A Jersey Guy: How high can Duggan and TCU climb?
LOS ANGELES--The story has all the necessary elements: health issues, lack of respect, perseverance and, in the end, what?
A year ago in the College Football Playoff national championship game, Georgia quarterback Stetson Bennett, a former walk on for the Dawgs, came all the way back and led Georgia to its first national championship in 41 years.
Bennett is back for an encore performance on Monday night at SoFi Stadium for a showdown against once-beaten and No. 3 ranked TCU.
But as compelling as Bennett's story might be, there may be a better one in Horn Frog QB Max Duggan, as well as the constantly underrated Frogs
Picked to finish 7th in the Big 12 in the pre-season, TCU has kept finding ways to prove that they are good enough.
And Duggan, who began this season with the words --"You are not good enough to start'' coming from first-year coach Sonny Dykes, has been a leader of what would be the most improbable national champion since BYU stunned everyone in 1984.
Dykes, who made the trip along I-30 from Dallas, where he had revived SMU's program, attributed a number of factors in the success of TCU's season.
""I truly believe maturity, preparation, hard work, kind of goes back to some of the things I just talked about, he said. ""Just a general belief in each other and a belief that we're good enough. I think that's been the message really since I got the job here was we're good enough. We're good enough to compete. We're good enough to win game one and we're good enough to win game two. And let's take it one game at a time.
But we have all the pieces here. We just have to put them all together and we've got to do things the right way. We have to be willing to pay the price. And those guys believe that. They really have. They've believed it from day one.
And as I said earlier, look, they've done so many little things the right way and so many little things that they talk to their friends all the time and people at other schools and they've done things that other people at other schools probably aren't doing.
I think they've gained confidence from all those things, and I think it's made them just believe in each other. So they feel like the moment's not too big.
This year's team had four bowl players – or four players on this team that had played in a bowl game for TCU. That's it. And so that experience in Phoenix (CFP semifinal win over MIchigan) was new for everybody. But those guys believed in the plan and they went out and executed it. And, again, it's just a belief in each other and our program.''
Providing the on the field leadership was Max Duggan, the Frogs 6-foot-2 inch 214 pound quarterback.
You want a story
Chew on this.
Duggan came out of the heartland, Council Bluffs, Iowa, as the son of a high school football coach
He chose TCU, where he was a 3 year starter for Coach Gary Patterson. But after faltering again last season, Patterson was released and Dykes hired.
One of Dykes first moves was to decide that Chandler Morris would be the starter.
But that was only part of the tale. While taking a routine COVID test, Duggan learned that he had (until then) an undetected heart problem which required surgery--nine hours.
""A blessing in disguise,'' said Duggan this week as he tries to put a cap on what has been a 13 win season, which also includes Duggan becoming a Heisman Trophy finalist as well.
More problems. There were complications which required more surgery.
Still, Duggan refused to be knocked completely down.
In the second game of the season against Colorado, Morris was injured and Duggan came in for the rescue and the win.
The Frogs never dazzled anyone other than a blo
wout win against Oklahoma.
But they kept winning, except for the narrow loss to Kansas State in the Big 12 championship game.
By then, however, TCU had enough equity to make it into the Final Four, a move justified by the victory over Michigan.
Now the Frogs and Duggan are in sight, with in reach, of what almost everyone would have called an impossible dream only a few months ago.