Sonny Dykes said TCU’s Saturday game against Grambling State will be the third time he has coached against the Tigers, a small line that gave the matchup a longer shadow at the Frog Club Luncheon. The TCU coach did not frame it as a milestone. He treated it as part of a career that has already crossed paths with the Tigers twice before.
That made the search around Grambling State Vs Tcu feel immediate, not abstract. Dykes spoke at the luncheon as TCU prepared for Saturday’s game, and the timing carried extra weight because it came on the 25th anniversary of 9/11. He tied the conversation back to where he was that morning in 2001, when he was on the Texas Tech coaching staff under Mike Leach.
Dykes said he was in the drive-thru of a McDonald’s getting a cup of coffee when he heard what was happening in New York on Sept. 11, 2001. Texas Tech had a Thursday night game scheduled against UTEP, and the Red Raiders kept practicing even though the game was eventually canceled. The memory landed at the luncheon as a reminder of how quickly a season can be bent by events far beyond football.
TCU lived through that same break in its own way. The Horned Frogs had just beaten SMU in Dallas 38-10 on Sept. 8, 2001, and were preparing for a home game against Marshall on Sept. 15, 2001 before that game was canceled after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and never rescheduled. TCU ended up playing only 11 regular-season games that year, finished 6-5, and later lost to Texas A&M in Houston in the Galleryfurniture.com Bowl.
That history gave Dykes’s comments more than nostalgia. The luncheon was about a current game, but it also carried the memory of a season that was interrupted and never fully regained its original shape. The unusual part is that the same program now heads into another Saturday with Dykes describing a routine coaching matchup while fans hear echoes of a year when football plans could vanish overnight.
What comes next is simple and specific: TCU plays Grambling State on Saturday, and Dykes will coach against the Tigers for the third time. The game arrives with a familiar coach, a remembered date, and a backdrop TCU has not forgotten.
