I may be as petty as Karma itself, but I find myself overwhelmed with joy for my fellow Texans. It’s exciting to see the hope in their souls as they shout from every corner of the interwebs how proud they are of their triumphant Aggies and Red Raiders.
The wait has been excruciating for many of these playoff qualifiers in what might be the most interesting collection of combatants in the relatively short history of the 12-team grouping. The Aggies, for example, must travel back in time nearly as far as the Horned Frogs to find their last national title, a short 86 years to 1939. Though the Ags have lost only once this season, to their big brother Texas Longhorns, they don’t have any hardware to show yet for this season. Still, their first playoff appearance and seventh-seed first-round matchup with the least-deserving participant, Miami, will suffice for now as TAMU has waited since long before their jump to the SEC to be taken seriously, and they finally are — and should be.
The fruits of success for Texas Tech might be even sweeter. Even considering the ghastly quantity of black-gold bucks dumped into this year’s roster, the investment has proven worthwhile. The Red Raiders haven’t won an outright conference championship since Eisenhower’s first term and have never won a claimed or otherwise national title. Their lone blip was a particularly poor game against Arizona State in which quarterback Behren Morton was injured. The Big 12 championship against BYU this past weekend began with a contentious and competitive first half before the red machine completely annihilated the Cougars to the tune of four turnovers and 21 unanswered points during the second. One loss in the Big 12 was good enough to secure a fourth seed and first-round bye for the Lubbock lovers, and they’ll have plenty of time to press fresh tortillas while they watch last-seed James Madison and fifth-seed Oregon battle in the opening round.
Disappointing for Dentonites and perhaps other DFW dwellers, the “Envy Bowl” went the way of the Green Wave literally intercepting the Mean Green’s chances at a bid by picking off quarterback Drew Mestemaker three times, upending what had been a dream season for UNT. Lightning is unlikely to strike twice with their coach absconding for Oklahoma State and possibly convincing his pearl in a sea of oysters — Mestemaker — to follow.
The Mustangs of SMU foiled themselves with a late-season loss to Cal by three and a midseason failure against Wake Forest by a single point. Duke upended the entire conference by beating 17th-ranked Virginia (led by former Frog quarterback Chandler Morris) during the ACC championship game. The Blue Devil win opened an unlikely door for Miami to weasel themselves into the only Atlantic Coast Conference bid despite losses to Louisville and SMU. It seems the committee really respected their first-week win against Notre Dame, leaving the Irish as the first team out. Notre Dame responded with the class and dignity you’d expect from a coddled and overvalued program by pouting and rejecting bowl invitations entirely, choosing to take their yearly Disney check back to South Bend and decide which players they’ll steal in the portal to ready themselves for next season.
The penultimate seed is the most familiar among those with first-round byes. The Georgia Bulldogs absolutely trucked Alabama to win their sixth SEC championship game. Uga and company haven’t been as dominant as years past, losing to the Tide early in the season and surviving close spats with Florida and Georgia Tech, but Georgia will sit and wait for the winners of the “Interim Bowl” between Ole Miss and Tulane, whose head coaches left for new head jobs at LSU and Florida, respectively.
Not to take anything away from the accomplishments of TAMU and TTU, but the undeniably best story of this season are the Hoosiers from Indiana. Like the Aggies and Frogs, their only national titles are claimed or recognized from an era before playoffs or championship games and never won outright on the field. The Hoosiers are now the top-ranked team in the nation after besting Ohio State on Saturday night while winning their first outright Big 10 title in 80 years. Curt Cignetti has lost two games during his tenure at Indiana, one to Ohio State and the other to Notre Dame in the opening round of the playoffs last season. He gives Gary Patterson vibes in the manner in which he builds squads with overlooked talent that’s perceived as mid-tier at best but fits together in a superior way. If you love an underdog story, this is the only one better than the Red Raiders, and IU is the only FBS team who remains unbeaten. Yet the Hoosiers may face the toughest quarterfinal opponent in the winner of an SEC-spat between Alabama and Oklahoma. This rematch of their mid-November game that the Sooners won by two points is a major data point for OU being included in the playoffs at all.
Notable losers for selection are the previously mentioned Notre Dame, who might as well have decreed in their TV contract that they receive an automatic bid as long as their coach has a functioning brain and beats Navy. BYU via the rankings is the second squad out and lost only a regular season game at Tech and then again to the Raiders in the conference championship (which is in theory not supposed to count against a team on the cusp). I’m of two minds about this selection. The Cougars definitely have the resume, record, and strength of schedule to be included in the field, but they already lost to the fourth-seed twice and each contest was a beatdown. Do we really need to see more?
Texas, whom Coach Steve Sarkisian lobbied early and often for, is also a notable Disney-darling who was excluded. The Longhorns beat two playoff teams, Oklahoma and Texas A&M, but lost single-possession games against Florida and Ohio State and were trucked by Georgia. Texas would have been one of the most capable inclusions based on the available data, but a third loss during this regular season was insurmountable to the committee, even in the SEC.
Our local boys are riding high after an unexpectedly competent showing at home against Cincinnati to cap the regular season at 8-4 and will return to the Valero Alamo Bowl for the third time on Dec. 30. The first appearance under Gary Patterson is still legendary for a game of menial importance as the Frogs suspended then quarterback Treyvone Boykin for a bar fight the night before the game, elevating backup Bram Kolhausen to the starting role. The Frogs fell to a 31-0 deficit at halftime against Oregon before storming back to a 47-41 win during the third overtime in one of the largest turnarounds in the history of college bowl games. TCU will face the 16th-ranked USC Trojans, who are in three-loss purgatory like Texas for dropping ranked matches against worthy teams like Oregon and Notre Dame but also a two-point head-scratcher at Illinois. Aside from Frog fanatics watching the playoff like everyone else, Funkytowners can rejoice that Kendal Briles has officially been hired back into the SEC by the South Carolina Gamecocks — likely because of his connection to former athletic director and current head-other-USC-man Jeremiah Donati. Frog HC Sonny Dykes is searching for his third offensive coordinator during his tenure. I suspect this lateral(-ish) move was the best way to tell Briles, “It’s not you. It’s me, but it’s really you, and you need to go, but no hard feelings.”
We, as college football fans, have only two weeks to wait for important football to be played again, and that’s outstanding. In the meantime, join your local friends and rivals in their joy, be happy with them, and support them if they lose, because we as Frogs have been there. We were there first.
