We like our sports here — or at least I do — to reflect life itself. That is, messy, often humbling, and requiring hours of thankless work, not to mention the virtue of patience. And more often than not it’s decided by who keeps going despite all the setbacks.
It’s imperfect, like TCU senior quarterback Ken Seals was on Tuesday night in a 30-27 overtime victory against Southern California in the Valero Alamo Bowl in San Antonio.
That makes it just perfect.
Seals’ Cinderella story ended with the slipper fitting perfectly. Playing in place of transfer-portal-bound Josh Hoover, Seals, who has played very little as a backup the past two years, led the Frogs back from 10-points down in the last 9½ minutes in the fourth quarter.
His 35-yard touchdown pass to Jeremy Payne, who willed his way to daylight and the winning score in overtime, will be a memory that outlives the box score.
“I’m not processing it. It’s like a movie,” said Seals in the aftermath of his final college football game. “This has just been an unbelievable experience. To finish it in this fashion is more than any guy could dream.
“My mentality was just sell out, it’s your last one, man.”
It was, quite frankly, a thrilling way to end a nine-win season and well worth staying up past my bedtime.
Seals was selected the game’s offensive MVP. His stat line: 29-of-40 for 258 yards with a touchdown passing and another running.
However history and the rest judge TCU’s football team in 2025, these Horned Frogs did college football a favor Tuesday night in offering a blunt rebuttal to bowl cynicism.
“Anybody that says bowls don’t matter didn’t watch this game tonight, because bowls matter,” TCU head coach Sonny Dykes.
TCU appeared to go to San Antonio to do more than merely pay homage to Travis, Bowie, Crockett, and the boys while scarfing down a plate of enchiladas at Mi Tierra.
There was unfinished business to attend to — both as a team and as a representative of the Big 12 — and an opportunity to toss sand in the gears of media pundits who know only what box scores and analytics sheets tell them about the league.
“We had 13 bowl practices, I believe, and never one time did anybody dog it,” said Dykes. “We had some adversity. Your starting quarterback says he’s not going to play in a game. That’s adversity. Everybody stepped right up.
“Everybody said, ‘OK, we got the guy in the building that can do this in Ken, and you have to believe it. The only way you can go out and do what he did today is you have to prepare yourself every single day for two years, and you have to be incredibly unselfish in order to do that, and he did it.”
Seals, a six-year, COVID-season senior who played high school football at Azle and Weatherford, was 2-20 in two-plus seasons as the starter at Vanderbilt. He admittedly came out “rusty” on Tuesday.
“Not going to lie, I kind of forgot how to run a football,” Seals said. “I think I got hit standing up straight and just dropped the football the start of the second half.”
The offense put up a goose egg in the third quarter. We’re not gonna lie — things looked bleak.
But the Frogs chose to continue to keep going. Payne capped an 11-play drive, 75-yard drive with a 5-yard touchdown run with 5:13 left. The Frogs defense held to give the offense another chance, 3 points down with 2:44 left. Seals directed a 13-play, 59-yard drive to set up Kyle Lemmermann’s 27-yard field goal with 2 seconds left to force overtime.
Payne is simply a baller.
In overtime, he took Seals’ short pass in the left flat on third-and-20. The objective was field-goal range for an attempt to tie the game and live another day. Payne, though, didn’t get that memo, managing to maneuver around four defenders, the last missing a tackle, staying inbounds, and then darting down the sideline for the 35-yard game-winning score.
Fire up the partaay bus.
“I’m not surprised that he just went out there and made a bunch of dudes miss. He was doing it all night,” said TCU linebacker Kaleb Elarms-Orr, the game’s defensive MVP. “Shoot, he be shaking me at practice sometimes, too. Once he made that first dude miss, I knew he was gone.”
TCU, like USC, finished 2025 at 9-4. A second consecutive nine-win season wasn’t good enough for many fans, who measure everything against impossible standards, particularly the one set in the 13-1 season of 2022.
The past can both inspire and suffocate.
The Frogs, though, ended this season the right way — with a victory, a prince charming, and momentum. TCU opens next season in Ireland with a rematch against Bill Belichick and his girlfriend.
The bowl season still means something.
“This is important for this university and most importantly these young men, and it matters,” Dykes said. “They treated it that way, and that’s why they came out on the winning edge.
“Look, I want to be in the playoff every year. I know our players want to be in the playoff every year. I know our fans want to be. We’re going to work our tails off to get there.”