As title battle nears, Patterson fires verbal shots

— The question posed to Gary Patterson on Tuesday morning was a light-hearted one, an innocuous throw-away line designed to put the TCU football coach in an upbeat mood.

Did he know that Alabama and Ohio State were cheering for the Horned Frogs to defeat Oklahoma on Saturday in the Big 12 title game?

But Patterson, as he often does in his news conferences, meandered to what he really wanted to discuss. In this case, it was Sooners quarterback Baker Mayfield, OU head coach Lincoln Riley and an incident earlier this month that was blamed on TCU’s players.

In the end, Patterson intentionally created some bulletin-board type chatter and added to a grudge that the TCU coach and OU quarterback have borne against each other since Mayfield was a senior at Lake Travis High School.

First, here’s the background on what continues to irritate Patterson. In pregame warmups, before the Frogs and Sooners played Nov. 11 in Norman, Mayfield threw a hard pass at the head of TCU starting safety Niko Small. The ball bounced off Small’s helmet because an unsuspecting Small never saw it coming. Video recorded from the stands showed the TCU players jogging single file around the end zone and then down the sideline to get totheir warm-up area. Mayfield was standing at the 5-yard line when he zipped the pass, looking more like a pitcher trying to bean a batter.

Small played in the game — a 38-20 loss for TCU — but he hasn’t been in the lineup since. Patterson has not specified Smalls’ injury, although it’s believed to be a concussion.

“No, I’m not saying that was the rea-