BIG 12 CONFERENCE FOOTBALL MEDIA DAYS

July 8, 2026

Sonny Dykes

Ford Center at The Star

TCU Horned Frogs

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: Joining us now on stage is TCU head Coach Sonny Dykes. We'll start with an opening statement from Coach.

SONNY DYKES: Yeah, I just want to say, number one, thank you to the media for being here and covering the Big 12. I think it's a tremendous league. I think it's a league that's very exciting. Love the leadership in the league. I think Brett is doing a tremendous job of navigating some difficult times of what's happening in college football right now, and I think he's the right man for the job.

You know, I'm lucky. I think I have one of the best jobs in college football. I get to live in Fort Worth, Texas, in the DFW metroplex and coach at a university that understands how important football is, values, you know, winning and winning with integrity.

I get to work for people that -- Chancellor Pullin is fantastic, my buddy. Our athletic director. To me those are two of the people that if I got to choose anybody in the country to work for, I would. I'm just so thankful to get to work with them.

I think the thing that is satisfying for me, this is year 30 for me as a college football coach, year 16 as a Division I head coach. The more you do this, the longer you're involved in the game, the more you realize how fortunate you are to be a part of it.

What makes doing what we do so gratifying is when you get to bring six players with varying backgrounds, like we brought today, and guys that have been with us really since the beginning, since we came to TCU and had a vision for that program, it's fun to watch those guys grow up and become not only great football players, but great people and get their education, graduate from TCU. It's incredibly satisfying.

My hat's off to our players who are here. I'm very proud of who they are. Really proud of what they do and how they represent this university and just really blessed and fortunate to be a part of it.

Again, thank you for what you guys do. College football is the greatest game in the world. There are some challenges right now inside of our industry, but at the end of the day, the kids are better than they've ever been. They work harder. They're more unselfish. You know, they take care of themselves off the field better than they ever have before. They understand the responsibility that comes with being a college football player.

So, again, we're fortunate to all get to be a part of it. I'll take questions.

Q. Sonny, you said previously before that Jaden checked a lot of the boxes for you guys. As he's been in the building and you've gotten to know him a little bit more, what have you seen from him as he's taken more of an ownership of his leadership role?

SONNY DYKES: Yeah, you know, the more I'm around him, the more boxes I think he checks in a lot of ways. We went to dinner last night and had a chance to just visit and talk, and wasn't really about football, just about other things.

I was just so impressed with his self-awareness. You know what I mean? You know, I have teenage girls and a 9-year-old son in my household. Self-awareness is a big challenge for all of us in the Dykes household, for sure. It's cool when you get around a player that just, you know, understands who he is, what his role is, what his strengths are, what his weaknesses are.

I appreciate his love of the process of playing quarterback because it's a process-driven position. I appreciate the fact that he wants to do things the right way. I appreciate the way he has come in and, you know, won over the hearts and minds I think of his teammates, and he did it by being humble, by working hard, by not overstepping his bounds, by never pounding his chest and saying, look at me.

He's a joy to be around. He's a really talented football player. I expect great things from him. In our program, whoever the quarterback is, we hand them the keys to the program, so there's a lot of responsibility that comes along with that. I feel very confident handing those keys to him.

Q. What stood out about (audio interruption) during the recruiting process, and what gives you confidence that (audio interruption) at Harvard will translate to the Big 12?

SONNY DYKES: The interesting thing was the way the transfer portal works is, you know, we have a personnel department that is going through and looking at players all the time and evaluating guys and seeing, okay, who do we think is going to be a good fit for our program.

I don't know that we knew we were going to take a transfer quarterback, honestly. We had a quarterback that had been with us for a number of years and still had a year of eligibility. We kind of assumed he would be with us, and that ended up not being the case.

Once that happened, our personnel department came in and said, okay, look, take a look at this guy, see what you think. You turn the tape on of him playing at Harvard, and you really like what you see.

You see a big, strong guy that is making throws that you go, wow, that's impressive. You see a guy that doesn't turn the ball over. You see a guy that handles himself well.

So the football stuff checks out. Then you have an opportunity to get on the phone with him, and you start to talk to him a little bit. Okay, what's important to you? What are you looking for? Why are you interested in TCU? Once you got to know him, that's when we zeroed in on him very quickly.

The transfer portal quarterback thing happens fast. Unfortunately, it's happening in a lot of cases during the season. What I mean by that is there's people talking to your quarterbacks and talking to your players and doing all the stuff, and it just kind of happens in today's college football.

You know, we zeroed in on him quickly. We had to quickly. Got him on a visit. Got around him a little bit. We were fortunate that Gordy Sammis, our new offensive coordinator, was from that part of the country, had a background with him. They knew each other on a real surface level, but they knew each other. Jaden knew of Gordy. Gordy knew of Jaden. Once those two guys got in a room together, I think they both realized very quickly this is going to be a really good fit.

You know, he brings a lot to the table, as I said. Experience, maturity, athleticism, play-making ability. Again, at the end of the day, the thing I love about him is, you know, he wants to be challenged, he wants to be pushed. He's all about becoming the best version of himself that he can become. I think, at the end of the day, that's who you want to lead your program.

Q. Quick question, you went outside the box to find Gordon Sammis. You just talked about him a little bit. What was it about Gordon that made him the OC you wanted to have, and what did you see in spring camp that gets you excited to see him this fall?

SONNY DYKES: Yeah, okay, you know what's interesting is you could take exactly what I said and apply it to Gordy. What I mean by that is, you know, two years ago UConn had a Friday night game, and I'm in the team hotel watching college football like every college coach does on Friday night. UConn is playing, and I'm watching their offense. I know some of the players playing for them.

Number one, I thought, wow, I like what they're doing from a scheme perspective. I like their style of play. You know, they're showing their statistics. I like the balance between run and pass. I like the fact that they have productive runners, productive passers. I like the fact they don't turn the ball over very often.

All that stuff kind of -- you know, I noticed all of that. As the season rolled around, on Sunday I would throw a little UConn tape on and just kind of watch them a little bit. I get to the office Sunday morning and, I wonder what these guys did. Watched a little bit of that. Had an appreciation for what they were doing and how they were doing it.

The season rolled around. Kind of did the same thing. Followed them a little bit. Noticed how few times they turned the ball over. Then, you know, once we knew we were going to have an opportunity to hire a new coordinator, Ryan Dorchester, our chief of staff, kind of did a deep statistical study to things that we felt like were important and would give us the best opportunity to win. UConn kept showing up.

At that point it's like, okay, who is doing this? It's Gordy Sammis. Interesting background. He's an offensive line coach that's a play caller. There are not too many of those in college football.

Anyway, same thing happened. Got him on the phone, had a conversation with him, a quick conversation that I kind of thought, okay, this is really interesting. We need to have another conversation.

As we continued to talk a little bit, it became apparent to me quickly that this is the guy we need to hire. So we zeroed in on him pretty quickly. It was kind of the same thing. You look at the tape. Does the tape match? Yes. Does the personality match? Yes. Then we got him here for the spring and was around him every day.

Again, the thing I appreciated about him was, you know, there's nothing that happens randomly. Everything has a reason. It's just well thought out, it's well conceived. I think he's really bright. I just like what we're doing offensively.

I like the way he coaches our players. He's a physical, tough disciplinarian, and that's what we wanted, and that's what we needed to reinforce some of the things that we felt are important and, again, going to give us the best chance to win.

Loved what he did this spring. Loved what we did offensively. Got a lot of work to do this summer. You know, still a lot of things got to happen. We have to have a great fall camp, but coming out of spring football, I was really comfortable with where we were, again, most importantly, with him. Even more comfortable, even more excited than I was before we hired him.

Q. Just talking about the year of transfer quarterbacks, you guys have Craig, and then Baylor bringing in Lagway. You're heading down to Waco this year. Can you talk a little bit about the importance of having that rivalry game, keeping it alive on the schedule, and then also just the importance of Texas college rivalries and playing each other in Texas?

SONNY DYKES: Yeah, good question. Yeah, I think, look, that's what makes college football great and unique and different are those rivalries, are those games that, you know, our fans remember going to when they were students at TCU and their parents went to.

All that stuff is really, really, really important. It's important for us to do everything we can to maintain those rivalries. Just because of the way conferences are now, many of those don't exist. It's a shame that they don't. It's a shame that conference realignment has changed some of that, but we have to do everything we can to hold onto them.

Speaking of Baylor, I think obviously everybody in the country tried to recruit DJ Lagway the first time. He had some really, really bright moments at Florida. Did some really, really impressive things. Really talented young man.

Jake Spavital, Baylor's offensive coordinator, is a really sharp coach, and I think Jake will bring out the best in him, and I would expect him to have a big year and be one of the top quarterbacks in the Big 12.

Q. As you guys prepare for an international game heading to Ireland, does that change how preparation goes in fall camp and what challenges come?

SONNY DYKES: We play zero week, so we're a week earlier. Yeah, it changes our report day. Everything kind of moves up a week. But as you said, when you do a deep dive and look at the history of these games in Ireland, a lot of the teams that have played in this historically haven't performed that well or maybe not up to the expectations of those teams, at least what they thought they were going to perform.

You look at Iowa State and Kansas State last year. I think, you know, neither team probably had the kind of season they thought they were going to coming into the game and especially right after the game. I think both teams did a tremendous job of recovering and playing well at the end of the season, but you could tell it took a toll on both teams.

So we're trying to do everything we can to develop best practices. We've talked to a number of people that have coached in this game, both administrators, coaches, about, okay, what was challenging about this game? What would you do different if you had the opportunity to do it again?

The thing that we felt was incredibly important was playing that game week zero and then having are an open week Week 1, and we were fortunate enough to make that work in our schedule. We didn't want to have to get home at 10:00 p.m. Sunday night and try to prepare for an opponent on a short week.

So we'll have an opportunity to get our players back, get readjusted and try to hit the ground running as we start getting ready for our opponent in Week 2.

It's challenging. Any time that you break your routine, have an eight-hour flight, there are some challenges associated with that. Obviously logistically we've been working on it for a year now as far as getting our players passports and getting all the stuff done that we're going to do, how do we get equipment there, all the different things. What are we going to do with our team? How much time are we going to give them? We want them to have an experience of going to Ireland and get to see part of the Irish culture, but at the same time, it's a business trip, and we need to win the football game.

We're going to be playing a North Carolina team that's going to be a lot different than the team they had last year. So they'll be a completely different team. They'll make a tremendous jump. It will be a very challenging game for us. They've hired Bobby Petrino to be the offensive coordinator, I think one of the elite play callers in all of football. It will be a challenge.

We've got to do everything we can to, number one, ensure that we have a good trip going over and, number two, that we put our players in the best position coming back to perform well the rest of the season.