June Jones is about to see TCU’s brand of good football up close

Nobody quite remembers what SMU coach June Jones said exactly, not a word-for-word recitation anyway.

Just the gist, which is juicy enough.

Participating in a Q&A on the first day of the 76th annual Texas High School Coaches Association back in July in San Antonio, Jones attempted to explain inherent advantages of SMU. Lots of Metroplex players, an almost disproportionate amount of talent in said players, typical boring coach-speak until he wandered astray.

The good news, June noted, is nobody really has been playing good football around D/FW for a while to take advantage.

Why do I have a feeling that might anger the Frogs? At last check, TCU resides in the FW part of D/FW and has been pretty good lately, really for a while, and especially under coach Gary Patterson.

And what makes this an especially painful gaffe is Patterson was in attendance, on stage, as part of that very D-I coaches panel.

"Yeah, I was in the room," Patterson said Thursday after his weekly radio show, "but I was at the far end. I could not really hear what was said."

He quickly added: "Of course, a few coaches mentioned something to me."

And why do I have a feeling that "something" might have been mentioned to his Frogs players? Coach Patterson loves to beat that underdog/no respect drum, which just so happens to fit well with TCU still dealing with typical non-BcS-school putdowns and a general lack of respect. And how nice of perennially downtrodden SMU to pile on as well.

Don’t you just love college rivalries?

TCU and SMU renew theirs at 7 this evening at Gerald J. Ford Stadium. And just when you thought this might be boring, or TCU might be in danger of looking past a struggling Mustangs team to a certain game against a certain No. 2-ranked team in Norman in a week, June’s words began gaining ground at TCU this week.

Frog types were already touchy after some Stanford player basically dismissed the Mountain West as a fake conference. How embarrassing last Saturday had to be for him, with Mountain teams slapping around four schools from that real Pac-10.

And while the MWC is unlikely to be confused with the SEC by anybody, TCU has established itself as an "outsider" team — always a threat to crash the party — much like BYU, Central Florida and Hawaii a year ago. Obviously, June missed this.

Do not bother whining he was misunderstood. Of course, he probably did not mean anything by his comment. Patterson certainly seems to lack any ill will, calling June "a good guy, a good coach and an even better golfer."

Not that this is likely to stop Patterson from using Jones’ gaffe. Football is all about taking misspeaks, slightly controversial statements and even innocuous comments and plastering them on bulletin boards. On every single level.

Still, I feel it is my civic duty to help educate June about what TCU did while he was away from the mainland. So I asked Patterson a couple of questions, just to establish if TCU qualified as playing good football lately.

Has TCU done anything GP is proud of in the past five to eight years?

"I’ve been proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish over not just the last five to eight years but the last 11 — facility upgrades, the amount of recruits, the level of recruits," Patterson said. "We wanted to build something not only TCU but Fort Worth and the Metroplex could be proud of, and I think we have."

Yeah, but has TCU been to any bowl games?

"We’ve been to nine bowls in 10 years, actually," Patterson said. "We won the last three in a row."

Yeah, but have y’all ever been ranked?

"Four of the last six years, we’ve been in the Top 25, and we were in that picture last year," Patterson said.

Yeah, but it isn’t like y’all have played anybody such as Texas Tech or Oklahoma or Texas, right?

"We’re 11-2 against teams in conferences with automatic bids," he said. And since he failed to mention victories against Texas Tech and Oklahoma, I will.

So there you have it.

Hopefully, this helps June understand what he is recruiting. Because a lot of that aforementioned D/FW talent has chosen to go to TCU and helped turn it into one of the better programs in the country.

Of course, in fairness to June, he did slap superlatives onto TCU this week during his weekly news conference.

"I’m not so sure TCU isn’t the best team we’ve played so far, or going to play," he said. "Fortunately, we’re playing them at home, and fortunately there seems to be a rivalry with this, that it’s my first year of feeling, but I already sense it talking with the guys, and I already know how TCU feels about SMU."

No, I don’t think he does. But I think he’s about to learn.

First lesson: FW is in D/FW.

Second lesson: TCU is in Fort Worth.

And the final lesson, which is likely to come this evening when the Frogs go Georgia on his team: The Frogs have been playing some pretty good football. And even better when angry.