Sonny Dykes victoriously walked off Joe Jamail Field at DKR Stadium and immediately thought of his next opponent – the Washington Huskies.

Dykes was a third-year head coach at Cal who had just achieved a childhood dream – win a game in the stadium he grew up playing pick-up football in while his dad, Spike, was an assistant coach for the Longhorns under Darryl K. Royal.

Spike was there on the sideline waiting to greet his son after the game. The two grew closer as the pair aged and matured. Spike expected to see his son exuberant after the Cal Bears beat the Longhorns 45-44 on Sept. 19, 2015. He knew how much the University of Texas meant to his son and how much beating the Longhorns solidified Sonny’s status as a relevant major college coach.

But that’s not what Spike saw. He saw a distracted Sonny. One more concerned about the next thing than the current one. Sonny wasn’t celebrating. Sonny was worrying about Washington.

“I remember him pulling me to the side and saying, ‘son, if this doesn’t get you excited, you should go find something else to do,” Sonny told a crowd this summer at the Texas High School Coaches Association coaching school. He was the keynote speaker after his Horned Frogs reached the national championship game in 2022. “That stuck with me. I’d tell everyone in this room to remember why they got into the business and to enjoy the present. I’ve tried to do that since.” 

Dykes is 3-0 as a head coach against the Longhorns program he grew up admiring. He beat them twice in Cal and last year in his first season as the head coach of TCU. He was also an analyst on the staff at TCU in 2017 when the Horned Frogs beat Texas, 24-7. The 2022 contest felt personal, even if no side admits it. Depending on who you believe, Dykes was nearly named head coach at Texas after Tom Herman was fired. Dykes, who was the head coach at SMU at the time, was passed over for Alabama offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian. 

The 2023 meeting between TCU and Texas will also be personal, but not because of the coaches. This is the 94th meeting between the Longhorns and the Horned Frogs, and might be the last. Texas moves to the SEC after the 2023 season and doesn’t have TCU – or Baylor and Texas Tech – on any future schedules. That’s 278 rivalry games against intrastate foes dating to before the Southwest Conference was created lost to history – and the pockets of television execs. 

The Longhorns lead the series 64-28-1. They won 24 straight from 1968 through 1991 while outscoring TCU 950-277 during that streak. The two foes only met once between 1995 – when the SWC disbanded – to 2012 – when TCU joined the Big 12 and reignited the rivalry. The Horned Frogs are 8-3 against Texas since rejoining them as conference mates, including the victory last year in Austin. 

The two first met in Waco – where TCU was located from 1895 through 1910 – in 1887 when the Longhorns, led by Walter F. Kelly, beat a TCU squad coached by Joe F. Field by a score of 18-10. Texas won the first 13 contests until the Horned Frogs knocked off Texas in Austin, 15-12, in 1929. 

The progressive passing attack ushered in by TCU head coach Francis A. Schmidt and then perfected by Dutch Meyer with quarterbacks Sammy Baugh and Davey O’Brien helped the Horned Frogs make the series competitive. Starting with the win in 1929, TCU won seven of the next 10. Texas led the series 20-19 from 1929 through 1967. Darryl Royal put an end to the parity until Gary Patterson arrived in Fort Worth and his Horned Frogs were allowed into the Big 12. 

The game between Texas and TCU was never a heated rivalry, but it did result in plenty of tremendous coaching matchups. Schmidt vs. Littlefield in the 20s. Meyer vs. Dana X. Bible in the 30s and 40s. Ed Price vs. Abe Martin in the 50s. DKR vs. Martin in the 60s. Brown vs. Patterson in the 2000s. Now, it is Dykes vs. Sarkisian. 

Regional rivalries matter less and less in a national sport. College football is different than it was when Meyer or Martin or Royal roamed the sideline. Beating your neighbors and reaching a prestigious bowl game used to be enough. Old staff members at Texas used to wax poetically about the glory days when a season required only one or two trips outside of the state. Hell, if the cards fell right and the Cotton Bowl was the prize at the end of the year, a few seasons didn’t require a single trip out of the Lone Star State. 

The chase for national championships and more viewership was the death knell for rivalries like Texas and TCU. No one nationally will blink an eye. There likely won’t be many Longhorn fans reminiscing about the old times. A large percentage of the TCU fan base won’t care either outside of the appeal of pulling an Oklahoma State and sending the Longhorns off with a loss the way Texas did Texas A&M when the Aggies left for greener pastures in the SEC. 

Still, TCU is Texas’ fourth-most played opponent in football history behind Oklahoma, Texas A&M, and Baylor. TCU and Texas have played in three centuries and at least once in 14 consecutive decades dating back to the 1890s. 

That should mean something. For at least 60 more minutes in Week 11, it’ll mean a lot. Texas is playing for a Big 12 championship berth and a route to the College Football Playoff. TCU is trying to avoid becoming the first national runner-up to miss a bowl game the following year since Texas in 2010.