F. A. Dry

F. A. Dry was born on 2 September 1931. He attended Oklahoma A&M College, now Oklahoma State University, where he played football as a center from 1950 to 1952 and graduated before going into coaching.

Dry joined the University of Tulsa as an assistant coach in 1961 and stayed until 1965. Those Tulsa teams led the nation in passing and reached consecutive Bluebonnet Bowls, and he is credited as an architect of what was then a cutting-edge passing offense. According to his son Mike, the former TCU quarterback Sammy Baugh lived at the Dry home in Tulsa, and the two devised passing plays together. Later writers have described Tulsa's offense of the period as a point of origin for Bill Walsh's West Coast offense.

From 1966 to 1970 he was an offensive assistant with the Houston Oilers. He returned to Tulsa as director of athletics in 1971 and added the head coaching job midway through the 1972 season. Over four and a half seasons he went 31-18-1 overall and 20-4-1 in conference play, winning Missouri Valley Conference championships in 1973, 1974, 1975 and 1976. He was named conference coach of the year in 1974, 1975 and 1976. The 1974 team finished 8-3 and 19th in the UPI poll, and the 1976 team played in the Independence Bowl, Tulsa's first bowl appearance in 11 years. Among his players were the future Hall of Fame receivers Drew Pearson and Steve Largent. He held both the athletic director and head coach posts through 1976.

In 1977 he became head coach at Texas Christian University, which had gone 2-31 in the three previous seasons. In the Southwest Conference his teams went 12-51-3 over six seasons, with a best record of 3-8 in 1982, after which he was dismissed. John Denton, a former TCU player he recruited, said Dry raised the talent level and set the table for the early success of his successor, Jim Wacker. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram noted that the program's later NCAA probation, imposed in 1986, stemmed from violations that began during Dry's time. He afterwards served on the coaching staff at Baylor.

Dry's son Mike played football for him at TCU and later founded the AP Ranch in southwest Fort Worth. Seven of his grandchildren played NCAA Division I sport, including Dalton Dry, a four-year basketball player at TCU under coach Jamie Dixon. Dry spent his later years in Fort Worth.

F. A. Dry died in Fort Worth, Texas, on Wednesday 11 November 2026, aged 95, according to his family. The cause of death was not made public. "He hung on for us for as long as he could because we weren't ready to let him go," his son Mike told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

The University of Tulsa announced his death the same day. Athletic director Justin Moore said Dry "holds a special place in the history of Tulsa Athletics," and head coach Tre Lamb said he "helped build a proud tradition of Tulsa Football."

Dry is remembered at Tulsa as the coach and athletic director behind four straight conference titles and as an early innovator of the passing game. He was inducted into the University of Tulsa Athletic Hall of Fame in 2019, and the F.A. Dry Sports Performance Center on the Tulsa campus is named in his honour. At TCU his record was poor, but former players have argued that he lifted the program out of its worst era and laid the groundwork for its revival in the mid 1980s.