By GIL LeBRETON
glebreton@star-telegram.com
In the battle of locker-room bulletin boards, BYU head coach Bronco Mendenhall declared "no contest" this week.
He’s not going to put any quasi-impertinent news clippings on his locker-room board, Mendenhall said. And neither are his players.
"If I see 'em, I’ll pull 'em down," the Cougars coach said at his weekly media breakfast.
His counterpart at TCU, Gary Patterson, hasn’t made any similar, wall-clearing promises. Patterson would walk on flaming coals if he thought it might motivate his Horned Frogs to play better.
But he wanted to make it clear Tuesday that he means no disrespect for the Cougars — TCU’s 16th-ranked opponent Saturday night in Provo, Utah — or for his friend, Mendenhall.
"He’s a friend," Patterson said. "And if I would ever do anything to degrade BYU or Bronco, I’d call him on the phone and I’d apologize."
What Patterson said or didn’t say became a topic at Mendenhall’s news conference this week when the latter was asked about the BYU-TCU "rivalry."
It is a rivalry, isn’t it, the questioner seemed to ask skeptically?
"I think we acknowledge it because they have clearly made it so," Mendenhall said.
The Cougars, it appears, get asked that all the time.
"I was also asked by San Diego State’s radio people if we acknowledge that game as a rival game," he said. "I think possibly the tradition of the program being so good over such a long amount of time has provided that target. To give the motive for each particular team on why, I couldn’t do that."
Mendenhall is on the right track. The Cougars’ pedigree makes them the Mountain West Conference’s measuring stick, especially to a program that didn’t join the league until 2005.
Patterson tried to make the point Tuesday, however, that the rivalry is built on respect.
"Great quarterback, great fullback, great wide receivers, a great tight end," Patterson said, launching into a litany of Reasons We All Love BYU.
Patterson feels that one of the things that followed BYU here for last season’s game was a circus-like hype geared around the Cougars’ then-No. 8 ranking.
"The whole thing about BYU and 'circus’ had nothing to do with BYU," Patterson said. "It was about the BCS last year. They were going into last year’s game with all the talk surrounding them, like we are right now."
Patterson said that he was misunderstood. That didn’t stop the Utah media, however, from having a little fun Tuesday at the TCU coach’s expense.
Kurt Kragthorpe’s column in the
Salt Lake Tribune acknowledged Patterson as "a competitive coach who’s always looking for every edge and playing every angle."
And, oh, he also called Patterson "rabbit-eared."
Kragthorpe even playfully gave Patterson a new entry for the locker-room bulletin board, a reminder that since winning the MWC in 2005 the Frogs are 1-5 against the two Utah schools.
Touche. Though I have a feeling that that statistic is already up there.
It was interesting, however, to hear the two coaches this week talk about the circumstances that swirled around last season’s game, a 32-7 TCU victory.
"I remember feeling going into the game that some of the attention was starting to affect not only myself as a coach but also our players," Mendenhall said.
"I think we had maybe a false sense of security that we were a little bit better than we were. I think because we had beaten TCU the previous two years, maybe our players didn’t respect what they were capable of."
The Frogs jumped to a 23-0 lead in the first half, and the Cougars never responded.
"I learned a lot of things," Mendenhall said.
Coaching the same game, billed as the decided underdog, Patterson reveled in the opportunity. The Frogs were sharper, quicker, more physical from the opening play.
They must have read the bulletin board.
Maybe BYU fans and the Utah media aren’t kidding, and they really do like Gary Patterson.
TCU knows it will never replace the University of Utah as BYU’s fiercest rival.
But don’t mistake this: The Frogs and Cougars make each other better.
Rivals do that to one another, wherever you happen to read it.
GIL LeBRETON, 817-390-7760
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