As far as the College Football Playoff committee’s work this weekend, the choice was simple. Michigan and Georgia were automatic invitees, while the fourth spot went to an at-large team after USC lost to Utah for the second time this year. Despite losing their first game of the season, the TCU Horned Frogs were absolutely guaranteed to get a spot in the playoff, regardless of the outcome of yesterday’s Big 12 Championship Game.
In the process, a new face may have emerged to lead the Heisman Trophy discussion.
The Horned Frogs fell behind 28-17 with 11:24 remaining in regulation, which is key for my choice of words. Despite giving up 130 yards to Kansas State running back Deuce Vaughn, TCU rallied to tie the game on an eight-yard touchdown run from quarterback Max Duggan, who then tossed a conversion pass to Jared Wiley.
Duggan has thrown for 3,321 yards and 30 touchdowns, against just four interceptions all season. One of those interceptions was Saturday night. While Ohio State quarterback C.J. Stroud laid down in the second half against Michigan two weeks ago, and Michigan running back Blake Corum missed the matchup against the Buckeyes with a knee injury--which was later found to require surgery that ended his season, Duggan has continued to put up impressive numbers when his team needed them most. Duggan tossed for 251 yards and a touchdown, while also running for 110 yards and another touchdown in the loss to the Wildcats.
TCU as a team put up 469 yards of offense against a very good Kansas State defense that is on their way to the Sugar Bowl to play Alabama.
A lot of the rumor was the committee would give fans the Ohio State/Michigan rematch in the semifinal, leaving TCU to fend off undefeated Georgia, who are looking for a second consecutive National Championship. Instead, the committee got the seedings right, slotting the Horned Frogs at three, where they will match up with the undefeated Wolverines in the Fiesta Bowl on New Year’s Eve.
This also means Ohio State gets to deal with Georgia in primetime in the Peach Bowl, which is played in Atlanta. The Bulldogs seem more likely to outscore the Buckeyes themselves in comparison for the total number of points the Wolverines and Horned Frogs might muster together in this scenario.
The Bulldogs put up 67 points over two games in last season’s playoffs, but neither was an essential home game.
The key for TCU against Michigan will be Duggan’s ability to pick apart Michigan’s vaunted defense, which is in the top three in the country. If nothing else, a TCU victory would be the first win in a bowl game for head coach Sonny Dykes since 2015, when he was still the head coach at California. In five seasons at SMU, TCU’s heated rival for the Iron Skillet trophy, Dykes coached the Mustangs in four bowl games. Two were losses (2017 and 2019). The 2017 game was Dykes’ first as head coach, after Chad Morris took the Arkansas’ head coaching job after a 6-6 regular season.
The other two SMU bowl games under Dykes were the 2020 Frisco Bowl against UTSA and the 2021 Fenway Bowl against Virginia. Both games were canceled due to Covid issues.
This will mark TCU’s first major bowl appearance since the 2016 season, which was also a one-loss year that culminated in a 42-3 thrashing over Mississippi in the Peach Bowl. The TCU appearance in the playoff marks the first time that a Big 12 team other than Oklahoma will appear, along with the conference’s first appearance since 2019.
If the run ends against the Wolverines, this will go down as their most successful season since finishing third overall in 2014 under Gary Patterson. People often forget that TCU has two National Championships from 1935 and 1938. With Michigan’s uncertainty at running back and the chance of Ohio State and Georgia slugging it out against each other, Cinderella may not have to leave the party as early as Cincinnati did a year ago.
-JC24