Gary Patterson responds to Urban Meyer’s assessment that something’s not right with TCU
Maybe news doesn’t travel as fast as expected these days.
During the Big 12 coaches teleconference on Monday, TCU coach Gary Patterson said he wasn’t aware of the critical comments made by three-time national championship coach Urban Meyer during Saturday’s Fox broadcast.
Meyer seemed baffled by TCU’s struggles in what became a 24-6 loss to West Virginia, saying at halftime: “[TCU] is getting out-coached right now. West Virginia is doing a heckuva job because just purely on paper TCU is a better job, better talent to recruit from. What in the world is going on? You know they’ve got a great coach in Gary Patterson, but there’s something going on. My gosh, they beat Texas earlier in the year and they just look … is something wrong with TCU right now? They just don’t look right.”
Given a paraphrased version of those comments, Patterson replied: “I mean, we’d won two ball games going into it. I can’t worry about what Urban Meyer says. He got out of coaching.
“For us, it’s one of those situations where we just need to grow up. We’ve got a lot of young players. I think we went to the West Virginia game with less than 60 scholarship players, so … is there something wrong? We’ve got about 30 guys out. That’s as simple as it is. But our guys are playing hard. We’re going to win more ball games.”
Meyer and Patterson have never faced each other on the field. When Ohio State defeated TCU 40-28 in 2018 at AT&T Stadium, Meyer was serving a three-game suspension for how he handled domestic abuse allegations against former assistant coach Zach Smith. Ryan Day served as the interim coach for that game.
TCU has a bye this week before it travels to Kansas for a game on Nov. 28. Kickoff is set for 7 p.m. in Lawrence.
This story was originally published November 16, 2020 at 1:55 PM.
