Gary Patterson breaks silence on lack of Big 12 title game, CFP snub

FORT WORTH, Texas -- When TCU was left out of the College Football Playoff in December, Horned Frogs coach Gary Patterson was silent.

But this week, Patterson finally opened up about the snub, and one of his biggest gripes was how conference championship games seemed to tip the balance on the final weeks of the season. The Big 12, which was the only major conference to fail to put a team into the playoff, was the only major conference that didn't stage a conference title game.

"I was told why we had a committee was we were going to take all that stuff out of it; I remember talking about the championship games and they shouldn't have mattered," Patterson said. "Their job was to watch all this film and pick the top four teams no matter where you played and what you did. And then, all of a sudden in the end it got down to they played a championship game and we didn't. That's not what we were told. We were told they would pick the four best teams."

Heading into the final week of the season, TCU had jumped Florida State to the No. 3 spot. Patterson, however, said he know the Horned Frogs were doomed no matter how they fared against Iowa State in the regular-season finale.

"You can ask (Iowa State coach) Paul Rhoads," Patterson said. "We were on the field before the ballgame and he said he hopes if we ended up winning for us to have good luck (with the playoff). I told him, 'Paul, we aren't going to the playoffs.' We were the first team playing on that Saturday. I'm pretty good at gut feelings and I watched all the articles going through the week. I actually thought it was the kiss of death when we got moved to third."

Patterson made it clear that he didn't have any ill feelings toward the playoff selection committee, and that Ohio State was also deserving of the fourth seed. But he was also puzzled how the Horned Frogs could drop from third to sixth in the rankings despite routing Iowa State.

"You can't say it was the body of work, then," he said. "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. Then the other people's body of work moved so much that they moved everybody up and us down in five days?"

Patterson also noted that the Big 12 might not have had enough representation on the committee, a beef that Baylor coach Art Briles raised in December. FormerWest Virginiaathletic director Oliver Luck was the lone member of the 13-person committee withties to the Big 12. The Big Ten, conversely, had two people on the committee associated with its conference in former Nebraska athletic director Tom Osborne and sitting Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez.

"At the (Big 12) meetings last May, I brought up, 'You feel like we have enough people sticking up for the Big 12?'" Patterson said. "I was told, 'Yes.'

"I probably will not be told that this May."

Patterson, however, added that whatever the composition of the committee is, there will always be a perception bias.

"Here's the thing, what I found the one consistent is that it will never always be fair," he said. "No matter what we've called it during my 33 years of college football coaching, whether we had the BCS or the coaches poll, whatever they had, somebody has felt like they got screwed.

"That will go on."