LOS ANGELES—Did Kirk Herbstreit misspoke? If you watch a replay of the 2011 Rose Bowl — which through Dec. 31 could have been the biggest win in TCU history — ESPN’s college football analyst mentions the positive momentum the Horned Frogs could porter by beating Wisconsin in their new conference, the Big East.
Check the record books and you won’t find any evidence that TCU ever played in the Great East. But Herbstreit was right.
For 10 months, the Frogs received a ticket to join this league – their fifth in 16 years, after Mountain West, Conference USA, Western Athletic and Southwest. They were a geographical aberration clinging to an Eastern Time Zone Consortium, a vagrant school wandering the country looking for a place to play top football. But before this forced marriage to the Big East is consummated, the golden ticket to join the Big 12 has arrived.
Today, on the cusp of TCU (13-1) taking on Georgia (14-0) in Monday’s College Football Playoff National Championship Game, everything seems surreal. The Frogs are the pivotal member of a Power 5 league that shunned them in the 1990s, forcing their stay. Big 12 freshman commissioner Brett Yormark circled Saturday’s media day, enjoying the glow of the conference’s first appearance in the CFP title game, and some observers weren’t wasting any time. seen how little the league wanted to do with TCU less than 30 years ago.
“Nobody likes not being invited,” TCU faculty representative Joe Helmick told the Fort Worth Star Telegram on February 25, 1994, the day the demise of the Southwest Conference was finalized and membership was fixed in what would be the Big 12. Members of the Big Eight (Colorado, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State) added four SWC teams (Baylor, Texas, Texas A&M and Texas Tech). Four others were thrown to the sidewalk (Houston, Rice, SMU and TCU).
TCU defeated Michigan in the Fiesta Bowl in its first college football playoff semifinal appearance.
Ross D. Franklin/AP
After spending nearly all of the 1960s, 70s, 80s and early 90s as the punching bag for much of the rest of the Lone Star State, TCU was off on its multi-conference odyssey.
TCU became part of the 16-team quagmire that was WAC in 1996, with coach Pat Sullivan resigning the following season in what was a 1-10 disaster. Fan apathy was deep enough at this time that TCU student Cody Reynolds recalled being able to stretch out in the student section with his feet up on the row of bleachers in front of him and his back stretched out. in the row behind, with no one around.
“My buddies used to stay in the dorm on game days and watch Big Ten games on TV,” says Reynolds, who has gone 13 straight years without missing a home game and attends at least one. game on the road per year.
Sullivan’s only significant contribution to the outing: signing a running back from Rosebud, Texas named LaDanian Tomlinson. Sullivan was replaced by Dennis Franchione, who put Tomlinson to work and turned the program around. In 2000, Tomlinson’s senior season, the Frogs were 10-2 and WAC champions, but that gave them nothing better than a Mobile Bowl bid and a game against South Mississippi.
When Franchione left after that season for Alabama, some TCU players argued for offensive coordinator Mike Schultz to replace him, but athletic director Eric Hyman opted for defensive coordinator Gary Patterson. It would be a crucial choice.
With a new coach, TCU entered a new league, C-USA, which was not necessarily voluntary. The 16-team WAC proved to be an unwieldy creation, so eight schools split off to form the Mountain West. TCU, located in the central time zone while the other members were in the Pacific or the Mountain, was again not invited. After going 6–6 the first season in C-USA, Patterson established his credentials in 2002 by going 10–2 and beating Colorado State in the Liberty Bowl. It was the first of 11 double-digit winning seasons under Patterson, who became the greatest coach in school history and today has a statue of himself outside Amon G Stadium Carter.
“We started realizing pretty quickly that when it comes to training, GP was smarter than your guy,” Reynolds says.
Patterson’s early success helped TCU enter Mountain West in 2005, as the league wisely recognized the value of a presence in Texas. During this time, beginning under Hyman and continuing under his successors as DAs, the school embarked on an ambitious series of athletic improvements.
“Everyone knows about the financial commitment, but I’m talking about an emotional commitment,” says Brian Estridge, the radio voice of TCU football since the late 1990s. “These people love the place. They were ready to do whatever it took – I’m not just talking about finances, I’m talking about using relationships. It is deeply rooted. They are not a flash in the pan. He sweated over a long period of time. They really watered it down.
New facilities have been built. Old facilities have been upgraded (including a jaw-dropping transformation of Amon G. Carter Stadium.) Staff have been added. The city of Fort Worth was aggressively recruited to partner with the school in building the fan base – with low enrollment and a small alumni base, there was a need for “t-shirt fans,” as Estridge puts it. Sitting atop a goldmine of talent in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, it all started to fall into place.
TCU is currently the largest college football program in Texas.
Kevin Jairaj / USA TODAY Sports
Boise State got a lot of attention as the darling of the Power 5 underdog, but it’s safe to say that TCU was better. While winning the Mountain West three straight seasons from 2009 to 2011, the Frogs went 36-3 and won that Rose Bowl. It was around this time that the school agreed to join the Big East, which would have been difficult, but fate intervened on their behalf. The Big 12 began to fracture – Nebraska moved to the Big Ten, Colorado to the Pac-12, Missouri and Texas A&M to the SEC. Looking for new stability, the league saw a school in its backyard that had positioned itself to become a member of Power 5.
“They were desperate to get back into the Big 12,” Estridge explained. “They felt rejected, they felt looked down on, but it was probably the best thing that could have happened. It was a wake-up call. Hyman came and had to rebuild the infrastructure, as he called it, because it was so bad. Once he built it, you had a foundation and he could go from there.
“It was also about being opportunistic and not being afraid to change. These guys were willing to take risks. You always hear, dress for the job you want, not the job you got. TCU has always done this – they always dressed for the job they wanted and treated athletics like they were in the Big 12, even when they weren’t in the Big 12. they wanted to be and never lost sight of it. North Star. The Big 12 was the North Star.
There was a two-year adjustment to the competitive level, and then TCU started winning big again. The Frogs went 12-1 in 2014 but were snubbed by the first College Football Playoff Selection Committee, dropping from No. 3 to No. 5 after winning their last game by 52 points. The team that took its place in the bracket: Ohio State, which won everything.
“I hate Ohio State,” Reynolds says. “They took our national championship. I will never forgive them for that.
But the team that Reynolds and most TCU fans hate the most is Texas. The Longhorns were part of the movement that broke up the Southwest Conference and were seen as a high-maintenance Big 12 colleague. Now Texas and Oklahoma are heading to the Southeastern Conference, which has unsettled the Big 12 and brought old fears to the surface for TCU.
“Owning UT was the first job,” Reynolds says of TCU’s 7-2 record against Texas since 2014. “Texas and OU tried to mess it up, so it was nice to see those two lame out of the conference.”
Meanwhile, the Horned Frogs are touting themselves as Texas football’s current flagship program. It still takes some getting used to at the Lone Star State, where TCU had 31 losing seasons between 1960 and 1997. The slow progression to full respect irritates more than a few people at TCU.
“Sometimes in the past you felt like you were a bigger name or more respected outside of Texas,” says Mark Cohen, TSU’s associate athletic director for strategic and football communications, now in his 18th year. at school. “I think that’s starting to change now. I think that playoff appearance changed our program forever.
TCU’s past has created a Cinderella-like storyline around this team – the “UnderFrogs” – but the present shows a program with plenty of muscle.
“It’s a different place,” Cohen says. “Even when we won the Rose Bowl, we were kind of this cute little underdog, the little school that could. We don’t see ourselves that way anymore. We are a legitimate Power 5 institution. Look at our resources, our commitment, the recruiting we do. People who set foot on our campus who have never been there before, they are blown away. People want to be here now. We have guys here.
In addition to the guys on the pitch, there will be plenty of purple in the stands at SoFi Stadium on Monday. For a small school, turnout is important. No one connected to TCU wants to miss this, especially those who remember wandering the multi-conference wilderness for years.
“We checked a lot of boxes,” Reynolds says. “We have one left to check.”
.