AUSTIN — Everyone loves an underdog, and TCU is here to play the role. It goes back to Gary Patterson, the longtime former Horned Frogs coach whose statue stands on campus in Fort Worth. If teams take on the persona of their head coach, then the guy who said things like “I didn’t build this program backing down to anybody” gave them an undeniable edge for the length of his tenure.
But on Saturday night as TCU beat the Longhorns 17–10, Patterson (now a special assistant to Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian) was standing on the opposite sideline from the purple program he raised for 21 years and shepherded into the Big 12.