Gary Patterson And The Horned Frogs Will Be Nebraska’s Biggest Fans This Saturday
December 3, 2009 – 6:45 am by Michael Bean
The TCU Horned Frogs have done everything in their power to get included in the Bowl Championship Series, be it the National Championship Game or one of the other four major bowls. TCU finished their regular season a perfect 12-0, with solid wins coming at Clemson, at Air Force, at BYU and against Utah. The question now becomes whether they will have a shot at playing for a National Championship or whether they’ll be relegated to one of the other BCS Bowls. The Sugar, Fiesta and Orange Bowls are all possible destinations for the Horned Frogs if Texas were to finish off their perfect season by beating Nebraska in the Big 12 Championship Game. Obviously the winner of Florida and Alabama will be heading to the title game, leaving either Texas if they were to win, or perhaps TCU if the Longhorns were to stumble, to take on the SEC winner.
TCU head coach Gary Patterson joined The Dan Patrick Show to talk about how he feels the Horned Frogs can compete with any team in America and why he believes there’s no sense in whining about the BCS system regardless of what happens with his team’s fate in the forthcoming days.
On who the best team in Texas is:
“There’s two good ones – Texas and TCU. It’s definitely a toss up.”
On wanting to get a crack at Texas:
“We always want to play the best. Every year we’ve played Oklahoma or Texas here in the last three, four years. We’ve got Oklahoma on the schedule, we’ve got LSU on the schedule down the road. So, you know, you’re always wanting to play the best because that’s how you put a measuring stick on your program.”
On whether he feels TCU deserves to play in the National Championship Game:
“Well I believe we can play with all of those who sit at the top, yes I do. Now, I’ve stayed far away from all that deserving stuff because I’ve never been one to believe it. I’ve always believed that the football gods will come back to haunt you. So for me, we feel like we have a good football team and the only way you can really speak is when you get a chance to do it on the field.”
On what he tells his kids about the BCS system:
“Well what I tell our kids and what I said when we got done with our last game – I’m not going to ruin a 12-0 season, the first one in 70-some years. Our goal was to get to a BCS game by as soon as I got there, and everybody started talking about well we may not get a chance to play for a National Championship. But the same thing I think we said about getting to a BCS game – everybody said it’s hard to do and we’d never get a chance to do it and we did it. And I tell them the same thing now that I told them about that – we’re just going to keep knocking on the door until one day we get that opportunity.”
On whether or not he thinks the BCS system is fair and equitable:
“Well like I’ve said many times – it doesn’t do any good to be a whiner. I think all of us have been there before, this is not something that just happens in football, this is something that happens in life. Where you do great in business or whatever you do, and you come up a little bit short, they give someone else the contract or whatever else happens. I think what you have to do is know what you’ve done in your mind, and how can you get better and how can you get back to it. I think there’s great possibilities on both sides. You know, in some ways, even a playoff system’s not fair because of the kind of competition you have to do on a weekly basis for three or four weeks. You may not have the players and the best team may not play in the National Championship Game anyway, just for the simple reason that – take Miami when they played in the National Championship Game. If that had been the first round of the playoffs, they lost three, four, five guys including their starting tailback and they wouldn’t have been the same football team. So there’s a lot of different ways to look at it. I think the BCS is a good way. Everybody would argue that there’s a better way, but I think everything has its pros and cons.”
Listen here to Patterson on The Dan Patrick Show
Tags: BCS busters, best non-BCS conference teams, Gary Patterson, Mountain West Conference, TCU Horned Frogs, undefeated teams in college football
