TCU Athletics
Long before TCU found itself opposite the riled fire ant mound that was Georgia on Monday night, another Horned Frogs legend found himself in a situation much the same.
Sammy Baugh, the famed quarterback who stamped his entry into the Pro Football Hall of Fame through a highly successful career with Washington, was, as the story goes, asked by a reporter whether a dropped pass to a wide-open Charley Malone in the end zone would have made any difference in Washington’s 73-0 loss to Chicago in the 1940 NFL championship game.
“Yes,” Baugh purportedly said, “it would have been 73-7 instead of 73-0.”
In other words, no one was beating Chicago that day.
And, no one — not any of the other 128 FBS schools — was beating Georgia on Monday night. No one, not even one granted the power to part the Red Sea, was touching Georgia.
The No. 1 Bulldogs, generally a very docile breed but now growling back-to-back champions, were simply that good and that dominant in a victory, by a score that will remain unsaid, over TCU in the College Football Playoff national championship game at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California.
This so-called Hollywood ending turned out to be a horror flick and a bummer of a way to end a magical season.
This shortcoming, of course, brought out the Twitter analysts, who crowed, saying, in essence, “see, I told you TCU didn’t belong.”
This is, in reality, not the Twitterverse, but the loser class.
“It is not the critic who counts," Teddy Roosevelt famously wrote, "not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Cold and timid souls. In other words, the guys sitting on their couches playing Twitter, exercising some petty jealousy that TCU broke through.
“Tonight did not go the way we wanted it to,” quarterback Max Duggan said. “Disappointed in that aspect. But tonight isn’t going to take away from this season and what we were able to do as a program. I don’t think that’s going to define all the good memories and all the success that we had this season to project and put this program in the right direction.”
In truth, of course, many of these games in the CFP are not competitive. Many are, in the words of Sonny Dykes' father Spike, whipped like a tied-up goat.
Georgia beat Michigan a year ago in the semifinals 34-11. In the same round, Alabama defeated Cincinnati 27-6. Ohio State two years ago beat Clemson by three touchdowns. Alabama won the 2020 title by beating Ohio State by four touchdowns.
Three years ago, LSU scored 63 in rolling past Oklahoma, which has never advanced past the semifinals. Notre Dame has been to the CFP twice and been thumped each time.
These things happen in competition. Sometimes the other guy is simply better.
But being in the arena means something, and TCU climbed into the arena in 2022.
They did it the way all the rest do it, with a set of core values they’re dedicated to, starting with a passion and respect for the game and for each other.
They were positive with a belief and faith in each other, despite no one outside their locker room believing in them. The Frogs were picked to finish seventh in the Big 12 under a new coach, Dykes, after finishing 5-7 a year ago.
The Frogs were also resilient.
TCU came back from double-digit deficits five times this season. Teams that have these kind of seasons don’t quit. They don’t quit on themselves and the don’t quit on each other. You’d be surprised how many teams don’t have these kinds of characters.
And they did it with great leadership, both on the coaching staff and with seasoned players with diverse backgrounds and experiences.
Anybody who tries to tell you TCU didn’t belong on this stage is simply full of, ahem, it.
The Frogs beat both Oklahoma and Texas for the first time in the same season in school history while going unbeaten in conference play, which included the magical finish at Baylor. They became the first team from Texas to advance to the CFP and first Big 12 program to win a game in the postseason tournament.
Their pièce de résistance was that national semifinal game, a beatdown of Michigan. TCU crashed the party of the elites by dismantling the Wolverines in a game that thoroughly entertained the masses, from coast to coast, on New Year’s Eve.
For all of this, we’re grateful to you, Horned Frogs. You’ve told us something not only about you but about ourselves.
We’re not crying that it’s over or how it ended.
We’re smiling because it happened.