Former TCU Athletic Director Jeremiah Donati's most significant hire was football coach Sonny Dykes.
All that was missing on Monday as Sonny Dykes and his family stepped out of the helicopter that had delivered them to midfield at Amon G. Carter Stadium was some hosannas, a donkey, and perhaps some incense.
The scene seemed to encroach even on the very loose sanity code of football in Texas, where the game is religion for the most charismatic soul.
And there seemed to be no ceasing with the inspiration on Tuesday for the formal introduction of Dykes as TCU’s new football coach and successor to the prophet Gary Patterson. Not even St. Nick could have made it jollier in the football stadium’s Legends Club & Suites.
But it was there watching all of this unfold that one had a vision of perfectness. How appropriate it all seemed that a boy raised in West Texas was being introduced to an approving audience in the stadium named for the man who declared as only he could that Fort Worth was “Where the West Begins.”
And we were all there fittingly facing Dallas, the city where the east peters out. Well, so says our very own Socrates, Will Rogers.
“He would be very excited,” said Mark Johnson, grandson of Amon Carter and chairman of TCU’s Board of Trustees, laughing at the verbal portrait put before him. “I would think so. The tradition continues.”
From the standpoint of practicality, athletic director Jeremiah Donati said Dykes represented everything TCU was looking for.