The leader of the TCU Horned Frogs has been voted as the coach of the year by the AP.

Gary Patterson guided TCU to its best season in 70 years on the way to becoming the first Associated Press Coach of the Year from outside the six conferences with automatic BCS bids.

Patterson led the Horned Frogs to a perfect regular season, their second Mountain West Conference title, their first BCS appearance and even had them vying for a spot in the national championship game.

Gosh, how nice of the AP! To go out of their way and vote Coach Patterson from the under-appreciated Horned Frogs as coach of the year. Now how many votes did the Horned Frogs get from the AP to be the number one team?

Zero.

Rhetorical questions that you know the answer to aside, my point isn’t that the coach who wins the AP coach of the year should also have some votes for the number one team. My point is that while sometimes the AP coach of the year honor might be a legitimate way of honoring a coach who turned around a broken program, but sometimes it seems like a throw away prize given to the team who was in first of getting screwed. “First in getting screwed,” is the honor I bestow upon the team with the highest ranking of the undefeated teams NOT in the BCS title game.

For some reason I picture AP voters patting themselves on the back saying, “That sure was nice of us!” as if it’s a real replacement for not giving a team like TCU a chance. Not that it’s all the AP’s fault that teams like TCU or Cincinnati can’t make the title game without a miracle, but if they did actually give them some first place votes, then they’d have a better chance in the clusterf*ck system known as the BCS.

I”m sure Coach Patterson graciously accepted the award, because he’s not a d-bag of a coach. But I’m sure he felt like the kid who gets a small trophy in little league baseball only because the coach’s kids already got the best trophies.

[via SportsIllustrated]