‘Logos Need to Quit Mattering So Much’

Dykes spoke on his stance regarding the difference in Power football compared to Group of Five teams and mentioned some key factors in maintaining Power Four status as a member of the Big 12 Conference.

“Well, the biggest thing is to have success. I mean, I think that’s that’s the whole thing. You can talk about whatever you want to talk about, but you have to go out there, and at some point, you got to play the games, and the games have to matter at some point. I think that’s what’s good, is that they’re going to, and I think that when the games matter, and people look at the body of work in the Big 12, I think they’re going to have a ton of respect for what they see.”

While conference prestige, strength of schedule, and non-conference opponents all factor into determining the value or skill level of a football team, Dykes noted that regardless of any external factors, the most important evaluating metric of a football team is their ability to find a way to win.

“When you’re playing ranked opponents, you have to figure out how to win,” Dykes continued. “There’s opportunity out there, and it comes down to who’s going to be the best. I think, at some point, the logos need to quit mattering so much. Right now, it seems to be all everybody wants to talk about is the logo and what league they are in because, look, it’s like I talked about the other day. You know, somebody asked me, and I talked about the difference between Alabama and Louisiana Tech, and it certainly wasn’t a shot at Louisiana Tech; I loved my time at Law Tech. I was very fortunate to be the head coach there. We had a lot of success, and we won a lot of games. We beat a lot of Power Five programs when I was there. It’s going to be hard for those teams to continue to do that with NIL and the way that things are now in the transfer portal.”