Sonny Dykes’ championship game run is a victory for the Air Raid tree after a year of loss

Greenrex · January 7, 2023

When TCU pulled off its 51-45 upset of Michigan in the Fiesta Bowl Saturday night, perhaps the biggest Horned Frogs fans in the state of Texas were two families watching from a house in Westlake who didn’t attend, work for or have money on TCU. They had rooted against TCU often over the previous 25 years, but there they were, screaming for the Frogs like never before.

As TCU built a 21-3 lead late in the first half, the kids in the room, a pair each of 12-year-old boys and 9-year-old girls, were going nuts. So were their parents, two couples who have known each other for 20-plus years and were flying together to Disney World the next day.

One of the dads on the couch, former North Texas head coach Seth Littrell, couldn’t believe what he was watching as the upstart Horned Frogs beat back every Michigan rally in a frenetic second half. He and his pal Bill Bedenbaugh, Oklahoma’s run game coordinator, found themselves cracking up. Their buddy Sonny Dykes, the first-year head coach of TCU, with whom they’d spend years coaching alongside at Texas Tech and then at Arizona as their careers were just getting off the ground, had earned a spot on college football’s biggest stage.

“Are you friggin’ kidding me?” Littrell howled in equal parts excitement and disbelief. “Sonny just made it to the national title game!”

TCU, a 200-to-1 preseason long shot to win the national title, became the biggest underdog to ever make the four-team Playoff and now stands one game away from winning the whole thing. Never mind what old recruiting rankings say about the roster’s talent level, or the program’s record over the previous four years, or the number of times the 2022 Frogs almost lost in the regular season. For the extensive Air Raid coaching family, the fact that Dykes became the first head coach from their tree to lead a team this far sets up a surreal finish to the collective emotional roller coaster they have been on over the past year.

“It’s giving me chills just thinking about it right now,” Littrell told The Athletic Tuesday night. “To know and see all of the adversity that Sonny’s had to go through and watching him achieve his dreams, this is incredible.”

(Wish I could share the entire article! Such excellent excellent writing!)

https://theathletic.com/4060436/2023/01/05/sonny-dykes-air-raid-coaching-tree/?source=freedailyemail&campaign=601983

Edited January 7, 2023 by Greenrex
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