TCU coach Gary Patterson apologizes for postgame comments

TCU coach Gary Patterson apologized Tuesday for comments he made following Saturday’s 52-46 loss to Oklahoma.

Following the game, Patterson criticized officials for several calls throughout the contest, including an intentional grounding penalty against TCU quarterback Kenny Hill that ended the Horned Frogs’ comeback bid. Officials initially said no penalty, but ultimately threw a flag after Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops argued Hill was still in the pocket when he threw the pass with no receiver in the area.

“You know, it’s amazing, we can’t say anything, but they can do whatever they want to,” Patterson said Saturday. “So I don’t really care right now if the commissioner, if they don’t like what I think about what happened with the officials. We talk about sportsmanship in this game, and I’ve got a quarterback that writes a whole article on me, how I treated him wrong. But I can’t talk about officials. Bottom line to it is, I wasn’t happy with the officiating.”

The quarterback to which Patterson was referring was Oklahoma’s Baker Mayfield, who has on several occasions criticized TCU’s recruitment of him.

On Tuesday, Patterson walked back those comments following his regular Tuesday news conference.

“When it came to officials, Baker, anything, the bottom line to it is you have to be bigger than all of it,” Patterson said. “You have passion. I think in my 19 seasons here I can count on two hands, maybe six times that I’ve said things that usually by the next day I’ve regretted. After that, by the time I got to my radio show [I regretted it]. That’s a good officiating crew. This game goes really fast. It’s hard to be an officiating crew any more.

“I have a high respect for Bob Stoops and the University of Oklahoma, [athletic director] Joe [Castiglione],” Patterson said. “Bob’s a really good friend and I wish them the best. The bottom line is it’s been great football games. So in this day and age right now in our horizon, everybody throws things out, everybody thinks they can say whatever they want to. The biggest thing for me is I don’t want to be part of that. You go down and come back from 20 something points and you have some suspect things going on, but the bottom line is I’ve had some of those things go my way. You stay in this profession long enough you’re going to have some things that are going to be good for you and some things that aren’t.”

Patterson said he hadn’t spoken to Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby about his comments and that he wasn’t asked to apologize.

“From a football coach, that’s probably the closest to an apology as you’ll ever get, probably,” Patterson said.

TCU, which fell out of the national rankings for the first time this week, plays at Kansas on Saturday.

For more TCU news, visit PurpleMenace.com.

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Graham Watson is the editor of Dr. Saturday on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email her at dr.saturday@ymail.com or follow her on Twitter! Follow @YahooDrSaturday