Former West Virginia and Houston head coach Dana Holgorsen joined the TCU football staff as a consultant this offseason and met with the media on Thursday for the first time as a Horned Frog.
One of the most polarizing coaches in recent Big 12 memory, Holgorsen’s time in Morgantown, and in Houston to a lesser extent, left both fan bases with folks on either side of the fence.
His decision to leave West Virginia after the 2018 season was met with all kinds of questions, and on Thursday, he took the time to reflect on the road that brought him to this point.
“In this profession, you’ve got to take some gambles,” Holgorsen said. “When Sonny [Dykes] and I were at [Texas] Tech, we were there together for six years, and he had to leave to advance his career. He left to go to Arizona to advance his career. I stayed for two more years, and then I had to leave to go to Houston. Kevin Sumlin just got the Houston job and offered me the OC job, and I took a pay cut for the same reason Sonny went to Arizona.
“We were co-coordinators at Tech, but we all know that we weren’t calling the plays. That belonged to Mr. Mike Leach. You had to get away to grow. I did that, and two years later, I’m at Oklahoma State, and three years later, I’m at West Virginia, so the gamble paid off. I did it again six years ago when I was at West Virginia in the Big 12 and left to go to Houston.”
Holgorsen also dove a little deeper into his decision to leave West Virginia to take over the program in H-Town, which ended after going 4-8 in his inaugural campaign in the Big 12 last season.
“I had reasons why I did that,” Holgorsen said of leaving Morgantown. “I had been at West Virginia for eight years and was very successful. But there was a couple of things that I was concerned about that made me do that. I do not regret that.”
There’s no way that Hogorsen or the Coogs could’ve foreseen their move to the Big 12 in 2023 when he took the job ahead of the 2019 season, but a rough transition into the Power Five ultimately landed him in Fort Worth and back working with Sonny Dykes.
“You look at what happened at Houston. I mean, we were 4-8 in the first year in the Big 12 I guess that’s not good enough. But a couple of years prior to that, in the American, which is why I went there, we won 20 games in two years. We had some success, and I don’t regret that either.”
