TCU’s Big 12 Hopes End in Heartbreak, but Its Playoff Dream Is Very Much Alive

The sting of a conference title defeat will linger, but this time the one-loss Horned Frogs aren’t likely to be left out.

ARLINGTON, Texas — TCU is likely still going to be in the College Football Playoff field after its 31–28 overtime loss to Kansas State in the Big 12 title game, but Max Duggan doesn’t care about that yet. He took the postgame podium with puffy eyes and struggled to make it through his press conference without breaking down—because when you only have a dozen chances a year to do what you love with who you love on the biggest stage, it doesn’t matter what will probably come next.

For now, it matters that the Horned Frogs came up quite literally inches short on Saturday. There is plenty of ink routinely spilled and words used to lower the value of a conference championship in lieu of the national one, but try telling that to Duggan and his teammates.

“I think since my four years I’ve been here, there’s been a lot of lows, at least in a football career,” said the quarterback. “And then to be so close to bringing this school and this university a championship, the seniors on this team have been through a lot. I think that’s what hurts the most. You’ve been so down before, so low, to get so close and fall short, I think that’s where [the emotion] is coming from.”

Duggan accounted for 361 yards in TCU’s bitter defeat :: LM Otero/AP

TCU’s is a fanbase with scars. In a Big 12 era without a championship game, the Frogs ended the 2014 season as one-loss co-champions; their only blemish was a three-point loss to Baylor. They were left out of the Playoff field then, and it still stings.

Former coach Gary Patterson tweeted before Saturday’s game [sic]: “This tweet is for the Frog family, Big12, State of Texas and being left out in 2014 “Good luck and Go Frogs”!

There is a palpable anxiety inside and even outside the fanbase of what will happen to No. 3 TCU now that both it and No. 4 USC, which fell in Friday’s Pac-12 title game, have lost. A Big 12 staffer texted Sports Illustrated asking if “you think [the] Frogs still make it?” at the same time a high-level TCU booster did. Bigger brands Ohio State and Alabama lurked just behind the Frogs in the penultimate rankings. The Buckeyes are likely in due to USC’s loss. Just like in 2014, they’ll back their way in without a division or conference championship. But this time, there is a Big 12 championship game, and the worry is that TCU may be on the outside looking in after losing it by three points.

Externally, there is a united front from all sides in the league about what TCU’s fate should be:

“For sure I do," coach Sonny Dykes said when asked if TCU belongs in the CFP.

“You look at their strength of schedule, you think about how they've performed all year long,” Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark told reporters before the game. “Obviously the best way to get in is to take care of business today but I think regardless they should be in for sure.”

“TCU should be in the [Playoff]. They’re one of the best four teams,” Kansas State head coach Chris Klieman said in the winner’s press conference.

Duggan is a player with scars too. If there had ever been an example of leaving it all out on the field trope, the QB did that against K-State. It is the pattern of his career to continue to get off the mat when knocked down. He was benched to start the 2022 season, and yet here he was leading these Frogs. He played much of the ’19 season on a busted foot, opting not to wear a boot so he wasn’t photographed, and survived emergency surgery in ’20 after a health screening revealed he was born with a heart condition called Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome.

On Saturday, he gutted out yet another Horned Frogs come-from-behind performance, this time to tie the game and send it into overtime. Duggan rushed five times on that drive for 95 aggregate yards, erasing a yardage deficit due to a penalty with one 40-yard scamper. With his right arm bleeding and being clearly physically exhausted, he virtually collapsed into the end zone on an eight-yard plunge to paydirt and had to be picked up by his linemen after the ensuing two-point conversion was successful. His emotions after the game were raw, real and uncontrollable as they spilled out of him. It was the human value of sports on full display.

“I think if we got in, we would give one heck of a fight. I think our competitiveness would take over,” Duggan said.

This is the Max Duggan experience, and this is the TCU experience—fighting until the very end. The only difference is that after a season of close shaves, it was finally inched past after nearly scoring on the goal line in the extra period. The Frogs were turned back twice on the Wildcats’ 1-yard line, with Dykes saying they didn’t want to run a QB sneak because they didn’t think Duggan was healthy enough to run it.

TCU’s Playoff future is no longer its to control, and so the hope is its body of work will win out over a two-loss Alabama’s when the committee—which includes Kansas State athletic director Gene Taylor—meets to set the final field on Sunday morning.

“I got a lot of faith in the committee. I know they’ve got a very difficult thing to do, but I believe that those guys will take a look at what we’ve been able to accomplish and what this team looks like and what we've done and put us in,” Dykes said. “My hope was to celebrate a Big 12 championship tonight and not worry too much about it, but it’s going to be a different course of action.”

A conference championship eluded the Horned Frogs, but a national championship is not completely out of reach. The scars of the past are too fresh for now, but a night’s sleep and the announcement of a semifinal berth will go a long way to healing them.