UCF pulls out impressive road win at TCU

There’s something special about being a college football fan. It’s not like pro football where you can attach yourself to being a fan of a city you like or following the career of a favorite player you grew fond of, or a team’s jersey and color scheme that you enjoy. No, college football fandom is etched into you by regionality, generational heartache, or a place you gave money to for four or more years, that served as the foundation for your adult life. It’s our little cyclical sickness that remerges every fall when we allow 18-22-year-olds to dictate our moods through the good and the bad. Sports is the best reality show going and sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction.

In our new paradigm, the hope is for every regular season to end with a flight from Sanford International Airport to the Dallas-Fort Worth area and to play on the first weekend of December in Arlington. We started the season in conference play with a flight to Dallas and left with a program standard-level raising win. 

TCU and UCF have a lot of similarities. Both G5 busters in the BCS era. Both get irked by calling them anything but their initials. Both are looking to establish themselves as formidable stalwarts in this new look Big 12 and both are very funny. 

Students chose The Horned Frog as the school yearbook name in 1897 after Professor Addison Clark Jr. told them to pick a Texas “plant, bird or animal.” The yearbook manager wrote later that they chose horned frogs because the University of Texas yearbook had already claimed their first choice: The Cactus. Like a cactus, both programs have been prickly, resilient, and immune to the harshest conditions. Maybe that’s because both reside in popular states where the flagship university has its finger on the scale of local politics or the box out from other elite teams in power conferences when we were once relegated to G5 hell. 

This past week was simmering with elite banter back and forth between both fanbases and it felt good to have some juice. Astonishing, how far we’ve come from playing the likes of an ECU or paying a $10 pay-per-view to watch us play at the University of Texas-El Paso. A nationally televised broadcast in prime time on a Saturday night. Pinch me. 

We Did Not Wilt

We could have died Saturday night but we showed incredible grit and carried ourselves with moxie. Feels like 2013. Sure, we went on undefeated runs in 2017-18 but that 2013 team had an edge about them that was not to be denied. The DNA of last year’s team would have been demoralized being down by 21. This felt more like Louisville 2013 with a just-chip-away attitude.

KJ Jefferson scoffed at a petering 46K stadium environment that thought they had locked up a conference opener win at home on Family Weekend. We exemplified the feeling of “Tough and Together.” Harvey is H7M. Deshawn Pace was a man for three straight plays denying a conversion allowing us to receive the ball one final time. We outscored the Horned Frogs 22-6 in the final 24 minutes of the game. A 10-play, 72-yard drive that resulted in a 20-yard touchdown pass from KJ Jefferson to Kobe Hudson won us the game. 

Kudos to Kobe Hudson

What a MONSTER game from #2. He may have only had 6 catches,  but they went for 145 yards and two touchdowns that shifted and sealed momentum for this season. We’re wearily thin at the wide receiver position this year, but woah did he take on the WR1 role. For the first two games, I thought he was getting cardio out there with how vanilla our play-calling was. I often wondered if he regretted staying on another year here in an offense tailored to the run. He was the Robin to Javon Baker’s Batman all of 2023, but he put this team on his back Saturday night. Clutch conversions and a game-sealing touchdown. He felt reborn Saturday night and vindicated as our true premiere option. The final pop that he endured at the goal line was violent. He held on like a bonafide baller. 

First Half Ted “Leaky” Roof and Special Team Woes

3MG Roofing is a major athletics sponsor. Maybe give them a call? Our defense looked porous that first half and I thought we’d be in for a long night. Upon reflecting, it seems like the game plan was to make TCU one-dimensional and confident in their passing attack giving up 402 yards in the air but only 58 yards on the ground. This was rather brilliant as TCU couldn’t bleed clock on us and tempo their way to 00:00 when up by three touchdowns. Hoover to Bech was an absolute problem as he went off on our emerging secondary. Hoover went 35/52 for 402 yards and FOUR touchdowns. You tell me that stat Saturday morning and I tell you we had gotten creamed. 

Special teams were atrocious. It was inexcusable for 44 to get blown off the block for extra-point situations that need to be automatic. It was exacerbated by horrible clock management ending the first half. Thankfully Boomer delivered the most important point of his career here to go up by 1. That would have been a nasty soap-beating Full Metal Jacket style had that not gone through the uprights. We got the win though and that’s all that matters.

PSA: Be Kind to Your Fellow Fan

It’s chaotic, visceral, and emotional being a fan. Sometimes it’s fun to dump your thoughts in a stream of conscious flow to get the poison out of your gut as you watch your team frustratingly not convert on a crucial third down. It’s sports. One of the few places where you can lock into a tribal diatribe of fervor and irrationality with fellow fans as you celebrate or commiserate the journey this year’s team is taking on—the group chat filled with f-bombs, wishful mantras, and unyielding camaraderie. Be easy on the people who love the same team as you. The same goes for criticizing the men in the arena. We all want our Knights to be successful. Everyone is investing at some level to make our program successful. Players are using their bodies as instruments for entertainment and coaches have dedicated their life’s work to perfecting a craft, taking time from their families. When you give resources, compensate players and staff handsomely, and invest your attention you want to see results.

Bullying works; so does shame. 

It is okay to have expectations and hold people accountable. This is real football now. We’re not just getting up for a hot Memphis or Cincinnati in The American and balling out for a September out-of-conference game. Every week is a grind in conference play from top to bottom. Will we win them all? Probably not. Will we be in the fight for every team we face? Absolutely. These are the growing pains we’re all experiencing. You take the wins and the losses and take your medicine when you need it too. It was funny to see the dramatic mea culpa on the timeline Sunday morning as if someone had somehow ruined this year’s Thanksgiving dinner by drinking a little too much and then committing the ultimate crime against humanity: deciding to type your lucid frustrations in 280 characters or less about how your sports team is shitting the bed. 

Twitter isn’t real life folks. This is supposed to be FUN. You and I are FANATICS: someone who is filled with excessive and single-minded zeal. As supporters, some people need to pull it back a bit with the fandom gatekeeping. It’s a spectrum like everything else in life. Some people invest millions, some thousands, and others invest their time, attention, and $12 a month to the Kingdom. It makes no one less or better of a fan. Like any collection of people, you’re not going to rock with everybody. And why would you want to? If you’re being 100% authentic, not everything and everyone will be your cup of tea. That’s okay. Just be cool. A varied collective of Fonzies glued to a child’s game for a few hours on a Saturday afternoon in the fall. The hyperbole and euphoria are all part of the FUN. 

We have a lot of football left. A lot we can improve on. A lot to be excited about. The feeling I had Saturday night felt like those last moments of a game, closing the 2018 season. That feeling where your heart is in your ass as you pace and will the moment into existence. Cherish that, it means you have a pulse and you care. How lucky are we to have something in our life that elicits that kind of emotion and connection?

Enjoy it, because just like that, the season is already 25% over. We have two weeks before a national spotlight gets shown on the Bounce House as Fort Myers’s native has his debut back in the Sunshine State. 

Let’s come back home too and touch a little grass. 

We’re lucky to be 3-0 on a BYE with arguably the biggest home game of the Malzahn tenure from a national interest perspective coming next. UCF Football is currently sitting atop the Big 12 standings with a trip back to the Dallas-Fort Worth area in early December well within reach. 

Enjoy the journey friends. The road has always been winding and more rewarding than just getting to the destination.

Charge On, stupid.