TCU, SMU still scuffling three days after postgame incident

It's been three days now since the final horn sounded on SMU's 42-34 win over TCU, but the game still has not been put to bed.

SMU celebrated quite wildly after the win, its second straight in the series but just its fourth in 19 tries against Gary Patterson-coached teams, including multiple attempts to plant its Mustang field on TCU's grass field. 

Patterson accused an SMU player of striking TCU assistant Jerry Kill in the head during the postgame skirmish. Video evidenced later showed Patterson was mistaken. SMU head coach Sonny Dykes apologized for his team's attempted flag planting, but the Mustangs flatly denied any player attempted an act of violence upon anyone in purple. (Kill lives with a well-chronicled case of epilepsy that drove him out of the head coaching ranks; needless to say, he was the last person that needed to hit the ground in Fort Worth on Saturday.)

SMU AD Rick Hart and TCU AD Jeremiah Donati talked afterward and both sides expected Patterson to clear the air today. That did not happen. Instead, Patterson accused SMU of planning its flag-planting and, whether it was a Mustang or a Frog that pushed Kill to the ground, it was still SMU's fault because they were the ones doing the flag planting in the first place. 

“You don’t think it was planned? They had a media person from their office that was out filming the flag getting set in the middle of the field,” Patterson said, via the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “It’s OK. But don’t tell me there wasn’t a plan somewhere there.

Hart issued this statement Tuesday afternoon to the Dallas Morning News:

That wasn't all.

SMU sent this tweet after the game, mocking a song Patterson released last summer.

Patterson had this to say about it Tuesday: "They take a song that you wrote about COVID and getting back to families and they make fun of you. If I had the time, I’d go out and get all the copyright laws and I’d get after their ass but I’ve got Longhorns on my mind right now."

Patterson was also upset that Dykes called TCU AD Donati, not him. “Sonny has been a good friend of mine. I was disappointed that the AD got a call, I never got a call about Jerry getting hit." Dykes spent the 2017 season as an offensive analyst at TCU, in between losing the Cal head coaching job and getting the SMU job. 

Referencing back to TCU canceling the 2020 game -- which started this round of animosity, thanks to an SMU player accusing TCU of canceling because they were scared -- Patterson said he personally called Dykes, not SMU AD Hart. "That’s what the head coach of programs do. Not have one of their assistants text me in the middle of the night, or call my AD."

Patterson told his players he was proud of the way they reacted to, as he stated again, a planned flag planting by SMU. He also said he'd expect SMU players to react the same way if TCU attempted the same shenanigans at Ford Stadium.

Which, if TCU wins in Dallas next year, the natural laws of college football rivalries now demand the Frogs attempt a revenge flag-planting.