SCOTTSDALE, ARIZ. – A Horned Frog lurks in the shadows to avoid being detected from predator and prey alike, so it is a fitting mascot for a TCU football team that was picked seventh in the Big 12 before the season. A 12-1 season and the third seed in the College Football Playoff didn’t do much to shake the underdog tag, especially with mega brands such as Georgia, Ohio State, and Michigan alongside them in the Final Four. 

TCU’s opponent on Saturday in the Fiesta Bowl is Michigan, the winningest team in college football history. Ohio State is third and Georgia is 13th on that list. The Horned Frogs are hidden down at 57th sandwiched between Iowa and Stanford. The Bulldogs are the defending national champions and entered the season ranked third in the AP Poll. Michigan was at eight, and Ohio State was second. TCU wasn’t on the list. 

The other three teams were always on college football’s pedestal. They are the blue bloods that the purple-hearted Horned Frogs are trying to knock down a peg or two. They did it in the regular season against future SEC programs Oklahoma and Texas. This is not a unique situation for TCU. The Horned Frogs were left out of the original Big 12 and were forced to fight their way up from the WAC to Conference USA and to the Mountain West Conference before arriving back at the Power Five level. 

“TCU has always been in a fight for credibility,” head coach Sonny Dykes said at the Fiesta Bowl media day to a room full of reporters. “If you go back and look at the old days of the Southwest Conference, TCU was kind of an also-ran for probably about three decades.” 

The program didn’t win more than eight games from 1955 to 2000. TCU ended the season unranked on the AP Poll from 1959 to 2000 and only reached two bowl games from 1966 through 1997. The Horned Frogs lost both of those bowl games. 

The hiring of Dennis Franchione in 1998 began to turn the tide. The appointment of his defensive coordinator – Gary Patterson – as head coach in 2000 was truly the fulcrum point for TCU football. Patterson led the Horned Frogs for over 20 seasons through three difference conferences. They’ve reached a bowl game in 18 of the past 23 seasons and won at least 10 games 13 times over that span. TCU reached the Fiesta Bowl as a MWC team in 2009 and knocked off Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl a year later, prompting a move to the Big 12 in 2012. 

Still, TCU remained the Rodney Daingerfield of the state of Texas – no respect. The Horned Frogs were famously left out of the 2014 playoff despite an 11-1 regular season record in favor of Ohio State. 

“It took a lot of work and dedication from a lot of people to get us to this point,” Dykes said. “It hasn’t been easy. It’s been a process to get to this point.” 

That process isn’t over. Michigan, Ohio State, and Georgia could be blown out on New Year’s Eve and that result won’t be held to the light as proof positive that any of those teams belong. The bona fides of decades in the spotlight repel any of those notions. That’s not true for TCU, or any of the new-look Big 12 programs. The battle for respect is real, and perception is an important commodity in college football. The game on Saturday against Michigan is the biggest in program history for TCU as it dictates the future of recruiting and the odds of being invited back to the biggest stage. 

“Every time we get on a big stage like this gives us an opportunity to create a bigger brand and more credibility,” Dykes admitted. “Playing against the winningest program in college football history allows us a chance to go build that credibility if we can beat them. That’s certainly important for our program as we move forward.” 

The disrespect is nothing new. TCU relishes in it. It is a team of underdogs. Dykes, the son of a legend in Spike Dykes, had to build his own reputation and overcome adversity after being fired at Cal. Starting quarterback Max Duggan began the season as the backup. Star running back Kendre Miller was weeks away from signing with UTSA before TCU became his only P5 offer. Even Thorpe Award winner Tre’Vius Hodges-Tomlinson was overlooked in recruiting because of his size despite the famous last name. 

“In everything we do, we have an underdog mentality,” said All-American offensive lineman Steve Avila. “We’ve never felt like the team picked to win and that is life at TCU because we’re in Fort Worth and our history compared to some of these other schools.”

Michigan is 7.5-point favorites in the Fiesta Bowl. It is the third fourth time this season that the Horned Frogs enter a game as the underdog. They are 2-1 on the year in that role, knocking off Texas and Oklahoma in the regular season before losing to Kansas State as a 1.5-point underdog in the Big 12 title game. The good news for TCU is that helmets don’t win football games, and neither do gambling lines.