How ‘do your task’ helped Sonny Dykes fuel TCU’s exceptional
LOS ANGELES– After all the anxiety-inducing surfaces, after the Fiesta Bowl upset of Michigan, after making history as the longest of long shots to make the College Football Playoff National Championship, TCU has just one thing delegated do.Its job.
“Do your job” is the unsexy, unflashy mantra that coach Sonny Dykes pounds into the heads of his Horned Frogs. Senior guard Wes Harris said he can’t even envision how many times he’s heard it this season.
“Probably about 1,000 if I had to think,” Harris stated Saturday at media day. “Let’s see, I’m stating he says it 15, at least 20 times a week. I’m bad at mathematics, but that’s a great deal of doing your task. Two, 3 ‘do your tasks’ a day, 5, 6, 7 days a week.”
Dykes undoubtedly does not see any need to break from that formula prior to TCU deals with Georgia in the national championship game Monday at SoFi Arena (7:30 p.m. ET, ESPN/ESPN App).
There’s very little for the Horned Frogs to lean on aside from putting in the work. They were supposed to be overmatched going into the season with a brand-new coach while losing their 2 finest players in the transfer website– running back Zach Evans to Ole Miss and defensive end Ochaun Mathis to Nebraska. They were supposed to be outclassed in the Huge 12, where they were chosen seventh in the preseason poll without receiving a single first-place vote. They were expected to be exposed in the Feast Bowl, making the playoff field regardless of being a historical outlier in recruiting rankings. No national champ in the CFP period had a recruiting class outside the top 15 in 4 years prior to winning the title. TCU has never had a single top 15 class since ESPN began its recruiting rankings in 2006.
“We enter this game with a great deal of inspiration, certainly,” Dykes stated. “It’s been a long season. We have actually exceeded expectations, a minimum of externally. Therefore anytime you do that there’s constantly a little bit of extra motivation.”
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History keeps gazing the Horned Frogs in the face. After being just the second team to make the CFP in spite of being unranked in the preseason (Michigan in 2015 was the other), TCU is the first unranked preseason group to make the national title game because Auburn in 2013, 2 years prior to the CFP came into existence.No team outside the
preseason top 25 has actually won a championship game given that Georgia Tech in 1990. And no team coming off a losing season– TCU was 5-7 in 2015– has won a national championship since Michigan State in 1965; only four have ever done it.None of that is daunting to the Frogs, nevertheless, because their insouciant coach doesn’t care what the story may have to do with his team or his design.
” [Dykes] hasn’t altered a single game this whole year,” Harris said. “I seem like it helps us since certainly we haven’t been on this stage previously, however it’s true, dude, like we ain’t got nothing to lose. We should not feel any pressure anyway.
“He resembles, ‘Man, simply do your job. It’s another game. There’s no need to blow it out of proportion despite the fact that it is the greatest game you can play.’ He does a good job of sort of just telling everybody to cool down, take a deep breath and just soak everything in.”
Dykes no doubt is soaking everything in. Coaches coach their entire lives without getting an opportunity to play for a championship game. His late dad, Spike, did it for 40 years and never ever got a shot at one, possibly coming closest in his very first year as an assistant at Texas in 1972– the Longhorns completed No. 3 in the postseason poll.Dykes could
n’t have actually envisioned being in this position a year ago as he viewed Georgia declare its very first national championship in 41 years from a table in the back of Mad Pet dog’s British Club, a bar on the River Stroll in San Antonio, where he was in town for the Football Coaches Association convention. This year, he’s coaching against the Dawgs in Los Angeles.The AFCA convention is annually held the very same weekend as the title game. Georgia may have expected to miss it. Not TCU. “Every year at the convention, you
make plans on where you’re seeing the national championship game, “offending line coach A.J. Ricker said.”One of our graduate assistants informed me,’We’re gon na miss out on the convention this year.’I said,’Yeah, that’s a good idea.'” Coach Sonny Dykes states no one in the TCU program will be happy with simply getting to the nationwide title game. AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin
It’s been a surreal climb for TCU.
“This whole thing’s nuts, man,” Harris said. “I’m just like, ‘When’s it gon na hit us, when’s it gon na hit us?’ I simply seem like we just need to make the most of it due to the fact that it is quite cool.”
Harris stated he was back home fishing last year at this time since football wasn’t actually on his mind given that TCU’s season was over. Josh Newton, the first-team All-Big 12 corner after moving from Louisiana-Monroe, wasn’t even at TCU yet, and saw the game at his cousin’s house in Monroe. Wide receiver Taye Barber said he enjoyed with buddies at The Star, the Dallas Cowboys’ practice complex that includes bars with giant TV screens. This year, his good friends can watch him on those same screens.
“We simply needed to come together and believe in one another and just do our job like Coach Dykes stated and it can occur,” Barber stated. “No matter what, anything can happen.”
The TCU contingent is not simply commemorating the journey to this point. This is a possibility to end up one of the most not likely runs in sports history, as the Frogs faced 200-1 odds to win the title prior to the season. They’re also the biggest underdogs in the national title game era (since 1998), with Caesars Sportsbook noting Georgia as a 13-point favorite.
“Look, you do not go through all the things we’ve gone through this season and work as hard as these guys have actually worked and make all the sacrifices these people have actually made to state we’re simply pleased to be here,” Dykes stated. “I think if anything, it offers you extra motivation to finish the task due to the fact that we haven’t been here prior to. And if you haven’t been there previously, then it’s tough to state, well, we’ll be back next year.”
Throughout the board, TCU players state they understood from the very first meetings last December with Dykes and strength coach Kaz Kazadi that things would be various. TCU security Abe Camara stated they were “all business” from the dive.
“Everybody has told us from day one that this is a championship game group. ‘You men can make it there, you people can win it,'” Camara said. “We’re here. Undoubtedly, the task’s not ended up. So you get the job done. That’s all. We really want to do this. It’s not simply for us, though. It’s for the city of Fort Worth. Our fans have been committed all year. We have so many individuals that have actually been there for us. Without them, we wouldn’t be here. It’s for everyone.”
TCU, the little independent school that simply made it to the Power 5 in 2012, is taking goal at Georgia, the protecting nationwide champions, the brand-new SEC Death Star made by Kirby Smart in the same pressure-cooked structure that Nick Saban used to turn Alabama back into a dynasty.Now, after all the
talk, analysis and buzz, the Horned Frogs simply have another game to go.” None people will feel excellent about this year if we don’t win this game,” Dykes said.” I believe we’ll seem like we’ve misused an opportunity. And nobody wants to do that.”
Harris, the bearded Texan with the thick accent, stated he understands just how to finish things off.
“I tell you what,” he stated. “If there’s one thing we’re gon na do, it’s gon na be our job.”