A Good Hit to the Gut

You'll hear the phrase "a good hit to the gut" when dealing with knocking someone off some sort of pedestal. Someone gets a little too big for their own britches, and they need to be knocked down a peg so they can live in the world with the rest of us.

Tonight, TCU got a good hit to the gut. And I'm talking about everyone, but I'm especially talking about the fans. Yes, the game was a nail-biter at the end, with the final score coming down to a field goal. But I'm talking about 47-23. Deep touchdown after deep touchdown. A royal ass-whipping.

At that moment, TCU fans knew that this was different. No more perfect seasons. No more BCS hopes. A normal season for an average football team.

The last time that TCU lost a regular season game was November 6, 2008. They lost a 13-10 game at Utah, who ended up going to the BCS. The only other loss on the year was at Oklahoma to a team that eventually went to the national championship game. That year ended with the Frogs beating Boise State in the Poinsettia Bowl. Both of those losses are forgivable.

You have to go all the way back to 2007 to find a loss like this one. Four years ago. To a team that was starting a redshirt freshman quarterback named Andy Dalton.

That team lost five games. They lost at Texas, at Air Force, at Wyoming, at BYU, and home to Utah. They went 7-5 and won the Texas Bowl over Houston. For the most part, I can't remember this season at all. I remember the Texas and the Air Force games, but I don't really remember any of the others. It was a mediocre team that was trying to work in a brand-new quarterback.

After that year, TCU went 34-2 in the regular season and 2-1 in bowl games (including two BCS bowls). All three losses were to teams in the top 10.

Five losses in one season. Less than that over the next three. And a Rose Bowl championship to tie it all off.

Tonight's game signaled that it was time to start over. And it didn't really matter if they won or lost. TCU could, very well, lose their next game at Air Force. They could lose a couple different games in the Mountain West schedule. They could lose to BYU. They could lose to Boise. This team could easily go 7-5.

And we all knew it going in. No one was talking BCS this year. We all predicted two or three losses. A lot of people thought we could lose to Baylor.

But it was all just talk. TCU fans could barely remember what it meant to lose a game. It'd been so long that we just grew accustomed to finding a way to win every game. I mean, think about what's happened since November 2008. It's a long time.

Until it happened. Until we looked up at the scoreboard and saw what was happening, we didn't really understand. And, as it happened, we all remembered what it's like to have a mortal team. To walk out of a stadium with that depressed feeling of "we'll get them next time."

And we needed that. We needed to see our team bleed, and we needed it to happen early so that we'll be prepared for what's going to happen.

And it will allow us to pay attention to what's being built. Tonight, we saw that the Casey Pachall era could be very good. After Patterson took the leash off, Pachall made some very solid throws, and it looked like he had great command of the team. He got the the team back in the game and almost won it.

I'm not saying that we can have a bad season and then immediately move on to greatness again. There's a chance that TCU will never reach the heights that it reached under Andy Dalton.

But now that we know that 2011 won't be special, we can start looking toward what's being built for 2012. And 2013. Because if it works the way that it could work, we'll all barely remember 2011. And tonight's loss will absolutely be worth it.