TCU coach Gary Patterson talked to the media Friday after the Horned Frogs' first spring practice. It's the first time Patterson has met the media since four football players were arrested in a drug-selling sting and kicked off the team last week. A source told the Star-Telegram that five TCU players failed a Feb. 1 drug test. Patterson discussed why he won't release the drug test results.
TCU coach Gary Patterson:
“I’m not going to talk about drug tests. It’s not my job to talk about numbers. What if I drug tested the whole media? Right now you have to be drug tested before you can come ask me questions,” he joked.
“You want an exact number and the world is not about exact numbers. I know what the exact number is. Somewhere between that 5, and maybe it's five, maybe it's 82, but the key is what we’re trying to do about it. And we’re going to keep fighting it. The reality is always somewhere in between. That’s not going to change. There’s not a school in the country that’s drug free.”
“When you become a coach you become a parent. So as much as we hated last week to happen, they are still somebody’s kids. You never stop caring for kids. And we hope that we all learn lessons because we’re all knuckleheads at some time in our life– we all have been. Some of us have done things as knuckleheads that are worse than others. But my message to the team is when you decide to become a Division I player you decide to become different. You don’t end up on the front of the sports page; you end up on the front of the other page. That’s never changed.”
“We looked it straight in the face and tried to address it the best way we knew possible so that we could make our university a better place.”
“I never said it was drug free, but I don’t think there’s any campus in the country that is. We’ll test them again and go about our business.”
“I’m going to worry about those 105 guys and move forward and make sure they learned a lesson and make sure we have a good football team because that’s what they pay me to do and raise good young men.”
“The circle of life ends for someone and begins for somebody else. That’s what we’re going to do as a program.”
-- Stefan Stevenson
@FollowtheFrogs
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