If history holds, TCU football should have another strong season in 2018

Five years ago, TCU athletics was licking its wounds.

It was 2013 and the Horned Frogs had just completed their second season in the Big 12 Conference.

At the time, it seemed as if all those internet loud mouths who had been predicting failure for the Frogs in a "big boy" conference were onto something.

But, just as TCU's administration and coaching staffs envisioned years before while trying to move from the Mountain West, the move only enhanced the programs in the long run.

That low point in 2013, when the baseball team missed the postseason for the first time in 10 years, the men's basketball team went 0-18 in conference (2013-14) and the football team went 4-8 and missed a bowl game for just the second time under Gary Patterson, did not define the athletic department. It regrouped, reevaluated and got to work.

Football, of course, is the flagship program for most schools and TCU's success in 2014 signaled to all the doubters that the Horned Frogs could hang with anyone in the Big 12. In '15, they followed it up with another double-digit win season proving '14 wasn't a fluke.

In 2018, Patterson will be tasked with following up an 11-3 season.

If history under Patterson repeats itself, the Frogs should be just fine next fall.

In Patterson's 17 seasons, three times he's had consecutive seasons of 10 or more wins followed by a down year. This doesn't include a four-year stretch when the Frogs followed an eight-win 2007 season with four consecutive seasons of at least 11 wins, from 2008-11. This was the zenith of the Patterson era when the Frogs went 25-1 in a two-year period, earned their first BCS bowl berth and went 13-0 and won the Rose Bowl in 2010. But that was as members of the Mountain West Conference.

The ultra competitive Big 12 is a different story and the transition required a two-year adjustment period, which included a 4-8 season in '13. But TCU followed it up by going 12-1 and 11-2 with two bowl wins. In 2016, they went 6-7 with a new quarterback. And then followed it up with an 11-3 season in which they played in the Big 12 championship.

A cycle of success

A look at the pattern of success for TCU football under Gary Patterson:

This story was originally published March 21, 2018 at 2:19 PM with the headline "If history holds, TCU football should have another strong season in 2018."