TCU’s Gary Patterson takes over as president of American Football Coaches Association
President Patterson.
TCU football coach Gary Patterson officially became the president of the American Football Coaches Association on Monday afternoon at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center, accepting the gavel from outgoing president Frank Solich.
“It’s in good hands,” said Solich, the longtime Ohio coach. “Gary cares about the student-athletes. He cares about the coaches.”
Patterson called it an honor to take the reins of the organization, especially given his path to becoming one of the game’s most respected coaches. He grew up in Rozel, Kansas, a town of 125, believing he’d become a high school coach after his playing days
But he worked his way up the college ranks and got his first head coaching opportunity at TCU in 2000. Fast-forward 19 seasons and 172 victories later, Patterson has established himself as one of the top coaches.
Now he’s determined to ensure there’s similar paths for aspiring coaches to follow in his footsteps as the association president.
“It’s just an honor,” Patterson told the Star-Telegram. “There’s probably 7,000 college and high school coaches here, and there’s a responsibility in understanding the role model that you’re trying to be. You’re trying to keep the profession moving forward, doing what’s best, trying to make this profession be one that’s good enough like I was when I was a 25-year-old and had an opportunity.
“It’s a great profession. We all go through the wins and losses, all the hurt and all the excitement, but there’s great people involved.”
Patterson never envisioned he’d become president of the coaches association when he started out as a graduate assistant at Kansas State in 1982. He joked that he was just happy when another GA talked to him at his first football coaches convention.
Now he prides himself on being accessible to young coaches at the convention, offering advice and wisdom whenever possible. He opened Monday’s general speaker series with an hour-long discussion of how to run a football program.
“Obviously you have to have a lot of good people who help you along the way and you’ve just got to keep your nose down,” said Patterson, who was named to the coaches association’s Board of Trustees in 2010 and served as first vice president last year.
“Some people may think coaches get in it for the money. But for us it’s about this great game. Most coaches don’t think they have a job. This is their passion, the ones who are really good at it.
“All the guys here know I’m a guy who helps young coaches. I believe in raising coaches and growing them up to teach them. That’s the way we do our system, our GAs and analysts and everybody in our program. You’ve got to pass it forward.”
Patterson becomes TCU’s third coach to serve as association president, joining Dutch Meyer (1949) and Abe Martin (1965). Other notable coaches to serve in its presidency include Texas’ Darrell Royal (1975) and Mack Brown (2013), and Oklahoma’s Bud Wilkinson (1958).
Brown was among several coaches excited to see Patterson become president.
“I think it’s one of the biggest honors you can have,” Brown said. “You get on the board and stay on 17 years, so it means you have longevity. You’ve been involved in trying to help the game for many, many years. Guys that come here and get on the board and stay that long are guys who really care beyond the game. They care about the betterment of the game.
“Nobody has done more for the AFCA than Gary Patterson. He’s been strong. He’s never missed a meeting that I was involved with. He was very strong in his opinions about what he thought should happen moving forward. Because of his involvement, the game is better. I’m really excited to see him become president.”
The American Football Coaches Association, which is headquartered in Waco, was formed in 1921 to “protect the game” from injuries that had been occurring in the early days of the sport.
Protecting the game remains one of its priorities, but it’s also evolved. It has 12,000 members with coaches of all levels (NFL, college and high school).
“I think we’re the voice of football, quite honestly,” executive director Todd Berry said. “We’re still very active in relation to injury prevention, keeping the game safe, keeping the game enjoyable and exciting for people to watch.
“This is also an opportunity for coaches to share ideas, not just the X’s and O’s, but the motivation, the leadership, the organizational things that we have to do in order to get a team functioning and playing together. We’re proud of our profession. This is a group of career coaches. It’s not part-time guys, these are guys who are dedicated to the coaching profession and dedicated to football.”
Patterson checks all those boxes. And Berry couldn’t be happier for Patterson’s presidency.
“When we’re looking for people to be on the board and to eventually work their way to be the president, we want them to be passionate and inspire the other people around them to do the things that you know are important for the game to move forward and for the profession to move forward,” Berry said. “Gary embodies all of those things — unbelievably intelligent, keeps up to date on not just the things that are important in terms of the X’s and O’s and what’s going on in the game, but the things that are impacting our student-athletes and coaches.
“It’s tremendous to have him as part of the board and certainly he’s been on the board for so long, now he’s gotten his way to the presidency. It’s tremendously well-deserved and we’re excited that he’s moving up in that category.”
This story was originally published January 13, 2020 at 4:46 PM.
