TCU Football: SMU gives Frogs a scare in battle for Iron Skillet
3. Never take a rivalry game for granted
Entering the 2018 edition of the series, TCU had won 16 of the last 18 contests. Their two losses in that span came by a combined total of 18 points. The average margin of victory in those 16 victories was just under 27 points in favor of the Frogs. To call this rivalry onesided wouldn’t have been an understatement.
But then Friday night happened. Injuries, weather, weird bounces and good ‘ol fashioned hate all play a role in every football game. The animosity of a rivalry game, though, takes that intensity and injects a sizable amount of chaos. That’s where anything can happen, and this time it did.
An SMU team, which was less than a week removed by a bludgeoning by CUSA’s North Texas, was within one score of the No. 16 team in the nation at halftime. In any other circumstance that seems unthinkable, but it’s par for the course as far as rivalries are concerned.
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TCU ended up winning this game in runaway fashion, but when the halftime whistle sounded it could have gone either way. That’s just how rivalry games work.