Why Did Cal Fire Sonny Dykes in 2017?
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As the bowl season swings into action, Cal football supporters might be asking, Why did we fire Sonny Dykes?
They have noticed that the former Bears head coach has taken TCU to the College Football Playoff in his first season as the Horned Frogs’ head coach one season after TCU went 5-7. Meanwhile Cal is recovering from its third straight losing season and searching for a new offensive coordinator, hoping to solve a 6-year-old problem with its offense.
Cal never had problems moving the ball and scoring points while Dykes was its head coach, providing an engaging offense and producing two quarterbacks who were taken in the NFL Draft. It was the team’s defensive shortcomings that prevented Cal from having major success under Dykes.
The odd thing about Cal’s Jan 8, 2017 announcement that Dykes had been fired is that it came six weeks after the final game of Cal’s 5-7 season in 2016 and one year after Dykes had signed a four-year contract extension that carried him through the 2019 season. Cal had to pay a lot to dismiss him.
Dykes has been the head coach at four FBS schools, and has been fired from just one – Cal.
The fact that Cal he had only one winning season in Dykes’ four years in Berkeley apparently was only part of the reason he was dismissed, which we will go into in detail later.
Dykes was hired at Cal on Dec. 5, 2012 by Sandy Barbour, then Cal’s athletic director, after Dykes had led Louisiana Tech to a 9-3 season. The announcement came two weeks after Cal had fired Jeff Tedford following a 3-9 season.
Cal’s first season under Dykes was a disaster, as the Bears finished 1-11 in 2013 while riding the potential of true freshman quarterback Jarod Goff, who was the Bears’ starter throughout the season. That year the Cal defense gave up the most passing yards in Division I history.
Things improved the next season when Cal went 5-7 overall and 3-6 in the conference, as Dykes’ spread offense began to bloom. In 2014, 2015 and 2016, Cal finished among the top three in the Pac-12 in scoring every year, and scored more than 40 points 17 times in that three-year span. The Bears also ranked among the worst in the country in scoring defense in that stretch. The Bears won one game 60-59, and that was not an overtime game. (Cal has scored more than 40 points six times, including one overtime game, in six years under Justin Wilcox, but the Bears have been one of the best defensive teams in the Pac-12 in that stretch.)
After Cal’s 8-5, bowl-winning season in 2015, Cal gave Dykes a contract extension that ran through 2019. Goff gave up his final year of eligibility, was the No. 1 overall pick in the 2016 NFL draft and is still a starting quarterback in the NFL.
Dykes got Texas Tech transfer Davis Webb to be his quarterback in 2016, and Webb would become a third-round NFL draft choice in 2017 and is still in the league as a member of the Giants’ practice squad. The Bears finished their 2016 season with a 5-7 record, including an impressive 36-10 win over UCLA in the last game.
That’s when things got interesting.
There were no hints that Dykes’ job was in jeopardy, and coaches typically get fired a few days after the final game.
But it wasn’t until Jan. 8, 2017 – six weeks after the final game – that Cal announced the firing of Dykes with three years left on the contract, at $2.4 million per year. Cal was on the hook for a $5.88 million buyout to Dykes.
The 5-7 record was not what Cal was looking for, having been emboldened about the Bears’ football potential by the success Tedford had provided, but that apparently was not the entire reason Dykes was fired.
“Something blew this thing up,” a source told the San Jose Mercury-News at the time. “If you’re going to fire him for what happened on the field, you do it a month ago. This wasn’t about what happened on the field.”
Barbour had left to take the athletic director’s job at Penn State in 2014, and Mike Williams had replaced her as Cal’s AD. Williams’ statement regarding the dismissal of Dykes suggested the decision was not based on the performance of the team. is statement, in part:
“Coach Dykes clearly built up our program—both on the field and in the classroom—and he leaves Cal in a stronger position than when he arrived. For that alone, he deserves credit and our thanks. After our bowl win last season, we showed our commitment to him with a contract extension. But after looking at a number of factors after the end of this season, I felt that we needed a change of direction for the good of our student-athletes and our program.”
No one was more surprised than Dykes, who reportedly was on his way to discuss a possible coaching hire when he was given the news:
ESPN’s Kyle Bonagura reported the message Dykes gave to the team upon learning of his dismissal:
"I am as surprised as you all about the news today. I am sorry you all found out the way you did. All I can say is I am incredibly proud of each and every one of you; it has been an honor to be your coach. If you keep working hard and doing things the right way, you will have success in everything you do. Please do not hesitate to reach out to me any time. God Bless."
So what happened?
There were reports that Cal officials were looking for a way to fire Dykes with cause, which meant Cal would not have to pay Dykes a $5.88 million buyout. That delayed the announcement, but apparently no such rational to fire Dykes for cause was discovered and the dismissal was carried out anyway.
The most common reasoning reported for the firing was that Cal officials were not convinced that Dykes was completely committed to Cal football.
Dykes reportedly had interviewed for several other head coaching jobs while at Cal, including the Houston vacancy in 2014, as well as Missouri, South Carolina and Virginia following the 2015 season before signing the extension. But during his final season at Cal in 2016 he interviewed for the Baylor job, which eventually went to Matt Ruhle.
Sources told Bruce Feldman of Fox Sports that Dykes’ interest in other jobs “didn’t sit well with the Cal administration or the players.”
(This is in direct contrast to current Cal coach Justin Wilcox, who last year turned down an offer to be head coach at Oregon, a clear step up, to remain at Cal.)
So why was Dykes’ looking elsewhere, even after signing his contract extension?
We need to take a step back.
Dykes was born and raised in Texas, and his first three coaching jobs –- two at high schools, one at junior college -- were in Texas. All of his subsequent coaching jobs were in the Southeast, except for three years as the offensive coordinator at Arizona. You can debate whether Arizona is a blue or red state, but it and all the other places Dykes lived and worked were far different culturally than the Bay Area, particularly Berkeley.
There was a sense – though Dykes never expressed it – that he was never completely comfortable in the Bay Area. In his early years at Cal some reporters noted that Dykes seemed to fear he would be fired, so perhaps he was concerned about Cal’s commitment to him. Afterall, Tedford had made Cal a national powerhouse and he was fired with just two losing seasons in his 11 years at Cal.
The openings in which Dykes had expressed all were located back in his comfort zone, and since being fired at Cal all his coaching jobs have been in Texas.
A few weeks after the Cal dismissal, Dykes became an offensive advisor at TCU. A year later he moved a few miles to Dallas to be head coach at SMU, where he had success, and became TCU’s head coach this season.
You hear all the time from college officials that the coach must be “the right fit” for a given job, a phrase onlookers dismiss as hiring jargon. But in the case of Dykes and Cal it appears to be true.
Dykes apparently fits at TCU, which was picked to finish seventh in the preseason Big 12 poll, but is No. 3 in the final CFP rankings, is two wins from TCU’s first national championship and has a Heisman Trophy candidate in quarterback Max Duggan.
So here’s the next question Cal fans might be asking: Why did Cal fire Tedford, who won his second Mountain West championship this year in his first season back as Freno State’s head coach?
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Cover photo of Sonny Dykes by Raymond Carlin III, USA TODAY Sports
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