Trevone Boykin and his buddies at TCU have grown tired of hearing about last season, when the Horned Frogs shared the Big 12 title but were left out of the first College Football Playoff.

The second-ranked Horned Frogs finally get to start fresh with an early opener. They are at Minnesota tonight with their highest preseason ranking ever.

“The talk is cheap and I’m ready to just go out there and play the game,” said Boykin, considered an early Heisman Trophy front-runner after finishing fourth in the voting last season.

Funny how perceptions of TCU and its senior quarterback have changed in a year’s time. Last August, coach Gary Patterson’s team was coming off a 4-8 season and putting in a new up-tempo offense with new co-coordinators. There was uncertainty, at least publicly, about whether Boykin would even be the starting quarterback before what was a record-setting season.

“Our mindset really hasn’t changed,” Boykin said this week.