FORT WORTH, Texas — TCU athletic director Jeremiah Donati cannot be expected to find the next Gary Patterson. That won't happen again.
There is no need. The job that Gary accepted in 2000 is not the one TCU must fill in 2021.
Donati needs to find a coach who is receptive to transfers, NIL and the mercenary attitude that exists in college football today.
Maybe it's SMU's Sonny Dykes. The two know each other from Dykes' days on Patterson's staff as an assistant.
Maybe it's UTSA's Jeff Traylor, even though the coach recently signed a 10-year extension.
The market will be stupid competitive as USC, LSU, Texas Tech and TCU all need new head coaches. There will be others, too.
What Donati can't do is miss the way Texas A&M missed when it pushed out R.C. Slocum.
What Donati can't do is miss the way Texas Tech missed when it fired Mike Leach.
What Donati can't do is miss the way Texas missed when it dumped Mack Brown.
Those collective misses cost tens of millions of dollars, and the future firings and hirings of more coaches and their respective staffs.
What Donati has to do is hit the way TCU hit when it hired Dennis Franchione in 1998, and then Patterson in 2000.
It can be done.
Baylor did it after it fired Art Briles and convinced Matt Rhule to leave Temple. Baylor did it again after Rhule left for the NFL and the school hired Dave Aranda.
For the first time since Donati inherited the job in December of 2017, he has completely stepped out of the shadow cast by his former boss, Chris Del Conte.
Despite Patterson's popularity and past success, those elements did not buy him any more autonomy over his program once the school allowed Donati to do his job and make the hardest decision anyone at this university has made in decades.
On Sunday, Patterson "resigned" because he recognized what was coming.
Although Donati has extended the contract of men's basketball coach Jamie Dixon, hired Kirk Saarloos to replace Jim Schlossnagle as the baseball coach, and completed a new football stadium project, Donati's tenure will be determined by his ability to find a winning football coach.
Donati did not make this decision unilaterally. He would have had to convince influential boosters, as well as Chancellor Victor Boschini.
According to people familiar with the situation, this was not an impossible sales job. Most, but not all, of the influential types were ready to move on from Patterson.
There are still some angry feelings over the "resignation," with the major complaint being that the situation could have "been handled better."
Ever see a divorce photo where both parties are hand-in-hand, smiling?
The good news for TCU and Donati is that unlike the last time a coach "resigned" the state of the school, and the football program, are in good condition to attract quality candidates.
The last time a TCU football coach resigned midseason was Pat Sullivan in late October of 1997. Like Patterson, Sullivan knew he was going to be fired. Sullivan remained on to coach the rest of the season, which ended with an upset win over SMU in the season finale to finish 1-10.
Sullivan's departure led to the hiring of Franchione, who brought Patterson in with him as his defensive coordinator.
(Franchione resigned late in 2000 but not because he was going to be fired. He left to become the head coach at Alabama.)
Like Sullivan, Patterson was given the opportunity to coach through the end of the season. He passed.
The similarities between the Pat Sullivan and Gary Patterson eras at TCU end there.
The story that was started by Franchione and taken over by Patterson may never be equaled in college football. They took one of the worst programs in the country and made it a nationally relevant brand that ranked among the Ohio States, Michigans, Notre Dames, et al.
No economist can accurately quantify the impact Patterson's tenure had on TCU and Fort Worth. Start with hundreds of millions of dollars.
Whomever Donati finds will be asked not to rebuild anything. Patterson and Co. already did that.
TCU has spent, and will spend, all of the necessary money to give a coach and his staff whatever it needs to be competitive.
Whomever Donati finds will be asked to return the program to the level of success that was established by Patterson a few years, not decades, ago.
Now that Donati has made that hard call, all he has to do is just not miss on the next one.
