I came in to this hoping for the best. I thought it would be tight. I was wrong and I was right, so that is not half bad. I attended with two of my dearest friends and rabid sports fans. Nick and Paige. This young couple has a passion that I used to have for sports. car races, college games, baseball, basketball you name it. If there was tailgating involved they would watch you do your taxes, If you are lucky Paige will even bring some of her award winning chocolate chip cookies.

Now what I am telling you is my observations, I have not listened to a post game, I have not read articles, and I have not studied a box score. Simply what I observed and talked to these two about during and after the game.

I thought this game would be over the Las Vegas point total and it kind of was. In regulation much to my surprise it was under, in double OT it was significantly over.

The uniforms. I hated both. OSU was kind of boring and I am not a fan of colors that are not your traditional school colors. In this case I could live with the gun metal grey uniforms, begrudgingly, but I most certainly hated the red number and red helmet logo. I mentioned to some Cowboy fans behind me that if I did not know what game I was attending, from our seats I would have wondered who is playing. That is a problem.

OSU showed more of the high octane longer passing that I expected from TCU but rarely saw. The Horned Frogs seemed to dink and dunk their way through an awful half.

When OSU played the first half they were on fire. Most every big play had no Horned Frog defenders around. When I say wide open I mean it. They had these huge lanes to catch and run, holes the size of a garbage truck. TCU had to work 5x as hard to get their 13. Every play the Cowboy defenders were there to stop them.

I never thought there would be more than a 10 point difference, but at multiple points the Cowboys were up by more than 10. Early on the TCU offense would get near the red zone or even in and stall. They then had to kick a field goal. You do not have to be a genius to know if you are playing OSU it will be settled with touchdowns not fg’s.

TCU ran up the middle with counters and traps a lot more than expected. They were successful but anyone that saw the Jimmy Johnson era Hurricanes knows that the run should be more balanced with the pass and these days it rarely is. They also know when you get down, running is not going to get you back in the game, you need that passing. A huge mistake on the Cowboys part was they never, ever really got to the point of stopping or slowing these up the middle runs.

The OSU run game was non existent. I would be willing to bet if you took the quarterbacks rushing numbers out of the equation that a Cowboy fan would cry. They were able to make do without this but late in the game I commented to the Wonder Twins and others that the Cowboy offense was built to score not burn clock. This came back to beat them, not only could they not burn clock but they even had one series of downs where within about 46 seconds or so they went through all three downs. Gundy, his OC and the qb should know better and had been better clock managers.

Momentum is real. TCU was able to outscore the Cowboys 17-6 in the second half to force a tie. One of the Cowboy field goals from where I was setting went through but flying through the air, you got the feeling it did not have enough mustard.

At 30 all going in to OT, you knew that all the momentum was on the Horned Frogs side, then in an event similar to the Rangers loss in the WS, one pass put OSU on the one , on their fourth down. At the point that they tied at 37 I honestly believed that OSU would win in the second OT.

Penalties, bad play calling and a stellar Horned Frog Defense led to them only getting a fg. The Frogs capitalized and finished them off.

OSU in my opinion chocked some in the second half, but honestly I still feel like TCU stole it from them and that in a ranking I am honestly not sure I would not say that OSU is the better team.

The TCU team I saw today will not run the tables in the Big 12. Too many big games left. Will they make the Championship ? I hope so but after what I saw I am not sold on them. Texas only has one conference loss. How TCU and OSU handle them will likely give us what we need to know.