TCU is where it wants to be — in Big 12 Conference | College football

FORT WORTH, Texas — After a conference-hopping journey that included two BCS bowl games and three different league titles, Texas Christian is finally where it always wanted to be.

The Horned Frogs are in the Big 12, the conference they were left out of when the Southwest Conference broke up in the mid-1990s.

Now comes the real challenge.

"Our group has to understand, you have not arrived just because we got to the Big 12," TCU coach Gary Patterson said. "Being in the Big 12 doesn't make you special. Winning makes you special. That's how we got back to this point — winning."

TCU has won 24 conference games in a row, winning the last three Mountain West titles outright without a league loss since November 2008. The Frogs have won 50 of their last 55 games overall, including a 13-0 season two years ago when they were Rose Bowl champions and finished No. 2 in the final Associated Press media poll.

UNLV and New Mexico are no longer part of the Frogs' conference schedule. Instead, they will now face on a regular basis the likes of Oklahoma, Texas and West Virginia, like TCU a Big 12 newcomer that was a champion in a different conference the past two seasons.

"We have the talent, and we have the skill and the size to compete with any of those teams," quarterback Casey Pachall said. "It's just being able to deal with them week to week to week."

The Frogs are the only Football Bowl Subdivision team with six 11-victory seasons from the past seven.

This is the season TCU was supposed to be joining the Big East. That changed in October with an invitation to be part of the Big 12, the group the Frogs were excluded from before going to the Western Athletic Conference, Conference USA and the Mountain West.

Notes

• Louisiana State coach Les Miles declined to close the door completely on the possibility, however remote, of cornerback Tyrann Mathieu playing for the Tigers in 2013.

Mathieu, a 2011 Heisman Trophy finalist nicknamed the Honey Badger, was dismissed from the program Friday for what reportedly was the latest of several failed drug tests.

"He will not be on this football team this year — I guarantee that's a fact," Miles said. "So I have no idea beyond that."

• Junior Stephen Morris was named Miami's starting quarterback.

• Guard Brian Thomas and safety Urell Johnson have left the Texas Tech program.

Tech coach Tommy Tuberville said Johnson will transfer to Southern Mississippi.

By The Associated Press