Move over, Red River: There's plenty of football acrimony in the shadow of the Metroplex every October, but now the bad blood between two homegrown private schools is getting far uglier than the 50-yard-line seats of the Cotton Bowl.
TCU head coach Gary Patterson lashed out against SMU on Tuesday - the institution itself, head coach June Jones and the officiating crew the C-USA Mustangs brought to Saturday's game - after the Horned Frogs lost 40-33 in overtime on Saturday.
Patterson (9-2 against SMU as TCU head coach) took umbrage with a Jones quote that the Horned Frogs "haven't changed much" in terms of game-planning, and that one SMU player remarked that he "didn't like these TCU people."
The Iron Skillet isn't just sizzling, it's being swung about the face and head. Here's Patterson on Jones, per ESPN Dallas:
"He hasn't changed much either, so if we want to get into those kinds of matches. But, I don't go there," Patterson said. "All we've ever tried to do here at TCU is help SMU. At some point in time we were going to get beat by them, so we got beat by them. We've helped them, let them come over and talked to them about how we do things academically, how we do things at the stadium, how we do everything to try to make their program better and their way of thanking us for that is to cut us down."
Less fussy and out of the coaching sewing circle, Patterson had sharp criticism for the officials at Saturday's game, to the point that he swore "they'll never come to this stadium again" after what Patterson said were calls that directly affected the game's score, including a first quarter pass interference call against TCU that turned into a SMU touchdown.
Lastly, Patterson wants SMU off the Big East's rumored rush list. The Mustangs are being considered for membership in the same Big East Conference the Horned Frogs will join in 2012.
With so many accusations and threats, certainly the other side of this suddenly heated rivalry would have a response.SMU's return fire? Offering tickets to their remaining four home games of the season for.... $40.33.