Assuming No. 1 Auburn asserts the perceived superiority of the SEC's Western division in the conference title game against South Carolina, and No. 2 Oregon manages to survive the Civil War against Oregon State Saturday, the Badgers will play TCU in the Rose Bowl on New Year's Day. Anything but this situation would be the result of a shocking weekend in the college football world.
Here's another surprise: Little Texas Christian University—with an enrollment of just 9,142 students—finds itself much more centrally fixed in the national spotlight than Wisconsin. If you think the Rose Bowl buzz in Madison is intense, look at all the news coming out of Ft. Worth, Texas these days.
National Championship conversation
Head coach Gary Patterson led the Horned Frogs to a perfect 12-0 regular season and his squad finds itself at No. 3 in the latest Bowl Championship Series rankings. As a non-automatic qualifier, TCU received a tremendous boost in its chances when Nevada knocked off then-No. 4 Boise St. last Saturday.
A quick aside: Broncos fans and sympathizers should just be glad I don't dedicate the next month to gloating about Boise's blue-turf blues.
At this point, though, TCU is on the outside looking in as long as Auburn and Oregon take care of business. If I'm from the Dallas area or a TCU alum or just make a point of supporting ceratophrys calcarata (Venezuelan Horned Frog) in general, I'm not going to be very happy if a second consecutive undefeated regular season isn't enough to get a crack at a national championship. Whether or not TCU deserves that shot is debatable—personally I tend to think they don't—but what is not debatable is that three undefeated teams is not good for the BCS.
Even if the Frogs get frozen out of the title game again this year, it's hard to argue that the Rose Bowl is a poor consolation prize. That leads right into my next point…
TCU's likely opponent in the Rose Bowl
Yes, that would be the Badgers. A matchup with Wisconsin may not have the same sex appeal as a track meet like Ohio State against Arkansas, but it should pique national interest for a couple of reasons. First, TCU's defensive front seven has dominated this season, limiting opponents to just 89.2 rushing yards per game and allowing just seven rushing touchdowns. Even so, Wisconsin ran effectively—even dominated at times—against Ohio State and Iowa, two defensive fronts with similar statistics and tougher opponents.
TCU's ability to stop UW might stand as a sort of indicator for the competency of this year's non-automatic qualifiers. At this point, it probably is not fair to judge anybody by how they handle Wisconsin's offense, but that appears to be the hand that's been dealt as TCU's run defense ranks third in the nation.
The other topic that is sure to come up in national conversation pertains less to the Badgers directly and more to the conference they play in. A couple of weeks ago, Ohio State school president E. Gordon Gee ripped schools like TCU and Boise St. publicly, and implied their schedules amounted to regular matchups with ""Little Sisters of the Poor.""
It'll be interesting to see how the national rooting interest in the game shakes out. Will a nation fed-up with computer rankings cheer for Bucky to roll, adding fuel to the argument that non-automatic qualifiers don't belong? Or will they take the more traditional side of the underdog in hopes that it will shut the uninformed mouths of folks like Gee once and for all? TCU is representing the little guys on a national stage this year, but they won't be for long.
Future shift to the Big East
As if TCU didn't have enough to think about between scoreboard watching this weekend and an uncertain BCS destination, the school announced Tuesday that it will join the Big East for all sports beginning in the 2012-'13 school year.
For Horned Frogs football, the incentive is obvious: The Big East holds an automatic BCS berth. For pretty much everything else, though, I can't see how this makes any sense. Take basketball, for instance. Beyond the fact that a 17-team league is ridiculous, the Horned Frogs are going to get worked just about every night. Currently, the Big East has six teams in the AP Top 25. Last year, TCU went 13-19 overall and 5-11 in the Mountain West.
For all sports, but non-revenue teams in particular, the travel schedule is going to be terrible. Fort Worth is west of every school in the Big East by a huge margin—the school is 1,545 miles from Syracuse, NY. Other schools are closer, but for good measure (no pun intended), the longest trip in the new-look Big Ten—Lincoln, Neb., to State College, Penn.,—is two thirds the distance at 1,088 miles.
It just doesn't seem right for a school to make a decision based largely on one sport. Then again, at least the Big East might have a more legitimate BCS contender than this year's 7-4 UConn team. That has to count for something.
What do you think of the waves TCU is making in the national media? E-mail Parker at pjgabriel@dailycardinal.com.
