It had been a normal Tuesday media conference with TCU’s Gary Patterson.
The head coach of the Horned Frogs had expressed his expected trepidation for the multiple defensive challenges presented by Texas Tech.
He had deflected a couple of clumsy attempts to get him to criticize his offense.
And yours truly had even coaxed a blithe response from him, when I asked what he thought of the revelation last week that Mike Leach had once foisted a bogus game plan card on unsuspecting Texas coaches.
“Oh, I think that’s awesome,” Patterson said, who then fessed up to having his own team managers scour the trash bins after each practice and send the results through the office shredder.
But as our time with the coach was ending, Patterson’s mood changed.
“My last note,” he said, “I just want to tell you this. I lost my dad in January, lost my mom the other night, so I lost two in the same year.
They were big Frog fans.”
The room hushed.
On Sunday, Sept. 30, a few hours after his team had beaten Iowa State, Patterson flew home to Kansas to see his 81-year-old mother, Gail, for the final time. She had battled cancer for years, enduring rounds of treatments, but still finding time to be her famous son’s biggest fan.
Doctors had advised her not to travel after the 2010 season, but Gail Patterson wasn’t about to miss TCU’s appearance in the Rose Bowl. So she, her daughter Amy and her son-in-law made the 20-hour journey to Pasadena by car to see the Frogs play.
“They were very proud of Gary,” his wife Kelsey said. “He takes a lot of pride in making them proud of him.”
Having his mom and family there in Pasadena, Patterson told friends later, meant as much to him as hoisting the bowl trophy.
Patterson left tiny Rozel, Kan., in 1978, first to Dodge City Community College and then to attend Kansas State, but in a lot of ways Rozel has never left him.
Rozel is smack dab in the middle of central Kansas, 137 miles from Wichita, 135 miles from the Nebraska state line and 150 miles from Colorado. There’s a grain elevator, a water tower and a few dozen houses, but no signal light or even a stop sign on the town’s main street.
The population of Rozel is listed as 156. Patterson’s final year at Pawnee Heights High was the school’s last season to play 11-man football.
“People say, ‘Well, why are you so driven?’” Patterson reflected Tuesday. “You’re driven because you have parents that drove you, and
you want to make sure that you paid them back for all the hard work they did.”
Patterson’s father Keith, who died in January, leveled farm land for a living so area farmers could find irrigation. His mother was a career nurse.
His parents valued the necessities of hard work, Patterson said.
“I went back to see her last Sunday after the Iowa State game, and it was the last time,” he said. “Most people, if they knew a parent was going to pass away, would have stayed a couple of days.
“But she was one of those [who said], ‘Now, I don’t want you to get beat by Texas Tech, so you need to get back and get prepared.’
“That’s just the way we do things. That’s the way they brought me up.”
His mom died quietly on Thursday, Oct. 4, four days after Gary visited.
Patterson wrestled with the idea of whether to tell his team. But at any given moment in a university’s football program, with 150 or so players, coaches and team personnel, somebody is likely to be grieving over a serious illness or death in the family.
“For young people out there, one of things I’ve talked about with my own kids and the players we have here, is that everybody has parents, people who have given them a chance to be where they need to be,” Patterson said.
“When you leave, the best way you can pay them back is by trying to be successful, so that if you’re successful enough you can actually help them through their lives and do things for them.
“Like I told the players, I don’t need any condolences. That’s not what I’m telling you for. You guys know me — I handled it a lot different than most people do . . . I just thought I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least make a note of it.”
Patterson, though, was far from being remiss. It actually was disarming to hear him talking about the death of someone so dear to him just two days before a big game.
From his parents, Patterson continued, he inherited his zealous drive.
“They were a couple who knew what they were and how they did things,” he said. “They worked hard. The reason myself and my brother and sisters turned out way we did was the simple reason that they pushed us to be that.
“We never knew we didn’t have anything. We didn’t have anything but we didn’t know that. They always found a way to make sure we had an education, clothes, everything.”
When Patterson returned in January to see his then-ailing father Keith, he received a similar scolding as the one his mother would later give him – get back to work.
“If you lose a recruit because you’re back here . . . ,” the elder Patterson told his son.
Yet, there was a detectable remorse in the coach’s voice as he spoke at the end of Tuesday’s news conference. It was as if the 36 years of postponing or cutting short visits to Kansas, because he was on the road coaching or recruiting, were weighing on him.
“The bottom line was they were both really good people, like a lot of other parents out there in the world,” Patterson said. “You all need to make sure you don’t take them for granted.
“I’ve worked too hard in my life. You spend most of your time doing this . . . make sure you don’t do it the way I do it.”
By every account that I’ve ever read about the Patterson family, though, they have treasured their time with Gary and are grateful for the things he’s done for them.
As a lot of us know, however, there’s a sorrowful void left when the last parent is gone.
“It changes your perspective a little bit,” said Kelsey Patterson. “I think that’s probably one of the things he’s thinking about — the passing of time, wondering if you’ve done right by everybody.”
How Patterson, the guy who shreds practice field notes, has managed to keep those thoughts separate from his customary all-consuming game preparation is hard to imagine.
On Friday morning, hours after the Texas Tech game, he and Kelsey will board a plane and fly to Kansas for his mother’s memorial service.
Gail Patterson’s famous son will be back at work the next day, because that’s the way he was raised.