One of college football’s longest-tenured head coaches is on his way out.
Multiple sources, including within college football in the state of Texas, tell FootballScoop that Gary Patterson is on his way out as head coach at Texas Christian University.
Multiple reports this evening are sharing the same, with the most recent sharing that it is a mutual parting of ways.
Patterson, who across more than 15 years led the Horned Frogs to unprecedented modern-era success, had been alongside Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz as Power 5’s longest-tenured coaches. But Patterson’s TCU program, which has posted an 11-6 bowl record since he took over the Fort Worth program in 2000, has slumped sharply in recent seasons.
The Horned Frogs are just 14-16 overall since the start of the 2019 season, a mark that includes a 3-5 ledger two-thirds of the way through the 2021 campaign. TCU has lost five of its last six games after a 2-0 start— a skid that has included now three-straight losses by a combined 52 points to Big 12 Conference foes. Kansas State stymied the Horned Frogs 31-12 on Saturday.
Over his last 40 games, Patterson is 19-21 and is among the ten highest paid coaches in college football at about $6.1 million annually after building the TCU into what they are today.
TCU has four games left on its regular-season schedule: home tilts against resurgent Baylor as well as league cellar dweller Kansas. The Horned Frogs have road games left at both Oklahoma State and Iowa State.
Former Minnesota head coach Jerry Kill will be stepping in as the interim head coach.
Patterson, a surefire Hall of Famer, has amassed a school-record 181 wins at TCU (qith just 79 losses) in over two decades leading the program and been honored 22 times for various national coach of the year honors.
TCU becomes the seventh FBS head coaching job to come open before the end of the year, joining Georgia Southern, LSU, Texas Tech, UConn, USC, and Washington State.
UPDATE >> Athletic director Jeremiah Donati shared a statement on Patterson's departure.
This section of the statement is worth noting
"Chancellor Boschini and I met with Coach Patterson today and mutually agreed that the time has come or a new voice and leadership in our football program. We asked him to continue on as our head coach for the remainder of the season, and take on a different role in 2022, but he believed it was in the team's and TCU's best interests to begin the transition immediately. We respect coach Patterson's perspective and will move forward in that direction."
(Special H/T to John Brice for contributing - big time - to this piece)