Commentary: Sonny Dykes, Max Duggan say the right things about former TCU coach Gary Patterson

TCU would not be in Monday’s college football championship game without former coach Gary Patterson.

The starting quarterback knows it.

The first-year head coach knows it.

If the star player and the coach acknowledge it, it’s time for the Horned Frogs fan base to embrace it, too.

Certainly, Patterson’s 22-year coaching career ended on a sour note in 2021 when he was asked to retire. And certainly, we’ve read all about the sour feelings among the alumni and those around Patterson.

That said, the Horned Frogs are grateful for their former coach and how he built the foundation of this season’s team that plays in the national title game on Monday against Georgia at SoFi Stadium.

Quarterback Max Duggan said so during Saturday’s media day.

“Coach P built this program up,” Duggan said. “Not a lot of people have done what he’s been able to do of staying at a school for so long and taking them through all the other conferences and getting to the Big 12. Like I’ve said, there’s so many other teams that have came through this program that have built this program up, whether it was Andy and the Rose Bowl team, the 2014 team, Coach P had so many great teams back in the day in the early 2000s.”

Sonny Dykes deserves much of the credit for the turnaround. He molded a championship team out of what Patterson left behind, out of an excellent recruiting class and out of making good selections in the transfer portal. He also made good choices in putting his coaching staff together, building a tremendous culture and making the right in-game decision that led to a 12-0 regular-season.

“I think it starts with Coach Dykes and the culture that he brought into us,” Duggan said. “He puts a lot of confidence and belief into us of what we are as players and what we are as people, and I think it starts seeing the work and the preparation that started last January with Coach Kaz (Kazadi) and the strength staff of all the stuff that we did leading up to this position. We know the work that we’ve put into it, and I think that’s where that belief comes from.”

There’s no doubt that Dykes’ coaching style and the culture that he created is quite different than the Patterson’s.

Dykes is also smart to acknowledge Patterson, whom he worked under in 2017.

“Very few coaches have meant more to their football program than Gary Patterson has meant to TCU, just elevating the program, giving credibility to the program, providing the resources we have today that he didn’t have when he first got the job,” Dykes said. “And so that, to me, is the way that this works. I really believe this, we’re all supposed to leave it better than we found it, you know what I mean? And he certainly did that with TCU. He was there with Coach Franchione. Coach Franchione had success; left it better than he found it.Gary left it better than he found it. My job is to build on that. That’s hard to build on because he had a ton of success and did it consistently for a longtime.

“And we’re in the national championship this year,which is great, but we’ll see if we can have the kind of success that he had, the longevity that he had. And the jury is still out on that for sure.That’s what we’re supposed to do. That’s our job. And, again, we would certainly wouldn’t be here without him.”

Patterson started his head coaching career at TCU in 2001 when he took over the team and coached them in the Mobile Alabama Bowl. Over the next 20 years, he went on to post an 181-79 record and to win 11 bowl games. His statue outside Amon G. Carter Stadium is a testament to his success.

He is expected to attend the championship game, watching from a SoFi Stadium suite as an invited guest of a booster.

And while his 13-0 Rose Bowl winning team in 2010 deserves all of the acclaim and attention it received, it never was given an opportunity to play in the revamped college playoffs like this year’s Horned Frog team.

This team has that opportunity.

“What Coach P was able to do was create values and roots for this program to set us up to be in this position, and we wouldn’t be here without everything that he did for us,” Duggan said.

This story was originally published January 7, 2023 at 5:07 PM.