[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 10 (Wednesday, January 21, 2015)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E91-E92]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         TCU & BAYLOR FOOTBALL

                                 ______
                                 

                              HON. TED POE

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, January 21, 2015

  Mr. POE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, for years, Texas college football has 
been dominated by Texas and Texas A&M, both of which are large public 
universities. So how have a couple of small, private, Christian 
institutions like Baylor and TCU dethroned the kings of Texas football 
and become the top two programs in the state? It's simple really--their 
success has been built on good coaching. While the Longhorns and Aggies 
consistently bring in top ranked recruiting classes, Baylor and TCU 
typically bring in much less heralded players, yet have had more 
success. This means that these two programs have coaches who can turn 
what most consider to be ``lesser'' talent into better football 
players.
  They each hired relative unknowns to guide their programs. Baylor put 
its faith in Art Briles while TCU put its in Gary Patterson. Both 
Briles and Patterson come from similarly humble backgrounds and have 
developed strong work ethics and good attitudes.
  Briles hails from a small town in West Texas called Rule, where his 
father was the head football coach at the local high school. Briles 
played for his father and went on to become an all-state quarterback, 
earning a scholarship to the University of Houston where he played wide 
receiver for legendary Coach Bill Yeoman. On their way to watch Art 
play in the 1977 Cotton Bowl, his parents and aunt died in a tragic car 
crash. Though Coach Yeoman knew about this before the game started, he 
didn't tell Art until after the game was over. Briles went on to 
transfer to Texas Tech so that he could be closer to his girlfriend who 
was a student there at the time. They are now happily married. Prior to 
his coaching career, Briles earned his master's in education from 
Abilene Christian University, my alma mater. He would go on to become 
one of the most successful high school coaches in Texas history, 
winning four state titles at Stephenville. After coaching at 
Stephenville, Briles moved on to Texas Tech as an assistant and to 
Houston as its head coach. Then, in 2008, after a remarkable turnaround 
at Houston, he was hired by Baylor in hopes that he could do the same 
for their program. Flash forward to 2015, and Briles has just finished 
coaching the team to its second straight Big XII conference title, 
which seemed virtually unimaginable before he arrived.
  TCU's Coach Gary Patterson also comes from humble roots. He grew up 
in a small town in Kansas called Rozel and played football at Dodge 
City Community College before transferring to Kansas State. After 
graduating from Kansas State, Patterson became a grad assistant there 
before moving up the ranks at several small schools around the country. 
In 1998 he was hired as TCU's defensive coordinator and would be named 
the head coach just two years later.

[[Page E92]]

  Briles and Patterson have each enjoyed huge amounts of success, but 
got there through different means. Patterson is known as a defensive 
mastermind and is one of the only coaches in history to win the 
national Coach of the Year award more than once. Briles, oppositely, is 
an offensive tactician and has engineered one of the greatest program 
turnarounds in recent memory. Both Baylor and TCU were low level 
football programs when Briles and Patterson arrived. Baylor was 
considered one of the worst football programs in the country, regularly 
winning only one or two games per season. TCU had just been left out of 
the Big 12 and were now members of the Western Athletic Conference, 
which isn't even a football conference anymore. Now, both are 
considered two of the top coaches in America and have brought back 
respect to these once forgotten programs.
  And that's just the way it is.

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