Dream still alive for Texas Christian
Horned Frogs prove their worth again in stunning Fiesta Bowl win to set up a shot for the national title.
NO. 3 TEXAS CHRISTIAN 51 NO. 2 MICHIGAN 45
GLENDALE, Ariz. — Texas Christian’s wild ride has one more stop.
The Horned Frogs are headed to SoFi Stadium, about 10 miles from Hollywood, just about the perfect place to end a storybook season for the most improbable team to ever make the College Football Playoff.
Max Duggan accounted for four touchdowns, TCU returned two interceptions for scores and the third-ranked Horned Frogs withstood a frenetic second-half surge by No. 2 Michigan to win the Fiesta Bowl 51-45 on Saturday night at State Farm Stadium.
TCU (13-1) will play No. 1 Georgia on Jan. 9 for the national championship.
Coming off a losing season in 2021 and picked to finish seventh in the Big 12 in Sonny Dykes’ first year as coach, the Horned Frogs will try to win the program’s first national championship since 1938.
It took TCU six weeks to get ranked this season, and almost every step of the way its worthiness was doubted.
“At some point, you just kind of quit listening to what everybody says,” Dykes said.
Being an underdog didn’t matter much against Michigan (13-1) as TCU took it to the big, bad Big Ten champions and turned the Fiesta Bowl into a circa-2010, Big 12-style scorefest.
“We heard all week how they were going to outphysical us,” TCU linebacker Dee Winters said.
It was the highest scoring Fiesta Bowl ever and the second-highest scoring CFP game behind Georgia’s 54-48 Rose Bowl victory against Oklahoma on Jan. 1, 2018. Maybe it was fitting.
TCU, the small private school from Fort Worth that was left out of the Big 12 when it first formed in the mid-1990s, became the first team from the conference to win a CFP game and will be the first to play for a national title since Texas in 2009.
This one was 34-16 after Dee Winters’ 29-yard pick-six with 2:46
left in the third quarter.
Of course, nothing has come easy for these Frogs. During their unbeaten regular season, they won seven straight games by 10 points or fewer.
What followed was five touchdown
drives — with a TCU turnover tucked in between — each taking less than a minute.
“The winner was football,” Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh said.
Roman Wilson’s 18-yard touchdown
run on a reverse and a twopoint conversion pulled Michigan to within 41-38 with 14:13 left.
Back came TCU, unleashing its best weapon. Quentin Johnston took a short crosser from Duggan and turned it up the sideline for a 76-yard score that put the Frogs up 10.
Duggan threw for 225 yards and two interceptions and ran for 57. Johnston had six catches for 163 yards and Emari Demercado, picking up the slack for an injured Kendre Miller, ran for 150. All of that against a defense that ranked third in the nation.
TCU finally got a stop on Michigan’s next possession and turned it into a 33-yard field goal by Griffin Kell to go up 51-38 with 10:02 left.
TCU couldn’t ice it and Michigan got one more shot, starting from its 25 with 52 seconds left — but couldn’t get a first down.
Before TCU could line up in victory formation, there was an officials’ review for targeting on the Frogs. The play was ruled clean. Duggan, the Heisman Trophy runner-up, took one last snap and a knee and the exhausted Frogs rushed the field and celebrated under cloud of purple and white confetti.