Should Baylor Bears Fans Root for TCU in the National Championship Game?
Monday night's College Football Playoff National Championship might be the closest the sport can get to its Hickory vs. South Bend Central matchup. It's the seasoned powerhouse, defending national champions, NFL farm system vs. the little private school that could, for the greatest prize in college football. It's a storybook narrative so intrinsically American it's leaking cheeseburger grease.
Seemingly the entire nation will be rooting for the TCU Horned Frogs will pull off one of the greatest feats in the history of college athletics...well, everyone outside of Georgia, and maybe Waco, Texas.
The Baylor-TCU rivalry (or Revivalry, if you're into that kind of thing) isn't at the stature of Michigan-Ohio State or Georgia-Florida, but it is rooted in some deep-seated hate, the kind that doesn't just go away because one team is playing for a championship. Right?
Interestingly enough, polling Baylor Bears fans on their rooting interests on social media has pulled up mixed results. In a Twitter poll with over 950 responses, 41 percent of Baylor fans said they would be rooting for their arch-rivals in the title game.
Working on a story.
— Cam Stuart (@realcamstuart) January 4, 2023
BAYLOR FANS…are you rooting for TCU Monday?
Vote and explain yourself!
Based on responses from Twitter and Facebook, most fans rooting for the Frogs aren't just buying into the storybook nature of the run, but also what it could mean for the Bears program down the line. A TCU victory would prove to all future recruits or transfer portal hopefuls that a school like TCU or Baylor can compete at the very highest level of college football.
Even at the time of writing, the popular theory is you can go to the NFL from these schools if you try hard enough, but you will most likely have to settle for (at best) a conference championship, a couple of wins over the big boys, and a darn good education. Do you want to play for the national championship? You've got to play at Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State, or, yes, Georgia.
A Horned Frog victory would undoubtedly bridge the gap between what is just barely possible and what is plausible in college football, changing the expectations of just about every program in the country, for better or for worse. It is not unfair to think to the entire recruiting landscape, especially for schools like Baylor, could completely change for the better if TCU hoists the trophy.
Still, more Bears fans are simply rooting for the Big 12. To this writer, that is just silly, but to each their own. No Bears fan would root for the Texas Longhorns or Oklahoma Sooners in the same situation and, a few years down the line, they almost certainly would not be rooting for the Texas Tech Red Raiders in the same scenario.
Conference prestige really only matters for the SEC hangers-on. Rooting for the Big 12 for Big 12 sake is no different than Missouri, Vanderbilt, or, dare we say, Texas A&M fans chanting "S-E-C" from the conference cellar.
For the 59 percent in the poll who aren't rooting for the Frogs, the argument seems simple enough: they don't like TCU. Again, there is no love lost between these two programs. The two institutions are eerily similar and have the same deck stacked against them, but maybe that's why it's so easy for Bears fans to root against them.
No Baylor fan will tell you they hate Max Duggan or Sonny Dykes or even Hypnotoad. No Baylor fan will tell you it's a team full of punks that's no good for college football. And no Baylor fan will tell you they aren't jealous of what TCU might just pull off.
As schools with two struggling athletic programs for basically their whole existence, Baylor and TCU fans look for any small edge they can get over one another. In the 2010's, they traded off accomplishments in minor, non-revenue sports. The Frogs had their Omaha trips in June, the Bears had their women's basketball dynasty, but nothing that put the nation on notice.
In 2021, Baylor changed that by winning the national championship in a major sport and producing one of the greatest college basketball teams ever. They could dangle that right over TCU's head and there was nothing the Frogs could do about it. College World Series participant? Cool. Rose Bowl a decade ago? That's nice. The Bears had the banner, the ring, and the "One Shining Moment" music video.
To be honest, Bears fans don't seem ready to relinquish the bragging rights so easily.
If TCU wins the national championship in football, the sport that trumps all others, there is no coming back from it until Baylor does the unthinkable and wins one themselves, which may never happen.
TCU did win national championships in 1935 and 1938, but any title won over Carnegie Mellon has to have a bit of "Mickey Mouse" air to it. This championship would be the Real McCoy. Undisputed, undeniable.
Whether the Frogs win or lose, the Baylor fans are already feeling the effect of it, good or bad. This will certainly be a boost for programs like Baylor and will be a good look for the "Hateful Eight" and the new Big 12, take it for what it's worth.
Even if TCU loses, they will have still captured the nation's imagination and their fans will have had the ride of a lifetime, the kind every sports fan covets but rarely enjoys.
If they lose, no doubt some Baylor fans will take a victory lap of "no one remembers who comes in second" but can think back 13 years to Gordon Hayward's missed half-court heave that would've won the Butler Bulldogs the men's basketball national championship. They have already done enough.
Whether fans like it or not, the TCU Horned Frogs are no different than Jeremy Brown at the end of the movie "Moneyball", the obese catcher who hits a rope to center field and is going to make the turn and head for second base, conquering his biggest fear, before tripping over first and diving back to the bag.
TCU, like Brown, already hit the ball fifty feet over the fence.
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Covering Baylor for Inside The Bears and the Locked on Baylor podcast. You can follow me for more Baylor content at @realcamstuart on Twitter. Originally from Rockland, Massachusetts and a Baylor alum, so I might mix the occasional bias and/or Boston sports tweet in there every once in a while.