FORT WORTH, Texas — A year ago at this time, Sonny Dykes sat in a sparsely decorated office and watched film during spring practice. He didn’t have a lot of time to worry about organizing his shelves when he was making a mad dash recruiting, hiring a staff and managing the transfer portal in his first few months on the job. And if he’s being honest, he wasn’t sure how the remodeling project was going with his team on the practice field out back either.
This April, his office is packed with the kind of hardware a historic season brings. There’s a purple Swarovski crystal football with a blinged-out TCU logo over his right shoulder (a gift from Penny Knight, wife of Nike founder Phil Knight). There are busts of Eddie Robinson, the legendary Grambling coach, and Bear Bryant, the Alabama icon, atop their respective coach of the year trophies — two of the nine national coaching awards Dykes won for 2022 alone. There’s even a plaque from the National Football Foundation, which named him a “Distinguished Texan” last month, which is about the highest praise you can give a guy from Lubbock.
“Ain’t that the truth?” Dykes joked. “I made the award up myself and paid them $100 to give it to me.”
All those awards and mementos commemorate last season, when TCU started 12-0, becoming the first current Power 5 school since Ohio State in 1944 to have a perfect regular-season record under a new coach after finishing below .500 in the previous season, with the Frogs having gone 5-7 the year before.
The storybook ride ended in disappointment with a 65-7 thrashing by Georgia in the College Football Playoff National Championship, but it doesn’t diminish the mountain the Horned Frogs climbed to get there, including eight second-half comeback wins and a CFP semifinal win over Michigan in the Fiesta Bowl.
With that comes a new level of expectations and a question for Dykes: Now that you endured the razor’s edge for a full season, coached a Heisman finalist (Max Duggan), a Thorpe Award winner (Tre’Vius Hodges-Tomlinson) and a probable 2023 first-round pick (Quentin Johnston), what do you do for an encore?
“You know, nobody wants the honeymoon to be the best part of the marriage,” Dykes said recently after a Saturday practice. “We’ve got to make sure that doesn’t happen here.”
IT’S HARD TO quantify the exact formula that made that TCU team so special, a mix of gumption and chemistry. There was a hunger from missing three straight bowl games. Duggan proved to be a gamer who was hard to break, even when he could hardly pick himself up off the turf. Running back Kendre Miller (who is also preparing for the NFL draft) rushed for 1,399 tough yards. And, Dykes said, the Frogs will miss the leadership established by guard Steve Avila, the consensus All-American, along with SMU transfer Alan Ali, who helped Dykes install the offense.
“[Avila and Ali] are just as important as the others — or maybe even more important — because those guys brought toughness and accountability,” Dykes said. “Steve was a uniquely gifted leader. And when you have a uniquely gifted leader on the offensive line, those teams are always really good.”
There are going to be new faces all across the offense this year — TCU ranked 118th in returning production in Bill Connelly’s February outlook — but Dykes hasn’t had to do as much of an overhaul on defense, where seven starters return for the second year in coordinator Joe Gillespie’s 3-3-5 defense.
Compounding the offensive losses, just days after an emotionally drained team returned from the national title game, offensive coordinator Garrett Riley, the Broyles Award winner as the top assistant coach in the country, departed for Clemson. If Dykes was still in that honeymoon phase, it was over.
Dykes raised eyebrows in Fort Worth when he replaced Riley with Kendal Briles, son of Art Briles, the former Baylor coach. TCU and Baylor turned the heat up on their rivalry, dubbed the “Revivalry” in the early 2010s after TCU joined the Big 12 and reunited with its old rival in Waco. Things got more tense after a 2013 game when Frogs coach Gary Patterson ripped Art Briles in a postgame news conference over a targeting penalty by a Bears defender.
“I didn’t build this program backing down to anybody, and I’m not going to do it to him,” Patterson said afterward.
The next year, Baylor stunned TCU with a 61-58 comeback win, and Patterson said he was threatened on the field by a Baylor player, which Baylor denied. The hate between the two was cemented.
Two years later, in 2016, Art Briles was fired by Baylor amid an investigation of sexual assaults by football players. Kendal, who was his father’s offensive coordinator, was not implicated in any wrongdoing in the investigation and remained at Baylor for one more year after Art’s departure, then served as offensive coordinator for a year each under Lane Kiffin at Florida Atlantic, Willie Taggart at Florida State and Major Applewhite at Houston before joining Sam Pittman’s staff at Arkansas in 2020.
The two have known each other since 1999 when Dykes recruited Kendal Briles out of Stephenville, about 60 miles away from TCU, when Briles, a star quarterback, was a junior in high school and Dykes was an assistant at Texas Tech (Briles ultimately signed with Texas). And Briles has worked with several members of TCU’s staff at other stops, which Dykes said allowed Briles to understand how he expects his program to operate. Still, for Briles to land at TCU was shocking to many Horned Frogs fans, which Dykes understands.
“We’ve known each other for a long time,” Dykes said. “I don’t think I would have made the hire had that not been the case. I wouldn’t have been comfortable doing that if I didn’t know him well.”
Like Riley and Rhett Lashlee, who was Dykes’ OC at SMU before replacing him there, Dykes said he hired Briles because of his commitment to the run game, a complement to Dykes’ Air Raid background (Arkansas ran for 3,075 yards last year, the Razorbacks’ most since 2003). Briles said the offense will look a little different because they’ll play with a little more tempo and a lot more run/pass options.
“We want to run the football,” Briles said. “They weren’t as much RPO [last season], and we’re pretty heavy RPO. We’re going to tailor to our personnel and what fits. Production, at the end of the day, is what we want.”
“I think we’ve got tremendous speed and playmaking ability and we’re a year further along,” Dykes said. “I really like what we’re doing offensively. I think it fits the skill set of our quarterbacks. I think they’re excited about the direction of the offense. So I don’t know how much different it’s going to look to the typical fan in the stands, but it’s going to be a little bit different.”
It’ll start, more than likely, with Chandler Morris, the quarterback who beat Duggan last year before going down with a sprained knee in the season opener at Colorado. In his only previous start, filling in for an injured Duggan in 2021, Morris threw for 461 yards and two TDs and ran for 70 more and another TD in an upset of No. 14 Baylor, the eventual Big 12 champs that season. This spring, Morris has looked efficient in practice, distributing the ball and using his feet, in Briles’ offense.
“I’m really enjoying it,” Morris said. “Coach Dykes and I had a conversation the other day about how he thinks this is the best offense for me and thinks I’m built for this offense. We’re going to get the ball on the perimeter, put a lot of stress on the defense, try and get them in a bad situation and play with tempo, keep them on their heels and, and go after them.”
Dykes has been impressed with his performances, and also by the development of Josh Hoover, a 6-foot-1, 205-pound redshirt freshman from nearby Rockwall in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, who looks like a different player in 2023 after losing 15% of his body fat.
“We’ve got a couple of quarterbacks that can throw the ball around,” Briles said. “So I think we’ll be able to do some quick-game stuff. We’ve got some players that I think if we distribute the ball to, they can be really good in space.”
That’s especially true at inside receiver, where the Frogs believe they are stacked with players who can make people miss. On the outside, they still have to work in Bech, the 6-2, 215-pound LSU transfer who is recovering from an injury, and 6-4, 205-pound freshman Cordale Russell, one of the gems of that recruiting class who arrives later this summer.
“There are a lot of guys that people know that are here, but they haven’t really had a chance to produce yet,” Briles said. “So I’m kind of interested to see who’s going to kind of rise to the top and be one of those guys that we can rely on. I think we’ve got a lot of different options.”
IN THE BEGINNING stages of Year 2 of the Dykes era, coming off an appearance in the national championship game, some things feel different, like when he walked into high schools and students took photos of him with their phones.
“I wasn’t jacked about that,” he said. “Hopefully that goes back to normal soon.”
But he also knows that comes with the exposure from all those awards and all the camera time he got last year.
“You want credibility,” Dykes said. “It’s hard. … I didn’t play college football. I coached at historically bad places, coached in the ‘gimmick offense’ [as the Air Raid was often dismissed]. You know, you just hear all this stuff for all the years and all you want is a shot at the big time. I think it just gives you a little bit of credibility. When you walk into a room, it’s a little different now than it was before.”
Dykes said the thing he was proudest of last season was the Frogs’ will to win, no matter if it was pretty or ugly.
Now, after arriving there, he has to help figure out how to do it all over again. This time, the Frogs likely won’t be picked seventh in the Big 12 preseason poll and instead will try to prove the way last season ended was the anomaly, focusing on the fact that Dykes’ team was able to survive and advance all year last season, no matter the obstacle or which side of the ball had a rough day.
“We were able to win the Michigan game 51-45, and we were able to win the game at Texas the way we did, a 17-10 game,” Dykes said. “It’s too bad that we played our one bad game we played all year in the national championship. We turned the ball over three times in the first half. We didn’t do that, ever. We played desperate and did all the stuff that bad teams do. I hated that was in the national championship game, but again, you’ve got to give our guys credit because we played well for 14 weeks when we had to. There wasn’t a ton of margin for error.”
This time around, he has proof to show his players they can believe. And he’s embracing that same belief himself while challenging his coaches and players to figure out how to live up to last year’s example.
“I think talent-wise, this year’s team will be on par with last year’s team or maybe better, top to bottom, just looking at the roster,” Dykes said. “But can you do those little things that allow you to win those games? And do you have that same type of leadership? I think we’re trending in the right direction.”
Morris was part of a team that made TCU history, but he said history is exactly what it is now.
“Nobody’s really talking about last year,” Morris said. “I think we’re all just very hungry right now to go out there and show what this team is all about. We know what the blueprint looks like from last year. Obviously, we fell short in the conference championship game (a 31-28 overtime loss to Kansas State) and the national championship game. We know our goal, we know what it takes to get there. We’re ready to write our own story.”
This weekend, tens of thousands of fans are expected to travel to Cooperstown, New York, as they do annually, to pay homage to new inductees and returning members of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, visit the Hall and see an array of artifacts from the greats of the game — including Major League Baseball’s all-time hits leader, Pete Rose.
But Rose’s presence in the Hall’s exhibits didn’t require the action of a commissioner. The legendary “Charlie Hustle” has been there for decades, a constant in the museum’s presentation of the history of the game, with numerous pieces that he donated to the Hall. Rose, of course, is not a Hall of Famer, but fans have long been able to see him and his accomplishments represented in at least a dozen items on display, including bats and a ball, a cap, cleats, a jersey and more connected with his 4,256 hits, record numbers of games played and at-bats and myriad awards. The 17-time All-Star at a record five positions won three World Series titles and proudly referred to himself as the winningest player ever.
MLB banished Rose in 1989 after an investigation it commissioned found Rose, then the manager of the Cincinnati Reds, had bet on the sport and his own team’s games. Two years later, the Hall of Fame’s board decided anyone on MLB’s permanently ineligible list would also be ineligible for election to the Hall. That became known as “the Pete Rose rule.”
For nearly 15 years after baseball banned him, Rose repeatedly denied that he had bet on the sport. Before, and long after, his 2004 admission to having gambled on baseball games — including Reds games — during part of his managerial tenure with Cincinnati, Rose was a fixture in Cooperstown for induction weekends, signing and selling his autographs at a memorabilia store.
Just a block away at the Hall were Sparky Anderson, Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan and Tony Perez of the 1975 and ’76 “Big Red Machine” championship teams with Rose, and Steve Carlton and Mike Schmidt of the 1980 Philadelphia Phillies with whom Rose won a championship, as well as several other teammates from his 24 seasons.
The Hall’s “Whole New Ballgame” exhibit, devoted to the era from 1970 to the present, features a Rose jersey from the 1973 season, when he won the National League Most Valuable Player Award; the ball and a ticket from the 1981 game when he tied Stan Musial’s National League hits record; and a 1978 can of a chocolate-flavored beverage named “Pete,” bearing a Rose action photo.
The section of the Hall that chronicles many of the game’s most hallowed records is titled “One for the Books.” It showcases Rose’s shoes and a scoresheet from his crowning achievement, Sept. 11, 1985, when he broke Ty Cobb’s career hits record. Also displayed is a pair of Rose bats from 1978, when he reached the 3,000-hit milestone and later tied the 1897 National League-record 44-game hitting streak by Wee Willie Keeler, and Rose’s Montreal Expos cap from 1984 when he broke Carl Yastrzemski’s record for games played.
In “Shoebox Treasures,” which examines the baseball cards phenomenon, visitors can see the Rose Topps card from 1975 and two Topps cards — one authentic and one counterfeit — from ’63, when he was named National League Rookie of the Year.
There is also an interactive exhibit on the subject of gambling that includes the Rose saga.
And according to the Hall, its archives contain dozens of holdings pertaining to Rose, from recorded interviews — including with Howard Stern — to correspondence and collectibles, as well as the investigative file from MLB’s 1989 probe of Rose’s gambling led by special counsel John Dowd.
Rose visited the Hall when he was 26 and a fifth-year star for Cincinnati. It was July 24, 1967, and the Reds toured the museum before losing to the Baltimore Orioles 3-0 in the then-annual Hall of Fame exhibition game, in which Rose went 0-for-3.
“This is really great,” Rose said as he looked around the Hall, per the Cincinnati Enquirer. “This is what baseball is all about.”
Rose marveled at the multitude of mementos from Babe Ruth, a member of Cooperstown’s inaugural 1936 class, and at the vast space specifically for the “Bambino” and his larger-than-life exploits on the diamond and beyond.
Dayton (Ohio) Daily News columnist Si Burick, who eventually would be selected to the Hall’s writers wing, recounted a moment from the visit in his column the next day:
When a fellow suggested to an awestruck Rose that he, too, might some day grace the Hall of Fame, if he continued at his present pace, the irrepressible Cincinnatian had a typical answer. Peter pointed to a cubicle filled with Ruth gadgets, and suggested, “There’s my chance to get in — with my bowling ball.”
Ruth’s bowling ball was on display and Rose was a winner four months earlier during spring training at a “Base-Bowl” event in a Tampa bowling alley that paired MLB and Professional Bowlers Association stars. Rose and Dick Weber edged Lou Brock of the St. Louis Cardinals and Wayne Zahn. Of the four, only Rose isn’t enshrined in either the baseball or PBA Hall of Fame.
“I got all the records, so you can throw me into the sea, but the records are still going to come to the top,” Rose said in a 2019 interview for ESPN’s “Backstory” program. “You can walk into the Hall of Fame, you see my name in things everywhere, which is fine. It’s good for me. It’s good for the Hall of Fame. The greatest thing for baseball is the history of baseball.”
With Rose now eligible for election, his Hall candidacy is to be considered by the Historical Overview Committee, which develops a ballot of eight names for the Classic Era Committee that is next scheduled to meet in December 2027. That era committee handles candidates whose greatest impact was prior to 1980, including Negro Leagues and pre-Negro Leagues stars. Its 16 members, comprising Hall of Famers, executives and veteran media members, are charged with weighing the eight candidates’ résumés, integrity, sportsmanship and character — 12 votes are needed for election.
The long-running debates over Rose surely will continue well past 2027. Regardless of whether he’s added to the Plaques Gallery signifying membership in the Hall — there will be 351 plaques as of Sunday, including the day’s five new inductees — there’s no disputing that Rose will continue to have places in the building.
ESPN senior writer Don Van Natta Jr. contributed to this report.
CLEVELAND — Baltimore Orioles closer Felix Bautista, who is tied for sixth in the American League with 19 saves, was placed on the 15-day injured list Thursday with right shoulder discomfort.
Interim manager Tony Mansolino said the right-hander felt uncomfortable while stretching in the bullpen Wednesday during a 3-2 loss to the Cleveland Guardians. Bautista will undergo an MRI when the Orioles return home Friday.
“The (dugout) phone rang in the seventh inning last night and I thought, ‘That is not good,'” Mansolino said. “Then I heard it get slammed down and knew it wasn’t good.
“Félix had started his process of getting loose and that’s when it flared up.”
Bautista did not pitch in the first three games of the series in Cleveland, last seeing action on Sunday at Tampa Bay when he earned his 19th save in 20 opportunities. He missed the entire 2024 season while recovering from Tommy John surgery.
The 30-year-old Dominican has a 1-1 record and 2.60 ERA in 35 appearances, limiting opponents to a .134 batting average over 34 2/3 innings. Bautista has struck out 50 and walked 23.
“We just have to hope it’s not too serious,” Mansolino said.
The Orioles will use a closer-by-committee in the short term with righty setup men Seranthony Dominguez and Yennier Cano at the front of the line.
“We’re going to have to bump up their roles,” Mansolino said. “We’ll figure it out.”
Bautista will not enter free agency until 2028, but is eligible for arbitration following this season. The 6-foot-8, 285-pounder is in the final year of a two-year, $2 million contract.
With the Orioles out of wild-card contention, they are expected to be active sellers before the July 31 trade deadline.
“For as long as I can remember, all I ever wanted to do was play baseball,” Ahmed wrote on social media. “I got to live out my childhood dream and play for a very long time! After 15 professional seasons and over a decade in the big leagues I am officially hanging up my spikes and retiring from playing.”
“To all of the organizations I got to play for… Atlanta, thank you for drafting me! Arizona… calling me up to the big leagues, and believing in me for 10 seasons! SF, LA, SD and TEX… thank you for giving me chances to continue doing what I loved!”
A Gold Glove winner in 2018 and 2019 while playing at shortstop, Ahmed batted .233 with 72 homers and 339 RBIs in 964 career games.
“I will always love the game of baseball,” he added. “I am excited for my next chapter and the [opportunity] to give the best of me to this game that we all love!”
