TCU Horned Frogs @ UNLV Rebels Football Preview

Oh, how tempting it must be for the TCU Horned Frogs. Coach Gary Patterson’s team can see, smell and taste the game it’s been waiting all year to play. However, there’s just one more hurdle to overcome, and in college football, it’s often that last obstacle which proves to be the most lethal one.

If you’re a historian of the sport of college football and have any appreciation for the rhythms of this fascinating game played by 18-to-22-year-old males, you know all about the dangers of the “look-ahead game,” the contest that gets overlooked because a much-awaited opponent looms the following week on the schedule. Air Force – before its two-game stretch against TCU and Utah – looked ahead and got burned at San Diego State this season. LSU looked ahead to a major date with Florida and should have lost at home to Tennessee, but the Vols’ infamous 13-men-on-the-field penalty saved the day for the Bayou Bengals.

Two years ago, the UNLV Runnin’ Rebels – the team TCU faces late Saturday night in Las Vegas – participated in a look-ahead game and ruined an opponent’s season. In September of 2008, the Arizona State Sun Devils had a loaded offense and were gearing up to play the Georgia Bulldogs in one of the season’s premiere non-conference showdowns. However, the Saturday before that hyped hoedown, UNLV marched into Tempe, Arizona, and stunned the Sun Devils in overtime thanks to a blocked field goal in the extra session. A shaken Arizona State team, dazed and disappointed by its upset loss, got blasted by Georgia and failed to even make a bowl game in 2008. The perils of the look-ahead game are well-documented in college football, and examples of the phenomenon can be found on multiple occasions in each and every college football season over the decades. As long as 10- or 11-game schedules have been around in the sport, it’s just not reasonable to expect the same level of focus from a bunch of collegians from the first game to the last one. There will always be variances of intensity in the world of college pigskin, and that’s how the look-ahead game and its cousins, the hangover game and the letdown game, have persisted on the Saturdays of Autumn.

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Very simply, then, TCU – before its long-awaited date with Utah on Nov. 6, in a game that will almost certainly punch a ticket to a BCS bowl game – must take care of business in a late-night game on the road. There will naturally be a lot at stake against Utah, but in order for that game to matter to the utmost extent possible, the Horned Frogs need to sink their horns into the Runnin’ Rebels and win a no-drama game in a city that’s famous for producing exaggerated, over-the-top productions. Dinner theater at a casino is fine for tourists, but a football team from Fort Worth, Texas, wants to enter and leave Sin City with a minimum of hubbub and fuss.

Can the Frogs quietly and efficiently dispatch Vegas? We’ll see how much focus the titans of TCU really possess.

By: Matt Zemek
DFN Sports Senior Staff Writer