SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- TCU is the antithesis of modern college football groupthink. The game is out of control? At TCU, that might as well be a reference to the marketing department that has put together a hype video featuring a cartoon frog from the future. Hypnotoad will melt your face.
The rich get richer? While the private religious institution with an undergraduate enrollment of 9,000 isn't hurting for money, it isn't exactly Notre Dame, either. It is thumbing its nose at the establishment by doing more with less heading into the Fiesta Bowl semifinal of the College Football Playoff.
Sometime next year, Texas will have an athletic budget triple the size of TCU, at least by one estimate. The Horned Frogs just became the first Big 12 program to go 12-0 since the Longhorns in 2009. TCU is also the first team in the entire state of Texas to advance to the CFP. That one of 36 spots is not occupied by Texas or Texas A&M but TCU.
"Being a small, private school from Fort Worth, people talk about not having the brand. That's fine. We're just being ourselves. Winning on Saturdays helps that," said quarterback Max Duggan.
Perhaps TCU would not be here had legendary coach Gary Patterson not resigned midway through last season. Some would say the salty but loveable "Coach P" got out before he was fired. Regardless, such a transition did not suggest an immediate championship run.
Beyond Patterson leaving, the program's entire image was changed in the offseason. The coach who perfected the 3-3-5 "Stack" defense was replaced by Sonny Dykes, a significant branch on Mike Leach's Air Raid coaching tree.
Dykes brought in 14 transfers. Again, the inverse of what the traditional Patterson would have done. Even then, it was a reach to think everything would click right away. The Frogs were projected to finish seventh in the 10-team Big 12.
You can bet purple hearts swelled everywhere when TCU walked into Darrell K. Royal Memorial Stadium on Nov. 12 and won a grinder over Texas, 17-10. By then, finality had set in. Patterson was on the opposite sideline as a 'Horns analyst.
"It was super weird," Frogs wide receiver Quentin Johnston said. "TCU-Texas, there is a whole lot of hype about that. Particularly that game, Coach P used to get extra fired up about. … We saw him in that Longhorn [gear] throwing those Horns up. It was like, 'OK, I wasn't expecting that.' I really would have been cool [with him going] anywhere but that school.'"
Johnston is among TCU players who still exchange texts with Patterson. The wideout also realizes the irony. He came to TCU because of Patterson' longevity but got to the CFP because of the coaching change.
Throw in TCU's uncanny ability to come back from, well, anything, and you've got a picture of these Frogs raging against the college football machine. Not exactly a power but absolutely unforgettable as perhaps the CFP era's first true Cinderella.
"Cincinnati did it last year," TCU athletic director Jeremiah Donati said of the Bearcats getting into the 2021 playoff. "They had a different path. I think [their AD] would admit that. They just didn't play the quality of competition we played. … We're really the first team that has broken through that glass ceiling."
Beyond that is the reality of No. 2 Michigan perhaps becoming a prohibitive favorite by the time the Fiesta Bowl against No. 3 TCU kicks off Saturday.
OK, but … which one of Saturday's participants has the best record since 2005? Hint: It isn't Michigan. TCU won a Rose Bowl as recently as 12 years ago. Michigan hasn't played in one since 2007. TCU was the only school to beat every one of its conference opponents this season.
This is less about comparisons and more about wonder. As in, how the hell did this happen at a school that is in its fifth conference since 1995? Forget asking whether this kind of success is sustainable for TCU.
"I totally think so," said 33-year-old offensive coordinator Garrett Riley.
It's more like, how was this possible in the first place? Patterson is such a legend, he has a statue on campus. Still, something definitely slipped in recent years. Dykes became only the fourth head coach since 1996 to start 12-0 in his first season at a school.
As the season progressed, the level of accomplishment settled in.
"It's hard for me to see that a lot of what we're doing this year is just going to fall off," All-American center Steve Avila said. "There is definitely going to be a point where people are going to stop looking at us like an underdog."
It will take time to change the perception.
If not for some questionable overtime play calling (by the coaching staff, which didn't put the ball in Duggan's hands with the game on the line) and shaky ball placement (by officials) in the Big 12 Championship Game, the Frogs might have finished undefeated, and Duggan might have won the Heisman.
That would have been exactly 98 days after he came off the bench as the backup for injured starter Chandler Morris in the opener. On Saturday, the 21-year-old Duggan -- in his fourth year of eligibility -- will play 46th career game and make his 42nd career start. It will be his first postseason game.
"There was a lot of doubt in those first three years about if [I] can play or not," Duggan said of fans' perception.
All without that "brand," as Duggan referred to it. None of the current Frogs were recruited with the promise -- or perhaps even expectation -- of a playoff berth.
"Not that I remember," Avila said. "But at the beginning of this year is when it was really engraved into our minds what we do here is win championships."
What changed? Donati tells the story of Dykes and defensive coordinator Joe Gillespie looking at tape during the offseason and asking each other, "Are you seeing what I'm seeing?" They were like scientists discovering a new element.
"It's kind of difficult after a coaching change to kind of come out there and be boastful," Donati added. "We just kind of laid low."
Johnston broke out to the point he is the No. 1 wide receiver available in the draft, according to Pro Football Focus. Linebacker Johnny Hodges transferred from Navy and became the Big 12 defensive newcomer of the year. Duggan was a Heisman Trophy finalist. He won the Davey O'Brien and Johnny Unitas awards as the nation's best quarterback.
The image of Duggan playing himself to exhaustion in the Big 12 Championship Game was inspiring in this age of runaway NIL inflation. The old college try still counts.
Much is made of Michigan's second-half point differential this season (206), but TCU has built its season on comebacks. The Frogs have trailed in five of their 12 wins, including winning consecutive games coming back from deficits of 14 points (Oklahoma State) and 18 points (Kansas State).
"We can kind of win games wearing people down," Riley said.
The program has been worn down enough. For years, it was a Southwest Conference punching bag. In 1986, TCU was docked 35 scholarships and handed a one-year bowl ban because of a scandal involving cash payments to players. At that point, it was in the middle of a 13-year stretch where it advanced to just one bowl game.
It finally got into the Big 12 after a weird sojourn to Texas by former AD Chris Del Conte.
TCU was also involved in the biggest and perhaps only controversy of the CFP selection process across its nine years of existence. And it happened in Year 1.
TCU dropped from No. 3 to No. 6 in 2014's final rankings after beating Iowa State by 52 points in the regular-season finale. Ohio State jumped from No. 5 into the playoff at No. 4 after shutting out Wisconsin in the Big Ten Championship Game.
When Ohio State backed it up by winning it all that first CFP season, TCU might have been nothing more than a playoff asterisk. Until now.
"We've kind of cemented ourselves in TCU history," Avila said. "We still have a lot of go, and hopefully we can win it all and actually have a statue."
Coach P would be proud to have some bronze company.
