At Le Bilboquet, a boutique French bistro in Dallas, the servers know Bill Armstrong well enough to refer to him by his first name.
, they say, likes to sit on the patio for dinner. They know Bill’s “usual” order. Sometimes, Bill eats here twice a day. He’s had the fish, chicken and the steak, and he has tested his seasoned palate on many of the wines (Bill and wife Elisabeth own a California winery).
Slender and tall, Bill arrives at the restaurant dressed as one would expect from a second-generation Texas oil man—jeans and a button-down. Bill is worth millions, some of which he’s pumped into his alma mater, Southern Methodist. For instance, SMU’s 3-year-old fieldhouse bears his last name, and so does a campus dormitory. He says he and Elisabeth have donated roughly $30 million to the school.
Bill Armstrong is so involved in SMU athletics that he and former football coach Sonny Dykes developed a close enough relationship to travel together, host family outings and dine across from each other here at Bilboquet. In happier days, Bill says, he and Dykes shared laughs, food and drinks from under this place’s covered patio. So forgive him if still, 10 months later, he feels betrayed and bamboozled by the coach’s decision to leave SMU for crosstown rival TCU.
“It’s like I got broken up with,” says the 62-year-old Armstrong, who points the finger back at himself. “I’m like, ‘Grow up, Bill!’ I probably was too close. I was a fanboy.
“But we do feel hurt,” he continues. “We feel stabbed in the back.”
It’s a big week here in Dallas. The 101st edition of the series between SMU and TCU has been billed as if it is a nightmarish box-office sequel: . Dykes’s decision last November is believed to be the first in the modern era of major college football that a head coach has left one school to directly join its primary, in-state rival. The move elicited such vitriol among Mustangs fans that Dykes, at first hoping his family could remain in Dallas through the end of the school year, immediately moved them to Fort Worth to save his wife and three children from the nasty aftermath. It’s bad enough that, as of last month, Dykes was planning to keep his kids from attending this weekend’s game at the 32,000-seat Gerald J. Ford Stadium.
The hate here is real, and it’s not only from SMU fans, says Paul Grindstaff, the former president of the Mustang Club. “The players have known what Sept. 24 has in store for them,” Grindstaff says. “Everyone’s known the date ever since that stuff went down.”
The duel between the Mustangs (2–1) and the Horned Frogs (2–0), despite both being unranked, is rife with so much anticipation that officials are expecting a record crowd. The cheapest tickets on the secondary market are priced at $200 apiece. Extra security and police officers will be at the game, officials say.
After all, this is a historically unique situation. Sure, it’s happened in plenty of other sports. Just recently, Texas Tech men’s basketball coach Chris Beard moved to Texas and TCU’s baseball coach, Jim Schlossnagle, left for Texas A&M. But this isn’t that. And it isn’t Tyrone Willingham leaving Stanford for Notre Dame. It’s not Tommy Tuberville trading Ole Miss for Auburn. Or Doug Dickey in 1970 bailing on Tennessee for Florida.
This is different.
“What happened to SMU and Sonny is no different than Lincoln Riley and OU or Brian Kelly and Notre Dame,” Armstrong says, “except he went to a crosstown rival.
“There’s not a lot of love lost.”
