‘Hate the way this thing ended’: Sonny Dykes’ reported exit overshadows SMU’s loss to Tulsa

Editor’s note: This story has been updated.

Update, 5:05 p.m., Sunday: Miami offensive coordinator Rhett Lashlee, the expected next head football coach at SMU, is already in Dallas, a source told The Dallas Morning News on Sunday.

ORIGINAL STORY FOLLOWS

UNIVERSITY PARK — Sonny Dykes walked before Saturday’s game, just like he always does. Past the Horned Frogs sign with a red circle through it that greeted him on The Boulevard. Past the two women wearing red-and-blue “TCU Sucks” shirts. Past the people who said he was making a mistake, and those who requested he put his purple on now, instead of later.

He walked past all of it, but when he got near the end of the road, he signaled to a few people and pointed left. Instead of finishing the walk, like he always does, he turned down a small path toward campus and out of sight.

Approximately six hours later, after a 34-31 loss to Tulsa on Senior Day, Dykes walked again. He entered his postgame news conference, sat down, and for more than two minutes talked about what SMU has meant to him. He thanked the administration for a great four years, thanked his players for their fight in Saturday’s loss, and even talked about how he didn’t want “it” to end this way.

After his opening comments were over, The Dallas Morning News asked the inevitable follow up: “Is it safe to say you’re going to TCU?”

Dykes declined to answer. “We’re not talking about that right now,” he said.

For the last five weeks, this is how it’s gone on the Hilltop. The Mustangs were 7-0 and the No. 19 team in the country when Dykes’ name first started appearing as a potential candidate for other coaching jobs. SMU then lost four of five games, including Saturday’s loss in the rain to Tulsa. It’s been a duet between on-the-field and off-the-field noise, and the latter reached an overbearing crescendo this week.

Dykes, according to multiple reports, will be the next head coach at TCU. Sources have told The News for days this was the expectation. SMU, according to sources, has already done interviews for its next head coach and identified former offensive coordinator Rhett Lashlee, currently at Miami (Fla.) as its next head coach. Lashlee has already reached out to coaches about joining his potential staff. Dykes has done the same.

The rumors had been building to this week’s apex for a while. So much so that on Sunday, Dykes decided to do something he hadn’t done before and address the rumors. After talking with senior leaders in the weeks before, he hadn’t felt the need to, but that changed this week.

“He just told us his No. 1 priority is beating Tulsa,” said senior offensive lineman Hayden Howerton.

What Dykes didn’t do in that conversation with his players is say one way or the other what his plans were for after the season. And SMU players didn’t have to wait that long to find out the answer.

News about Dykes going to TCU broke Friday night. At that time, players and coaches where filing on the team bus to head to the team hotel for the night, according to multiple sources. Social media was abuzz, and players were finding out the news — for the first time with some certainty — at that moment: that Dykes and multiple assistants were going to leave for Fort Worth and take over TCU, a rival SMU had beaten earlier this year.

“I just couldn’t be more proud of our players. They’ve had to fight through a lot of stuff,” Dykes said Saturday. “It hasn’t been easy this week and certainly not in the last 48 hours, but I told them in the locker room how much I appreciated their efforts and the way they handled things. I love those guys.”

Senior linebacker Jimmy Phillips Jr., who was honored on Senior Day and had an interception against Tulsa, said it was hard on Saturday to not let the outside noise affect their on-field production.

“You hear it everywhere,” said Phillips, who also thanked Dykes and wished him luck after the game. “You see it on social media. You see it all through this whole week. Trying to block that out and worry about Tulsa and actually finish this season off right was our main focus, but it was difficult.”

Understandably so.

SMU jumped out to a 17-0 lead in the first half. Tulsa then responded with 31 straight points. Saturday’s game started great, but when it got dark, and the rain started coming down harder, it spiraled out of SMU’s control.

The game, in many ways, was a microcosm for the twists and turns of the 2021 season for SMU. It wasn’t the way Dykes wanted “it” to end, but the expectation is he’ll walk out of his SMU tenure sometime in the next 48 hours.

SMU fans have seen this before. Former SMU head coach Chad Morris left after the 2017 regular season for Arkansas. Fans and players understand the coaching carousel — which started earlier than ever this season — is defined by business decisions.

“But this one hurts a lot more,” said Chipper Haynes, a 2008 graduate of SMU who was on the Boulevard before Saturday’s game. “Because great things were happening, and finally being ranked, and all the wins we’ve had with Sonny Dykes, and now, to have the carpet ripped out from underneath you it feels like and starting all over again, it kind of sucks.”

And Haynes believes TCU sucks, too. Which is why he made red shirts with blue writing that says exactly that. He put a big order for the shirts a few years back and has sold them at every game he can for $20. He brought them out from the shed and sold them on the Boulevard on Saturday. With 90 minutes before the game started, they were almost sold out, making him consider going back home to bring more.

Dykes walked past plenty of the TCU Sucks shirts during his standard pregame walk. And before he reached his normal end point, he was gone.

“If he was going to Lubbock and going to Texas Tech, that would’ve been fine,” Haynes said, “but to go to the cross-the-street rival, that just hurts.”

And it’s an end result that’s felt inevitable for a while, even if Dykes didn’t explicitly say so on Saturday.

Find more SMU coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.