Gary Patterson Has Been Kicking Ass at TCU for 20 Years and Just Got His First Five-Star Prospect

While seemingly all recruiting news this month has been about Tennessee, TCU got some great news today when 2020 5-star running back Zachary Evans enrolled in online classes for the summer semester and is officially a Horned Frog.

Evans's recruitment was a pretty wild one, as he originally signed with Georgia during the December early signing period but was subsequently granted a full release and re-opened his recruitment. Evans was then linked to several other SEC schools — mostly Texas A&M, Florida and Tennessee — before sort of disappearing for a while and then re-emerging today as a student at TCU.

The craziest part about this to me, however, is that Evans is somehow the first ever five-star prospect to go to TCU. Gary Patterson has been kicking everybody's ass for two decades with nary a five-star on the roster.

There are only about 30 five-stars every year, so landing even one is more rare than many fans realize, but for Patterson to have built what he has at TCU and never land a five-star prospect is unbelievable. Since Patterson became the head coach in 2000, the Horned Frogs have compiled a record of 172-70, gone from the WAC to the Big 12 — with stops at Conference USA and the Mountain West in-between — and won two New Year's Six bowl games, including a Rose Bowl — and should have been in the College Football Playoff in 2014, where they would have had a real chance to win the national title.

For any program to do that in two decades would be unbelievable, but Patterson has done it at a school which had not recruited a single five-star player until today. That's one of the best coaching jobs in modern college football history.