Dana Holgorsen is searching for a tailgate. 

Fans this fall might see the former Houston coach perusing the stadium parking lot or ducking into a backyard, an ice-cold beverage in his right hand and a Cornhole bag in his left. He’s still involved in football as an analyst at TCU. But his Saturdays are wide open for the first time in 32 years.

“It’s less stressful,” Holgorsen said of his new gig. “I’m in better shape. I look better, feel better. It’s a stressful job now; we all know that. Thirteen years as the head guy and coordinator for five years prior to that, it’s been good for me to take a deep breath. I ain’t going to lie to you.”

Holgorsen is one of four former head coaches that Sonny Dykes has added to TCU’s staff in the offseason. Todd Graham, a 14-year head coach veteran, is also an analyst. Meanwhile, former Boise State head coach Andy Avalos and Nevada head coach Ken Wilson have gameday roles as defensive coordinator and linebackers coach, respectively.

After TCU’s disappointing 5–7 season, Dykes self-scouted and realized he did a poor job of getting everyone in the program on the same page. The Horned Frogs took three weeks off after the marathon national championship run in 2022 and were behind the 8-ball from then on. 

“I feel like we’re so much further along as a football team right now than we were last year when we broke (spring) camp,” Dykes said at THSCA Coaching School. “I felt like a 13-year-old that was getting ready to go to junior high last year, just the angst of all this stuff. We just weren’t in sync.”

So Dykes hired four men who’ve led their own programs before. Avalos, the 2022 Mountain West Coach of the Year, said his experience as the head man allows him to be more well-rounded leading TCU’s defense this season. 

“(I) definitely see the game differently,” Avalos said. When you’re a head coach, you get to be on both sides of the fence, and you see what’s important to the offense and how they’re operating and doing things.”

But Holgorsen and Graham won’t have extensive interaction with the players in analyst roles. Instead, Dykes said they’re in Fort Worth to coach him before he coaches the rest of the staff.

“They’re both creative, outside-the-box thinkers,” Dykes said. “They see things differently, which is very valuable to me. I like to have people that I can talk to that have a different frame of mind and a different viewpoint than I do.”

The former head coaches are there to help TCU turn the page quickly after each game. Holgorsen remembers the days he’d get that week’s opponent’s depth chart on a Sunday with a stack of VHS tapes. He’d then take the next few days to figure out the team’s personnel and schemes. 

Now, Holgorsen and Graham will conduct advanced scouting and get all that information to the respective coordinators more timely. Holgorsen, an offensive guru, studies opposing offenses and reports to Avalos as defensive coordinator, while the defensive-minded Graham does the same for offensive coordinator Kendal Briles. 

“Dana’s in the defensive room as an offensive consultant, and I’m in the offensive room as a defensive consultant,” Graham said. “I think that’s something you don’t see in a lot of places, but it’s something that I actually prefer, and I think I can bring the most value from that standpoint.”

Dykes himself was an analyst for TCU in 2017 after seven consecutive seasons as the head coach at Louisiana Tech and Cal. That opportunity served as a mental reset before he became head coach at SMU in 2018. So, while Holgorsen and Graham may not be here for a long time, they’re here for a good time. 

“To be a head coach at the level I want to be a head coach at, there’s not many of those jobs,” Holgorsen said. “Those jobs are hard. And those jobs are primarily CEO-type jobs. And Coach Graham is going to say the same thing when he walks in here, we’re ball coaches. We want to coach.”