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By Pete Fiutak
It’s OK, TCU. You can be in my national title.
It’s one thing to be a non-automatic qualifying team and get through a mediocre schedule. It’s another thing to obliterate everything in your path.
TCU, with this win, has allowed a grand total of 23 points in six Mountain West games. Last year, blowing away Utah was good, but that was at home and that wasn’t the same Utes team that this year’s is. With the entire stadium humming, with all the hype, with all the GameDay excitement, with the Black Out, and with all that this game meant, TCU came in and treated Utah like it was Utah State.
The totals: 558 yards to 199. I don’t care if the No. 5 team in the country is a Utah squad that fattened up on an easy schedule, if you do that against a team of this caliber, you’re for real. After coming achingly close to playing for the national championship last year, TCU has earned its stripes with this win to deserve a shot. It’s doing exactly what it needed to do, and it’s making it easy on the voters to want to see what it could do against Auburn, Oregon, Boise State, or possibly Nebraska or Wisconsin.
San Diego State is good, New Mexico isn’t. TCU will beat both of them by a combined score of about 100-3, and it’s going to be a rock-solid No. 3 in the BCS rankings and knocking on the door, hoping for Oregon or Auburn to slip. After a thumping like this, getting up 40-0 and not allowing a Utah score until early in the fourth, it’s time to think about the possibility. Yes, TCU in the BCS Championship Game. It’s okay to accept it.
By Richard Cirminiello
Saturday was a great example why TCU is going to hear out the Big East’s overture to jump ship. The program just got done delivering one of the most impressive wins by any team all year, yet only a tiny fraction of the country caught it.
Are you convinced yet? You ought to be. The Horned Frogs are as complete a team as there is in America. Including Oregon. Including Auburn. For the vast majority of you who don’t subscribe to CBS College Sports, you missed an impresario from Gary Patterson’s team, a flawless performance on both sides of the ball. Not only did they hand Utah its first loss of the year, but they did so in supercharged Salt Lake City, where Utah hadn’t lost in 21 games … and by a 40-point margin.
This one was over after the first quarter. Go ahead and elevate QB Andy Dalton on your Heisman ballot. He earned it, throwing three touchdowns, which was just two fewer than his total number of incompletions. Oh, and Patterson’s defense is as ornery as ever, holding a Ute team that came in averaging 45 points to a single score. The last time a team scored more than seven points on this crew, it was Sept. 24. That is historically stingy.
I realize that you only watched the highlights of TCU’s effort. Your loss. You missed a true statement game that neither Oregon nor Auburn would be likely to replicate. The Frogs aren’t your typical Mountain West team. Think Big 12-championship caliber, because that’s a far more accurate representation. TCU finished last season in Glendale. After today’s surprisingly easy win on the road, it might spend January in Arizona once again, with a lot more riding on the outcome.
By Matt Zemek
TCU’s team performance was phenomenal – that’s one big storyline to take away from this unexpected rout. Utah was horrible – that’s another undeniable part of the postgame assessment from Salt Lake City. Utah coach Kyle Whittingham’s shockingly timid approach to the final minutes of the first half also sent a powerful signal that the Utes just weren’t ready for prime time.
It’s also important to note that TCU didn’t have to play on a Thursday night, just five days after playing its previous game; that was the scenario witnessed in 2008, when Utah stole a 13-10 win from the Horned Frogs. TCU coach Gary Patterson said that this year would be different with regular rest for his team, and he was proven to be 100 percent correct. All of the aforementioned details form a very impressive and fairly thorough summary of Frogs-Utes. However, the main story has to be one and only one person: Andy Dalton.
A lot of observers and commentators – this one very much included – thought Dalton wouldn’t be able to handle the heat at Rice-Eccles Stadium today. Dalton has often been the one man who has kept the Horned Frogs from being even better during their recent period of prominence and dominance. He came up small in the all-or-nothing game against Utah in 2008, which prevented TCU from playing Alabama in the 2009 Sugar Bowl. Dalton then looked horrible in the 2010 Fiesta Bowl against Boise State, a game that – quite ironically – could keep Boise State ahead of TCU in the BCS standings when the first weekend of December rolls around. (We’ll see; I’m not making a judgment on whether that’s right or wrong, good or bad, accurate or inaccurate. It’s a different discussion for a different day.)
Dalton doesn’t need to win a national championship to make his TCU career complete. He only needed to win this game on this day, in Salt Lake City, against the Frogs’ foremost competitor in the Mountain West Conference. Dalton needed to return to a BCS bowl and slay his foremost personal demon. A big performance today would have made Dalton’s career in Fort Worth an unquestioned and unqualified success, with the Fiesta Bowl becoming a footnote, not the lead item in a summary of Dalton’s dossier.
Now, the verdict can be rendered: Dalton’s career is a success. Well, to be very technical about it, Dalton has to beat San Diego State at home next week, in what is the last (only?) remaining test for a TCU team that will have two weeks to prepare for New Mexico (no, those words weren’t written with a straight face). Assuming the Frogs don’t croak against the Aztecs, they’ll be in a BCS game for the second straight year, a fantastic accomplishment for an elite group from a non-BCS conference.
Who’s the quarterback on this juggernaut? It’s Andy Dalton. Who didn’t flinch on the road against the din of a jacked-up Salt Lake City crowd? Andy Dalton.
