In the Playoff era, TCU is 1 of 1.

Since the 247sports composite rankings were tracked beginning in 2015, the lowest-ranked team to make it to a national championship was 2015 Clemson, which was No. 13. That is, until No. 32 TCU crashed the party.

The Playoff era began in 2014. Since then, no team made it to the national championship after starting the year outside the top 15 of the AP Poll. That is, until preseason unranked TCU crashed the party.

Also, no first-year coach made it to the College Football Playoff National Championship. That is, until Sonny Dykes crashed the party.

There really is no Playoff era comp for 2022 TCU. That’s pretty clear.

But if you go to the last year of the BCS era, there’s a clear comp, and it’s 2013 Auburn.

Think about it.

Sonny Dykes is the first Year 1 head coach to reach the national championship since Gus Malzahn, who took over an Auburn program that wasn’t even bowl eligible the previous year. That’s similar to Dykes, who took over a 5-7 team that saw Gary Patterson, AKA the guy with a statue on campus, resign midseason.

That’s why neither team entered the season ranked in the AP Top 25. Shoot, neither team cracked the poll until October.

It probably didn’t help either team that both entered with murky quarterback situations. Nick Marshall was the converted defensive back who spent the previous season playing quarterback at Garden City Community College while Max Duggan was the backup who lost a fall camp battle to Chandler Morris. Both Marshall and Duggan proved to be stars who exceeded even the wildest of expectations with their offensive-minded, first-year head coaches.

Speaking of wild, that’s really where these teams’ DNA have the most similarities.

Close games? Ha. That’s an understatement.

Check out the side-by-side:

Title berth seasons
2013 Auburn
2022 TCU
1-score games
7
7
+3-score P5 games
3
3
Average margin vs. P5
+7.6
+14.4
Games tied/trailing in 4Q
6
5

And both had “OK, now is when the fun ends” games late in the year that they won as underdogs to keep their national title dreams alive. For Auburn, obviously, that was the Kick-6 against Alabama and for TCU, it was against a Michigan team who was expected to finally get over the hump and reach the national championship.

Sure, TCU didn’t have a closing play as iconic as the Kick-6 or even the Prayer at Jordan-Hare, though I’d argue the fire drill field goal to knock off Baylor was perhaps as chaotic of a finish as we had in the sport in 2022.

What’s not debatable is that 2013 Auburn and 2022 TCU learned not just how to operate amidst chaos, but rather, how to thrive amidst chaos. That’s why their first-year coaches took home plenty of national coach of the year honors. Well, and the fact that everyone was just waiting on them to lose and ultimately put the kibosh on the storybook season after starting unranked.

As significant underdogs in the national championship, Auburn’s story didn’t come to an end until the final seconds of that game in Southern California (another similarity). It begs the question. Will the same be true for TCU? If the answer is “yes,” I suppose that means this Georgia team will play the role of 2013 Florida State. That is, the unbeaten team that enters the national championship as a significant favorite, only to find itself in a 60-minute game.

In some ways, it sounds ridiculous to predict that Georgia will struggle to distance itself from TCU when the Dawgs blew out 5 of their 6 opponents currently ranked in the AP Top 25. But in other ways, it sounds ridiculous to predict that TCU, in Game No. 15, is about to get blown out for the first time when it faced 12 Power 5 opponents and not a single one could even beat the Horned Frogs by multiple scores.

That’s actually an area where TCU has a leg up on 2013 Auburn, which lost a 14-point game at LSU in September that was never really in doubt. TCU never did that. However, TCU also is the first team since 1975 to win 7 consecutive games by 10 points or less.

We’ll play the results, of course. If TCU plays a 60-minute game, we’ll say, “see, this is what TCU does.” If Georgia blows out TCU, we’ll say “see, this was inevitable.”

In reality, though, the only result that wouldn’t feel inevitable is if TCU blew out Georgia, AKA the team that won 32 of its past 33 games with the lone loss being a game in which Bryce Young played the most impressive game of his career in the 2021 SEC Championship.

What feels far more likely than the Horned Frogs trucking Georgia is a postgame quote like this from a TCU player after a down-to-the-wire game on Monday night:

“It felt storybook again,” Auburn defensive tackle Gabe Wright said after the FSU loss at the end of the 2013 season (via ESPN). “It really felt like we were going to bring it out again. We’re just on the other end of the stick. It’s usually us going out on the field and celebrating. It’s been a long time since we had an ‘L’ in this locker room.”

(OK, so I guess TCU wouldn’t say that last sentence because obviously, the Horned Frogs lost a thriller in the Big 12 Championship, but you get my point.)

So far, 2022 TCU is the closest thing we’ve seen to a team recreating Auburn’s magic in 2013. And maybe “magic” might be seen as disrespectful because both teams were far more than just lucky, but there’s a certain bit of magic that comes with winning nail-biter games.

Georgia learned that first-hand on Saturday when Ohio State gave the defending champs everything they could handle. Perhaps TCU will follow suit. Or dare I say, maybe the Horned Frogs will do what 2013 Auburn couldn’t. That is, get the defensive stand to win it all.

One final chapter in the storybook season awaits. Georgia’s task is simple.

Put the kibosh on TCU’s party-crashing ways.