SMU football will try to keep Sonny Dykes, but nothing will stop his exit | Opinion
SMU is aware of what it has in Sonny Dykes and the school is willing to bury him in money in an effort to retain him as their football coach.
According to sources, Dykes is ready to leave SMU after the season and there is nothing the school can do to keep him.
He’s 51 years old, and as the son of a coach he knows “the game” as well as anyone.
Dykes has a quality team that is loaded with older players, and that is one of the reasons why there is no better time to leave SMU than right now.
Another is that he has at least two interested suitors, and people at both Texas Tech and TCU expect him to play one against the other as he tries to negotiate the best deal.
A bidding war for Sonny Dykes sounds insane, but what sounds sane about the state of college football?
With Gary Patterson “resigning” on Sunday, TCU people are convinced TCU is Dykes’ preferred destination — that if the choice is between TCU or Texas Tech, he will choose Fort Worth.
Meanwhile, Texas Tech people are convinced Lubbock is his preferred destination to replace Matt Wells.
Dykes has ties to both schools, and is acquainted with the respective towns and administrators.
All he has to do is not screw this up, which would be SMU collapsing in the final month of the regular season.
Last week, SMU was 7-0 and ranked No. 19 in the nation. But the Mustangs lost at Houston on Saturday night in the final seconds.
SMU has four games remaining, including at No. 2 Cincinnati in the second-to-last game of the season.
The Ponies are not apt to fall apart and lose out, which is the only way Dykes’ resume would be sullied enough to potentially motivate an interested school to look elsewhere.
Dykes is currently in his fourth season at SMU, and in the last three years the Mustangs are 24-7. Included in that are consecutive wins at rival TCU, in 2019 and 2021.
He is the first coach at SMU to enjoy sustained success since the school was handed the “Death Penalty” by the NCAA in 1987.
He is SMU’s seventh full-time head coach since 1989, and this is the first time since then the Mustangs will post three consecutive winning seasons.
For SMU board members and influential fans, especially the older ones, they all recognize the value of Sonny Dykes, which is why they are prepared to make it hard for him to leave.
Dykes’ interest in looking elsewhere has everything to do with the school’s affiliation in the American Athletic Conference, and the challenges of creating interest and drawing crowds for SMU home games.
Dykes is like most coaches — he just wants the higher level.
He has coached once at the highest level before, with his right arm tied to his left foot.
After a decent three years at Louisiana Tech from 2010 to 2012, he was hired by California.
Coaching the football team at Cal-Berkeley is not like coaching fellow Pac-12 members Oregon, Utah, Washington , UCLA, USC and the rest.
Cal Bears football is one of the more challenging jobs in the country. It’s a political nightmare job where the facilities are ish, and where winning is not exactly on the front burner.
Dykes did recruit and coach future top NFL draft pick, quarterback Jared Goff, to Cal. Dykes also had future New York Giants’ draftee, quarterback Davis Webb.
However, Dykes had one winning record in four seasons, and an overall mark of 19-30 at Berkeley before he was fired.
He joined Patterson’s staff in 2017 where he served as an offensive analyst.
Since being hired by SMU, Dykes has established himself as one of the top Group of Five coaches.
If he goes to either Tech or TCU, both are logical destinations where he would be well received by either fan base.
His wife is a Texas Tech alum, and his father, Spike, was the Red Raiders’ football coach from 1986 to 1999.
And having worked at TCU in 2017, Dykes knows all of the “right people” at TCU.
SMU knows all of this, and while it plans to do everything possible to keep their winning head football coach from leaving they are going to lose him to a former Southwest Conference rival.
This story was originally published November 1, 2021 at 5:56 PM.
