams holding top 15 rankings at the same time.
Football coach Gary Patterson and baseball coach Jim Schlossnagle are already the school's all-time wins leaders.
Dixon won 20 or more games 12 times in 13 seasons at Pittsburgh. He won 25 or more eight times and 30 or more twice.
Commitments kept
"Jamie was a person I always wanted to bring back," said Chris Del Conte, TCU's former athletic director, who is now in the same role at Texas. "He was immortal. He was a guy who left TCU and made it big."
But he wasn't interested in leaving the powerhouse program he helped build at Pittsburgh. Dixon kept a close eye on TCU from afar and would make it back for football games and the occasional baseball series.
He even helped TCU join the Big East in 2010 by directing Del Conte to the right contacts within the conference. Of course, when the Big East started to splinter, TCU was invited to join the Big 12, the choice destination all along.
Without the initial invite to the Big East, Del Conte said, the move to the Big 12 wouldn't have happened.
When Jim Christian announced he was leaving TCU for the head job at Ohio in March 2012, Del Conte called Dixon.
"Are you ready to come now? Del Conte asked.
The answer was a hard no.
The school's commitment to basketball just wasn't there. Daniel-Meyer Coliseum was 50 years old and still looked a lot like the same arena Dixon played in while leading the Frogs to their last NCAA Tournament win in 1987.
Not only was Dixon winning, and winning a lot, at Pittsburgh, but he had no interest in trying to rebuild a program without a massive commitment from the administration.
"Jamie, if we do the basketball arena can we have a conversation?" Del Conte asked.
On the other end of the line was a lot of laughter from Dixon.
"Yeah, if you do that, I'll come," said Dixon, never believing it would happen.
"He was laughing so hard. We had one shot at this. That, right there, was my carrot," said Del Conte, who would eventually embark on a $72 million drive to renovate Daniel-Meyer Coliseum on the heels of his $164 million campaign for the 2012 renovations to Amon G. Carter Stadium.
Del Conte never mentioned Dixon's name while securing the basketball donations, such as the $10 million lead donation from Ed and Rae Schollmaier, whose name is now on the building.
"Because I didn’t know if he would take it," Del Conte said. "But he was the guy. And I said, 'OK, you little son of a gun, we’re going to do it.'"
Four years later, including one when Trent Johnson's TCU team was forced to play in a high school gym because of construction, the job was open again. That dingy old gym was now a sparkling hoops cathedral.
"Is it time?" Del Conte asked Dixon by phone.
"It's time," Dixon responded.
Success breeds success
Nothing helps recruiting like winning.
All the cool amenities, players' lounges and uniform swag are great, but good players want to play on good teams.
The success Dixon has shown in just two seasons is faster than expected. It will improve recruiting, which had already been solid under Johnson.
"You sell a vision, you sell a dream when you go out recruiting on the road," Dixon said. "We’ve captured the excitement of kids in Texas as well as internationally with all the international guys we have.
"And I think it’s how we’re playing too. We look like we have fun. We share the ball, we pass it well. We score in high numbers. We play similar to an NBA style offensively so I think it’s attractive for a lot of reasons. The school is resonating nationally, there’s no question about it."
Basketball success doesn't just help Dixon recruit. It also helps Patterson and Schlossnagle.
"Of course," Patterson said. "I am so excited for Jamie and the kids."
TCU, with just over 10,000 students, is still a relatively small private school.
"You’re always going to be fighting for exposure and an identity and you don’t want that to just be the fall and spring, you want it to be year around," Schlossnagle said. "When we bring guys on visits it used to be a football game or a baseball series. We didn’t want to take them to a basketball game. Now, we’ll bring a guy in for a visit and bring him down to the court like we would for football."
Both Patterson and Schlossnagle sent texts of congratulations to Dixon when TCU officially earned its tournament berth.
"Part of my reason for coming here and believing we could get it done is those two guys," he said. "I used to joke that if those two guys can win here, then heck, I can win some basketball games here."
Dixon was intrigued by the idea of being "the right guy for the job" to help bring TCU basketball out of the 20-year wilderness.
"We're good in everything — tennis, golf, rifle, equestrian," he said. "Basketball was really the thing that was holding us back. That was part of my evaluation of it as well. I thought I could be the guy. I believe that."
Though the Horned Frogs are in the tournament for the first time in 20 years, Dixon acknowledges that simply reaching March Madness is not the goal.
"There’s progress to be made. The more you win, the wins don’t get bigger, the losses get bigger. I’ve been through it.
"That’s what I intend to build here. I want it to be when we don’t get to the tournament that’s the extreme disappointment.
No one is going to have higher expectations than me."
This story was originally published March 15, 2018 at 12:00 AM with the headline "How Jamie Dixon's return to Fort Worth secured TCU's place in the national spotlight."