TCU football selected to College Football Playoff: Frogs to face Michigan in Vrbo Fiesta Bowl

TCU+football+players+pose+for+a+photograph+after+learning+they+will+face+Michigan+in+the+College+Football+Playoffs.+%28Micah+Pearce%2FTCU360%29

TCU football players pose for a photograph after learning they will face Michigan in the College Football Playoffs. (Micah Pearce/TCU360)

Video: Micah Pearce, Staff Writer

No. 3 ranked TCU football will make its first College Football Playoff appearance when it faces No. 2 ranked Michigan in the Vrbo Fiesta Bowl on Dec. 31.

TCU is the first school from Texas to make the College Football Playoffs, and the second team with an undergraduate enrollment of less than 15,000 to make the CFP. The other is Notre Dame.

“I love this school and our guys love this school,” said senior quarterback Max Duggan. “We’re going to give everything we’ve got to give this school a championship.”

TCU and Oklahoma are the only Big 12 teams to make the playoff game. The Sooners have made the cut in four seperate occasions: 2015, 2017, 2018 and 2019.

Coming off of Saturday’s loss to Kansas State, head coach Sonny Dykes referred to the playoff game as the start of a new season.

“Now our job is to figure out how to win a playoff game and advance,” said Dykes.

The Frogs were initially picked to finish seventh in the Big 12 pre-season media poll, but the team never let the outside noise get to them.

“Our players have done an incredible job avoiding distraction and didn’t pay much attention to the pre-season ranking,” said Dykes. “Just as the season rolled along we didn’t pay much attention to the college football playoff rankings and we just tried to take it one week at a time.”

The Frogs will face the Michigan Wolverines for the first time in series history. The game, played on New Year’s Eve, will kickoff at 3 p.m. CST and will be televised by ESPN.