Who Are You? - What Did We Learn From the TCU Loss to BYU

After their worst loss since 2023, the TCU Horned Frogs need to do some soul searching.

Nov 8, 2025; Fort Worth, Texas, USA; A view of the stadium and the field and the fans during the game between the TCU Horned Frogs and the Iowa State Cyclones at Amon G. Carter Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jerome Miron-Imagn Images | Jerome Miron-Imagn Images

Welcome back to another edition of What Did We Learn. With the return of the football season, my weekly article returns, a two-year-long tradition now. At the end of every weekend, I release my weekly "what did we learn"—an opinionated editorial detailing what Frog fans can take away from the week before that might not appear in the box score.

Two weeks, two losses. One expected more than the other, but both causing the same amount of pain to TCU Horned Frog fans. The most recent, a 44-13 loss in Provo, at the hands of the top-15 ranked BYU Cougars, late enough in the day that some might have even turned off the game and opted for bed, or were blissfully hoping what they were watching was a nightmare from being asleep already.

There comes a time when every person has looked themselves in the mirror and asked, "Who am I?". It's part of life, identifying who you are, and surrounding the rest of your life with choices to make you that person. For the Frogs, they thought they had an identity, and they still might, but no one knows what it is.

Time to Choose

Nov 15, 2025; Provo, Utah, USA; Texas Christian University Horned Frogs head coach Sonny Dykes, right, speaks with BYU Cougars head coach Kalani Sitake, left, before the game at LaVell Edwards Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Rob Gray-Imagn Images | Rob Gray-Imagn Images

College sports are in a weird spot. With the ushered in age of NIL, paired with the transfer portal, and a wave of GM's infiltrating college football, the time to adapt, in fear of being left behind, grows closer and closer. For the Horned Frogs, who are only three years removed from playing for a National Championship, the feeling from that season has been replaced, by yet another year of fleeting hope.

Now is the time to look in the mirror, to decide what this program is. Are you a recruiting program, built upon years of growth and development, culminating in one high expectation season every three years, surrounded by down years? Or are you able to compete with the 'big boys' of the college football world and spend money in the transfer portal to give every season a chance to at least make the Big 12 Championship?

Does the brass in Fort Worth, albeit in the first year of their direction under Athletic Director Mike Buddie, and Chancellor Pullin, know the direction? Do the big boosters, in the new age of college athletics, decide the direction? Is there even a true answer? If your compass is rapidly changing directions, and you have to backtrack to restart again, have you even gone anywhere, or have you just used time to get nowhere?

Right now, the program sits in the limbo of both. Credit to Sonny Dykes, he has recruited, and he is 33-17 with the Frogs since taking over. Sure, the program hasn't become what he nor the fans expected and wanted, but it has slowly been on a decline since that 2022 season, in terms of results on the field and in recruiting, while expectations remained the same. A loss like the one last night to BYU also hurts optics, and it hurts morale, and that is felt in every corner of the fan base and staff.

Right now, the Frogs look aimless, and struggling to figure out their identity, while other programs within the state continue to figure things out. Texas Tech is establishing itself as the premier program in the Big 12. SMU could be competing for a conference title game for the second straight year. Texas A&M is undefeated and capped off one of the greatest comebacks in college football this weekend. Throughout all of this, where is TCU? Who is TCU? Because right now, I don't know the answer to that question, and I don't know anyone who does.