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TOSTITOS FIESTA BOWL: TCU v BOISE STATE

January 1, 2010

Gary Patterson

SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA

COACH PATTERSON: Looks like they made you guys get up early this morning, too, huh? I went to sleep last night and I did New Year's 10 o'clock New York time and woke up in the same place. I had my cell phone right on my chest and didn't even move. We have been working hard at it.
If you want an opening statement, Texas Christian University is very excited about being here. Many people have said one way or the other about the national championship. As far as I'm concerned, playing Boise State is exactly where we wanted to be, to be at the Fiesta Bowl and to be part of a Bowl, that if you talk to anybody -- I have talked to everybody who has ever been here. The way they have talked about the Fiesta Bowl and the hospitality and the things that go on here and the people, I can't say enough.
Our kids have been excited. It has been a great resort. Fairmont Princess, their hospitality has been huge. The kids have enjoyed themselves. We are starting to hone in. This will be our 15th practice today. We have been getting after it.
We'll probably start -- we're halfway through the practice today. We will take off the pads and start getting our legs and our shoulders back. We're getting ready for a really tough ball game. We feel like Boise State is as good as anybody in the country. You know, you always worry about people that know how to win. They have good players. They're well-coached.
Chris Petersen I consider a friend of mine, a remarkable man, not always a football coach, been documented many times, all of us should take a look at how to be a father, how to be a husband, all the other things in our profession, because he just does an excellent job with all that.
So thanks for having us here in the great state of Arizona. I'll field questions from then on.

Q. When you look at Boise State's offense, what impresses you about them? How do you go about slowing them down?
COACH PATTERSON: They're an exact science. They know what they're doing. Chris goes all the way back to Davis. I don't know how many of you know about UC-Davis. They are a nonscholarship program. They play scholarship programs in Division II. They played with a lot of confidence and they won.
You can see the same thing with Boise State. They play with a lot of confidence and they win. When you look at two ballgames, their record is 48-3. Any time you play somebody that knows how to win, that plays with great confidence, you better get yourself ready to go because they have a lot of pride.

Q. What's the status of Rafael Priest?
COACH PATTERSON: Possibly. The biggest thing for us, through the season we have had guys who have gone down and guys step up. We feel confidence in Greg McCoy. I think Greg McCoy has more interceptions than Priest does.
Robert Hanson last year wasn't able to play in the Pointsettia Bowl and Daryl Washington had to start. He ended up having a great season for us this year. That's what good programs do. You got to move forward. He's a possible.

Q. How much film are you watching from last year's game?
COACH PATTERSON: I have been watching film for the last five years of Boise State. When you play Boise State, you better look back at all the guidance, all the formations, how they attack.
Watched a little bit to understand. We know we probably won't see anything we saw a year ago from Boise State. So we are trying to prepare for all the rest of it.

Q. How do you prepare for some of those guys?
COACH PATTERSON: Work on them. If I was in the WAC, I would treat them the same way I treat Air Force. I would work on them in the spring, the last three or four practices in spring ball, you work on them in two-a-days. Last year we didn't get as much time to get ready because it was an earlier Bowl.
They are one of those teams you have to play great in the red zone against. The things they run in the red zone aren't the same stuff that they run in the middle of the field. You got to get ready. I think that's where people get in a lot of trouble is you work on the main stuff they do and then you see all the rest of it.
They're difficult. So we will try to do the best we can to try to slow them down.

Q. Is it hard to figure out what they are going to do because they kind of got basic a little bit?
COACH PATTERSON: They were -- they run the same plays. You don't see the backup quarterback a lot. You still see a lot of Kellen Moore and what they do.
They have a lot of good players. They run the same plays. They believe in their offense. We've got to make sure that we're prepared for everything.
It still comes down to -- it never fails. You got to get your kids where they can play hard. Usually in Bowl games at the end of the season, the most physical team wins. That hasn't changed. So that's one of the reasons why you take the pads off early so we have our shoulders working, our legs, you can fly, you're not tired.
You got to be careful. You got to get ready in Bowl games. It is a fine line also that your kids enjoy it because they have a lot of energy and then they play fast.
That's always the equation to try to figure out what to do with them.

Q. You brought up UC-Davis and your connection. Coach Pete had to beat UC-Davis during this season. Can you tell a story about you two when you were together at the school?
COACH PATTERSON: He said I was energetic. He didn't say anything about me yelling. That's one of the places where they call the coaches by their first name, except Coach Sochor. They didn't use whistles. I was louder and all over the place.
Chris ended up second in the running for the Harlon Hill award which is the Division II most valuable player. So he was a good player. He's just as competitive now as a coach as he was as a player.
Those are great experiences. It probably changed my life in coaching, Davis did. If you look at the tree of Mike Bellotti and Dan Hawkins and Paul Hackett, you go down the list of teams that have come through their system and how they taught to go win, I was glad I got a chance to be a part of it.
The problem is UC-Davis wouldn't tell me anything. Coach Biggs and their group, they stayed unbiased. They won't tell me anything. They won't tell them anything. I was a little bit disappointed.

Q. The preparation time that opponents have, is there one of the reasons for that?
COACH PATTERSON: I don't know. I got my own problems. I will let Chris Petersen worry about that. Last time I looked, they won a lot of football games.

Q. One of the comparisons is there might have been a time when they were stepping stones to other places. It seems like you have become destinations. We talked about your long road to here. Has having access to the BCS made these more destination jobs?
COACH PATTERSON: I don't think there is any doubt being in a BCS game. I can't remember the year, but, you know -- what has it been? Seven or eight years since they changed to 85 scholarships and changed the academic standards. I said that a long time ago. We all have in our mind certain conferences through the last 100 years, quote, this is the way you are supposed to be able to play.
That has changed. There is a fine line right now between, as I have said many times, the penthouse and the outhouse as far as you lose a group of seniors, you have a young group, somebody is not eligible, all those things play a big part.
In this day and age, I think you are going to see more of an emergence from the Boise States and the Texas Christian Universities. I think there is a closer line now.

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