TCU Horned Frogs vs San Diego State Aztecs Football Recap

TCU 40, San Diego State 35

This is what its come to with the Bowl Championship Series system: When a team wins a big game and overcomes many different forms of adversity, it is still left to think it is a failure, that it fell short of what it hoped to achieve.

The TCU Horned Frogs were not happy or effusive in their locker room on Saturday evening, when they had just dispensed with the San Diego State Aztecs in a game that was a lot closer than the experts thought it would be. Yet, the bottom-line element of this ballgame is that the people in purple won it. TCU passed its last remaining test en route to a 12-0 record that will almost certainly be sealed on Nov. 27, when TCU takes on lowly New Mexico with two weeks’ rest and preparation in the tank. The Horned Frogs, under coach Gary Patterson, are a slam-dunk favorite to post two straight perfect regular seasons. They’ve officially clinched their second straight Mountain West title, defending their superiority in the Rocky Mountain region against Utah, BYU, Air Force, and a gallant bunch of Aztecs who wouldn’t let them win without a fight at Amon G. Carter Stadium. This should be a happy time if you wear the purple of Texas Christian University. 

Yet, for all the successes that TCU should be celebrating, the prevailing mood among the Frogs was somber and characterized by a certain degree of disappointment. This shouldn’t exist when a 12-0 season is at hand, but it’s true. It’s true because the BCS system forces poll voters and everyone else in the college football industry to compare beauty-pageant contestants and see who has the smallest blemish on the left cheek, or which supermodel’s skin tone is slightly less radiant than the other’s.  

The sport of college football should be playing games on a field to decide champions, but instead, obscenely granular comparisons – comparisons which really can’t be made without a lot more empirical evidence – are forcing pundits and computer-formula geeks to recalibrate numbers and put Boise State, not TCU, on the path to a guaranteed Rose Bowl bid and a possible appearance in the national championship game. The open secret in college football is that TCU’s players know this. They know that their standing got damaged when they failed to rip San Diego State by 30 points, allowing a 34-14 halftime lead to get shaved to five during a furious fourth-quarter rally by the Aztecs, who didn't quit until the final whistle. The men who have "TCU" written on their helmets know that Utah’s 25-point loss at Notre Dame hurt their overall profile. They know that Boise State can now vault them with solid performances against Fresno State and Nevada. They know that a shift in national opinion has taken place.

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TCU has been made to feel like a failure. The Horned Frogs felt burdened after winning the Mountain West, dissatisfied after keeping their perfect season intact.  

That’s not right. That’s not fair. That’s not inspiring or uplifting.

It’s what college football has wrought, however, by foisting this severely misguided and eminently unjust BCS system upon the country. 

TCU’s players need to know that the value of their accomplishments exists no matter what the BCS might tell them to think. Two straight unbeaten regular seasons simply isn't done by very many college football programs. The Horned Frogs should take a bow instead of bowing to public pressure and BCS-based thought processes.

By: Matt Zemek
DFN Sports Senior Staff Writer