National reports that the university’s head football coach, Gary Patterson, was extending his contract were confirmed Wednesday morning by university officials.

Patterson accepted a contract extension to remain in the head coaching position through 2016, said Chancellor Victor Boschini.

The football team’s success has helped the university reach it’s goal of providing its students with a “total university experience,” Boschini said. “The excitement on the field extends way beyond the field and the students who play on the team. It is also carried over to our campus, our city, and really across the country,” he said. “I am pleased today that we can look forward to many more exciting Horned Frog football teams, especially with Coach Patterson.”

The university’s athletics director, Chris Del Conte, said Patterson wanted to cross out any rumors or speculation that he was leaving the university.

“He wanted to come out and say ‘Hey, this is my house. I am not leaving my house,'” Del Conte said.

Patterson extending his contract is a new beginning for the university but also a continuation of what the athletics department has been doing, Del Conte said.

“We want to keep the whole team together as we continue to build our program, and that was the big thing we needed to have happen,” he said.

Patterson said although he does not feel like the athletics department’s work is done, they are now crossing the threshold of what they want to do as a football team and a university.

“We still have a mountain to climb,” Patterson said.

When signing the extended contract, Patterson said his first priority was his staff.

“Head coaches get most of the accolades but you forget that to have a coach have success it means you have to have a great staff, players, program, and the university backing you up,” he said. “There is no way we could do this as a university, as a football program without them.”

In the previous recruitment years, the only thing hanging over the university’s head was not having the opportunity to play for a BCS game and the national championship, Patterson said.

“Those walls were knocked down,” he said.

The athletics department and program has been built slowly but correctly, he said.

“You don’t make quick decisions, and you make decisions for the right reasons, even though you don’t win at the time, and you keep moving forward,” Patterson said. “You don’t fall down the mountain, you set stones in place that are going to protect you and catch you.”