NCAA Football: 5 most valuable college coaches

3.) Gary Patterson, TCU

Age: 54
Salary: 3 million

Patterson, another Texas football coach, is also responsible for raising his program’s national profile well beyond what anyone imagined possible when he took the job. TCU claims two national titles, one in 1935 and another in 1938. Since then? Things hadn’t gone well. When Patterson took over at TCU in 2000 the football team hadn’t had a top 25 finish since 1959. In fact, the school had only ever finished in the top 25 nine times in its history at the point Patterson took over.

Since then, Patterson has double that total, finishing in the top 25 nine times in the past 14 years.

More to the point, Patterson’s TCU teams were the quintessential BCS busters of the Bowl Championship Series era — a distinction usually given to Boise State. Both teams made two BCS appearances — and Boise actually did it first — but when the college football playoff was announced and the BCS era ended, the Broncos were still where they started when the BCS began — on the outside looking in.

While Boise went from the WAC to the Mountain West, jumping mid-major to mid-major, TCU actually broke through — going from Conference USA to the Mountain West before settling in the Big 12 — becoming one of just two teams in the BCS era (Houston being the other) to successfully jump from mid-major to major status.

Unlike Houston though — and Boise State — TCU kept its coach. Art Briles and later Kevin Sumlin left Houston. Dan Hawkins and Chris Petersen left Boise State. Gary Patterson is still at TCU and doesn’t appear to be all that interested in moving on.

All things considered, the price tag is fair, the stability is good and few coaches in the past decade have done more to help their program than Patterson at TCU.