E-mail Pete Fiutak 
Follow me … @PeteFiutak 

It’s amazing how much things improve when you have an offense. 

When TCU joined the Big 12, it brought along the defense that was good enough to win the Rose Bowl and dominate whatever conference the program was in on a yearly basis, but the O wasn’t up to snuff in a conference that lives on terrific attacks. 

No one was questioning the defense coming into the season, but was the offense finally going to be along for the ride? Was Trevone Boykin really going to be the main man at quarterback again, or was Matt Joeckel going to be the one to finally step up the passing game? 

As it turns out, Boykin can do a little of everything on a more consistent basis – throwing for 318 yards and running for a team-high 77 yards in the 37-33 win over OU – and he now he has proven he can come through with the big performance in the big game. 

But just in case you forgot, TCU’s defense showed it was going to be a part of the fun, too, with a pick six from Paul Dawson to take the lead early in the fourth, and then clampdown after clampdown over most of the quarter to seal the first truly important win as a Big 12er. 

TCU committed too many penalties (12) and turnovers (3), and suffered a massive special teams gaffe on the blocked extra point for a score after the Dawson play, but when you can move the ball and score points, there’s a margin for error. 

And now TCU has shown that it has arrived. 

E-mail Rich Cirminiello 
Follow me … @RichCirminiello 

Make room for TCU. The Big 12 isn’t a two-team race after all. 

Baylor and Oklahoma. Oklahoma and Baylor. Throughout the entire preseason, the Bears and the Sooners were the only Big 12 programs given a crack of winning the conference in 2014. But on a most electrifying and wacky Saturday afternoon of football, the Horned Frogs improbably propelled into the discussion with a stunning upset of the nation’s No. 4 team. 

Hats off to TCU QB Trevone Boykin who outplayed the far more heralded Trevor Knight, while continuing to flourish in the program’s new up-tempo, no-huddle attack. The junior was again the centerpiece of the Horned Frog attack, accounting for two touchdowns and almost 400 yards of total offense. 

It wasn’t long ago that conventional wisdom had Boykin losing the battle with Texas A&M Matt Joeckel. But conventional wisdom has no place in college football, as the Week 6 afternoon games proved. 

Boykin is a gutty competitor, a microcosm of Gary Patterson’s team. Oklahoma? The Sooners still have enough talent to run the table, win the league and capture a playoff spot. But this is a Bob Stoops-led team, so no one ought to be especially floored that OU lost a game it wasn’t supposed to, just when it looked as if it might be one of the country’s unbeatable forces.