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TCU’s Gary Patterson rips playoff committee for snubbing Horned Frogs

By Patrick Schmidt

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TCU head coach Gary Patterson let out his frustration after being snubbed by the college football playoff committee.

Gary Patterson had every right to complain about the playoff committee after TCU was left out of the first college football playoff after his Horned Frogs team dropped from No. 3 to No. 5 despite a 52-point win.

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Patterson had remained quiet and didn’t voice much public displeasure with the committee’s choice, but opened up on Wednesday and let out some of that pent-up frustration with some harsh words for the 13-member committee.

TCU was No. 3 in the rankings before they beat Iowa State 55-3 in the regular season finale but because the Big 12 doesn’t have a championship game, they were passed in the rankings by Ohio State who won the Big Ten Championship Game and Baylor who beat them earlier in the season.

But moving up to No. 3 to only be dropped to No. 6 after a 52-point win didn’t jive with Patterson.

“You can’t say it was the body of work, then … we beat somebody 55-3 and dropped from three to six. That means you studied everybody in the country and the body of work moved us to three. But we won 55-3. The other people’s body of work moved so much that they moved everybody up — and us down — in five days.”

The playoff committee picked the four best teams who played and won their conference championship game, which means TCU could be left out again this year if they lose one game, because the Big 12 won’t have a conference title game until at least 2016 after deregulation.

“Their job was to watch all this film and pick the four best teams no matter who you played, what you did,” Patterson said, via CBS Sports. “All the sudden it came down to, ‘Well, they played a championship game but they didn’t.’ That’s not what we were told. We were told they were going to pick the four best teams.”

Conspiracy theorists speculated that if this was Texas or Oklahoma in the position as TCU last year that the playoff committee wouldn’t have snubbed the two traditional powers with huge fan bases, but Patterson took the high road when asked about that notion and made it clear he knows this business and didn’t want to come off as “bitching.”

“I think we gained more possibly by not being in the playoffs — and how we handled it — than by being in the playoffs,” Patterson said.

TCU took the anger and frustration of being left out by competing for a national championship on Ole Miss who they completely dominated in every facet of the game in their 42-3 win over the Rebels in the Peach Bowl. The Horned Frogs led 42-0 with more than 13 minutes remaining in the third quarter and the TCU defense only allowed 129 yards.

Patterson’s team could challenge for a spot in the playoff again in 2015 with a bevy of starters returning, including quarterback Trevone Boykin who finished fourth in the Heisman voting and I think they will have a motivating factor all season after they were slighted by the playoff committee.

We’ll see if they can repeat their 11-1 regular season from a year ago, but it would make for some great drama when the rankings are released to see how the committee members will react considering there isn’t much of a Big 12 presence with Texas Tech AD Kirby Hocutt the only voice representing the league.

Next: Big 12 Quarterback Rankings Entering Spring Practice

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