Sonny Dykes won Coach of the Year, but he is not the savior you might think. In fact, he is a bit of a dickhead. He coached for several years at Cal, and failed to get Cal into any bowl games of note. He is a good offensive mind, but his defenses generally sucked ballz. And he was a lousy recruiter, in no small part because he didn't invest much effort into recruiting.
Moreover, Dykes had some real personality quirks. He refused to visit any high school or JC campuses in the area. He made it clear that he thought establishing personal relationships with high school and JC coaches was beneath his dignity. (Keep in mind that the Bay Area was producing some quality recruits at the time. For example, both Joe Mixon and Najee Harris played high school football in the East Bay at the time Dykes was Cal head coach.) He never attempted to recruit either of them, even though they were local players.
He spent much of his time as Cal head coach trying to secure another CFB head coaching job. I fully understand that the Cal head football coach position is far from the most desired of college head coaching positions, but he instructed his agent to actively shop around for other jobs while he was coaching at Cal. Word of that leaked out, and he ended up getting himself fired for it. He ultimately found new employment at SMU and, later, TCU. He is loathed by much of the Cal community. My guess is that he left behind a lot of "friends' at SMU as well.
So while I really dislike Jim Hairball, rooting for TCU in the Fiesta Bowl was equally distasteful for me.
