SMU’s football team is not where it is today without Sonny Dykes’ tenure in Dallas
Around The Hilltop, and up and down Bishop Blvd., Sonny Dykes is SMU’s Benedict Arnold.
A purple frog in red and blue sheep’s clothing who used SMU as a stepping stone to land the job at TCU.
There are only tiny pockets of people around SMU who can see past the image of Dykes bailing on Dallas in favor of their little brother in Fort Worth.
“He played a great role here,” SMU coach Rhett Lashlee said Tuesday when asked about Dykes. “He’s a part of our story and our journey over the last couple of decades to get us back to this stage.”
While TCU continues to prepare to play Louisiana in the New Mexico Bowl, SMU will have already appeared in the first round of the college football playoff. No. 11 SMU plays at No. 6 Penn State on Saturday in State College, Pa.
There is a bigger picture to SMU reaching this stage, and Lashlee sees all of the corners, layers, colors and angles. Dykes is one of the biggest reasons why Lashlee is SMU’s head coach.
“I think Sonny Dykes deserves a lot of credit for the part he played in getting the program where it is,” Lashlee said. “I’m blessed to be the coach at this time. I am benefiting from a couple of decades of hard work.”
SMU is not where it is today without Dykes’ four-year tenure there, which ended after the 2021 season. The job he left is not the job that Lashlee occupies. There’s a decent chance that had SMU moved from the American Athletic Conference to the Atlantic Coast Conference when Dykes was the Mustangs head coach, he has no interest in leaving.
On Wednesday at his meeting with the media, Dykes dismissed the idea that he’s in any way responsible for the success SMU currently enjoys.
“That’s Rhett’s team and he deserves the credit for that football team; that’s just what it is,” Dykes said.
Lashlee was Dykes’ offensive coordinator at SMU in 2018 and ‘19. Lashlee spent the next two years at the University of Miami.
When Dykes left SMU for TCU, Lashlee was SMU’s top candidate from the beginning, and an easy hire. They knew him. They liked him. It’s worked.
At no point has anyone suggested Lashlee’s SMU success has anything to do with Dykes, which is another example of selective standards.
When Dykes led TCU to the 2022 national title game, it was with a roster comprised of players mostly recruited and signed by former coach Gary Patterson and his staff. That point was mostly quiet throughout the 2022 season, but it was used as a hammer against Dykes when the team finished 5-7 last season; the same point was no longer a hammer but a set of steak knives pointed at his head when the team was 3-3 in 2024.
An 8-4 final record put those tools back in the box.
Lost in this debate is the run that Dykes had at SMU. Few, if anyone, credits Dykes’ tenure as a catalyst for SMU’s current status. It is not the reason the Mustangs are in the ACC, or in these playoffs. It is, however, a big reason.
“I’ll always be appreciative to (SMU). They gave me a chance. I got fired (from California, in 2016). Nobody really wanted me,” said Dykes, whom SMU hired late in 2017. “I’m very thankful to SMU and appreciative for everything they did for me. I think the people that know over there feel the same way. I don’t expect the general fan to feel that way.”
Correct.
Dykes was the seventh head coach SMU had hired since it returned from “The Death Penalty,” in 1989. Of those seven, Dykes and former head coach June Jones are the most significant figures in this program’s rise from the dead.
Jones, who came to SMU after the 2007 season, forced SMU to update some internal policies that allowed the team to have a chance to compete for recruits, and to win.
Dykes elevated the program to a place it had not been since the early 1980s. In 2019, the team was ranked in the AP poll for the first time since 1986.
On Nov. 2, 2019, SMU was undefeated and ranked 15th. Its game at No. 24 Memphis was the backdrop for ESPN’s College Game Day broadcast from Beale Street. Under Dykes, SMU was finally good again at football, which made his exit to TCU so painful.
“Sonny came in, and that allowed me to get here,” Lashlee said. “Our second year, we won 10 games. That had not been done since before The Death Penalty.
“That’s when we started to embrace the city of Dallas. The Triple D (logo). That’s when the transfer portal became a thing. So, OK, if we’re not in a power conference how can we get power conference level players here to compete at the level we want to?
“It all just has added up. It was a pickle jar effect. They were all trying to get the lid off, and they never got it off and by the time we got here we were able to pop the lid off.”
Lashlee, his staff and his team deserve the overwhelming majority of the credit for their season.
Dykes, his staff and his teams deserve the credit for putting SMU in a position to be nationally relevant again.
To a tiny pocket of Ponies, they accept that fact whereas to the majority of Mustangs, Sonny Dykes will always be their Benedict Arnold.
This story was originally published December 19, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
