Baylor shows what is possible for TCU’s football future | Opinion
TCU’s football game without Gary Patterson on the sideline for the first time in more than two decades was scary when it should be inspiring.
Change is often terrifying, but TCU’s most loathed rival shows that the state of the Horned Frog football program does not have to fall to pre-Patterson depths, when it was one of the most irrelevant names in the sport.
Baylor is the example for TCU of what is possible; that Patterson’s exit is not an express escalator to decades of depression.
Baylor is not USC, Alabama or Ohio State, but no program in recent memory has had such a good run of finding winning coaches in succession any more than Baylor.
There are extenuating circumstances, but Baylor has hired four winning football coaches in a row. Forget Baylor, this doesn’t happen anywhere.
Starting with Art Briles in 2008, interim Jim Grobe in 2016, Matt Rhule in 2017 and Dave Aranda in 2020, Baylor has hit on four straight winners.
The odds of this happening at a place like Baylor, or anywhere, reside between Awful and Terribly Awful.
Once Patterson “resigned” from TCU, every TCU fan over the age of 30 immediately felt the fear that the football team will return to the days when TCU was football speak for “homecoming.”
Before Dennis Franchione arrived in 1998, with Patterson as his defensive coordinator, TCU football suffered through nearly 40 straight years of some of the most God-awful football the sport has ever seen.
In that time frame, thanks mostly to coach Grant Teaff, Baylor was only slightly better.
After Baylor fired Briles following the 2015 season, amid the fallout over sexual assault claims against members of the football program, BU fans were only too sure the program was headed back to the bottom of the Brazos.
Then Baylor hired Grobe as an interim coach, and the Bears had a winning season.
Then Baylor hired Matt Rhule, who built a winner only to leave after the 2019 season to become the head coach of the Carolina Panthers.
Now all of BU nation has that feeling of dread again. They should. When LSU, or USC, want a new head coach, a lot of fan bases should take a drink.
In his second season in Waco, coming into Saturday’s game, Baylor is No. 12 in the College Football Playoff rankings with a 7-1 record.
Aranda took what Rhule left and has returned the team to that level of relevancy. Baylor football remains a pain in the rear for all of its opponents.
Aranda is justifiably a person “of interest” for LSU to replace Ed Orgeron, the national-title winning head coach who resigned earlier this season.
Aranda was LSU’s associate head coach and defensive coordinator from 2016 to 2019.
In short time he has proven that Baylor athletic director Mack Rhoades once again made a solid hire. Rhoades hired Grobe, Rhule and Aranda.
Rhoades has no secret playbook, or some hidden formula.
Convincing Rhule to leave Temple University for Waco is the best move he’s made. Rhule was less of a risk than Aranda, who prior to accepting the Baylor job had never been a head since he started his career in 1995.
At TCU, Donati is looking for someone who is currently a head coach whose expertise leans to the offensive side. SMU’s Sonny Dykes fits that description. So do many others.
This does not have to be a scary time for TCU but it is, because it’s change.
There is no guarantee that the coach who will replace Gary Patterson will come close to the success he established in Fort Worth.
TCU fans fear that this will be a return to the days of Fred Taylor, Jim Shofner, F.A. Dry, three of the coaches who were hired after 1960 who did nothing but lose.
It does not have to be this way.
Baylor repeatedly proves it.
This story was originally published November 6, 2021 at 6:50 PM.
