• The KillerFrogs

Houston Chronicle: Texas, Oklahoma reach out to SEC about joining conference

Nick Danger

Active Member
I'd like to believe that, but I don't. Too many think TCU is the "small, church school that can't fill their stadium." Maybe some re-education will be required to counterbalance that viewpoint to the PAC decision-makers.

I'm not 100% confident that if the PAC "takes' four from the "leftovers" that we beat out all the others and make the cut. Yea it'd be a sad day if the PAC took TT, OkSt, Baylor and KSU/KU or ISU.
Just a couple of counter-argument points. First, TCU also has a reputation as a school that "travels well", as evidenced by our relatively well-off alumni and our Rose Bowl game. Secondly, There are a lot of alumni and parents of current TCU students that live in California, that would also tend to show up to California away games.
 
Just a couple of counter-argument points. First, TCU also has a reputation as a school that "travels well", as evidenced by our relatively well-off alumni and our Rose Bowl game. Secondly, There are a lot of alumni and parents of current TCU students that live in California, that would also tend to show up to California away games.

It’s funny how perceptions work… TCU fans thought we traveled well for the Rose Bowl, everybody else thought Wisconsin bought up a bunch of our tickets.

Attendance and a large traveling fan base that has any material effect on ticket sales is not one of our selling points, sorry.
 

Big Frog II

Active Member
It’s funny how perceptions work… TCU fans thought we traveled well for the Rose Bowl, everybody else thought Wisconsin bought up a bunch of our tickets.

Attendance and a large traveling fan base that has any material effect on ticket sales is not one of our selling points, sorry.
Well we did travel well to the Rose Bowl and the Fiesta Bowl. Wisconsin did have a ton of fans there, but they hadn't been there in 20 years and Northern fans will do anything to get out of the cold. See Florida. As Gary has said many times, our perception out of our state is much, much better than in it.
 

Wexahu

Full Member
Well we did travel well to the Rose Bowl and the Fiesta Bowl. Wisconsin did have a ton of fans there, but they hadn't been there in 20 years and Northern fans will do anything to get out of the cold. See Florida. As Gary has said many times, our perception out of our state is much, much better than in it.

Ummm......Wisconsin played in the Rose Bowl in 1994, 1999 and 2000, so they had actually been there twice in the previous 12 years. Our Rose Bowl was like a once-in-a-lifetime experience for us.

I appreciate the effort here, but if you want to say TCU fans travel well (relative to other schools being discussed), I'm not sure I'm buying that one. It's not one of our strong suits, that's just a fact. It never will be for a small, mostly regional private school.
 

Froggish

Active Member
Well we did travel well to the Rose Bowl and the Fiesta Bowl. Wisconsin did have a ton of fans there, but they hadn't been there in 20 years and Northern fans will do anything to get out of the cold. See Florida. As Gary has said many times, our perception out of our state is much, much better than in it.

I think his point is just that in relation to conference realignment, its has no baring on why another conference would or wouldn't want us as a member. Unfortunately it doesn't move the needle on our media value which is really the what is driving everything. Nobody cares if we have a good football team, travel well, or even where we are located (which mattered greatly 15 years ago). Those things are all a distant second to our brand value.
 
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TCUdirtbag

Active Member
Ummm......Wisconsin played in the Rose Bowl in 1994, 1999 and 2000, so they had actually been there twice in the previous 12 years. Our Rose Bowl was like a once-in-a-lifetime experience for us.

I appreciate the effort here, but if you want to say TCU fans travel well (relative to other schools being discussed), I'm not sure I'm buying that one. It's not one of our strong suits, that's just a fact. It never will be for a small, mostly regional private school.

I’ll argue that as a percentage of alums/students, TCU does extremely well. For example, stadium is 4.5x our student body. UT’s is only 2x theirs.

But other conferences don’t do these proportional adjustments. They just look at raw numbers.

It’s ok to pump sunshine but also good to be rational.
 

Eight

Member
I’ll argue that as a percentage of alums/students, TCU does extremely well. For example, stadium is 4.5x our student body. UT’s is only 2x theirs.

But other conferences don’t do these proportional adjustments. They just look at raw numbers.

It’s ok to pump sunshine but also good to be rational.

weird how a number of successful businesses also focus on the raw numbers of money coming in versus what percentage of our loyal customers are repeat customers even if that numbers is still smaller than first time or occasional buyers
 

CountryFrog

Active Member
I’ll argue that as a percentage of alums/students, TCU does extremely well. For example, stadium is 4.5x our student body. UT’s is only 2x theirs.

But other conferences don’t do these proportional adjustments. They just look at raw numbers.

It’s ok to pump sunshine but also good to be rational.
Exactly. Everyone who says we traveled great to the Rose Bowl is absolutely correct. We had an amazing turnout and the atmosphere was fantastic as a result.

The other side of that is that TCU's version of traveling great in raw numbers is still a pretty small percentage of what most of the bigger schools do.

But also as someone else pointed out none of this actually matters for the purposes of conference realignment. The number of fans you bring to away games or bowl games has zero value to a conference. If fan following was the end all then we would've never gotten into the Big 12 to begin with but thankfully it's not.
 

Bob Sugar

Active Member
Exactly. Everyone who says we traveled great to the Rose Bowl is absolutely correct. We had an amazing turnout and the atmosphere was fantastic as a result.

The other side of that is that TCU's version of traveling great in raw numbers is still a pretty small percentage of what most of the bigger schools do.

But also as someone else pointed out none of this actually matters for the purposes of conference realignment. The number of fans you bring to away games or bowl games has zero value to a conference. If fan following was the end all then we would've never gotten into the Big 12 to begin with but thankfully it's not.
On field success should count for something. I would ne shocked if fewer people nationally watched BYU-Coastal Carolina last year than UNC-Duke or Tennesse-Arkansas
 

CryptoMiner

Active Member
E7QSekNWUAA7AQn
 

Hoosierfrog

Tier 1
Ummm......Wisconsin played in the Rose Bowl in 1994, 1999 and 2000, so they had actually been there twice in the previous 12 years. Our Rose Bowl was like a once-in-a-lifetime experience for us.

I appreciate the effort here, but if you want to say TCU fans travel well (relative to other schools being discussed), I'm not sure I'm buying that one. It's not one of our strong suits, that's just a fact. It never will be for a small, mostly regional private school.

We travelled well to Atlanta and Phoenix too…
 
I'd like to believe that, but I don't. Too many think TCU is the "small, church school that can't fill their stadium." Maybe some re-education will be required to counterbalance that viewpoint to the PAC decision-makers.

I'm not 100% confident that if the PAC "takes' four from the "leftovers" that we beat out all the others and make the cut. Yea it'd be a sad day if the PAC took TT, OkSt, Baylor and KSU/KU or ISU.
The people who are actually involved in these decisions -- university presidents, conference commissioners, and TV execs -- know that TCU is not a "small, church school that can't fill their stadium." That's an uninformed fans' perspective.

That being said, TCU could be left out in the cold again for reasons entirely different from what you have described. This whole mess may be a push to bifurcate college football into around a 32 team league, with the rest just playing for "fun."

This whole episode will likely destroy college football (as if it hasn't already). I'm honestly more disheartened by that than what it does to TCU, even though they go hand-in-hand. Destroying college football by making it a small, exclusive, blue-blood only group not only destroys TCU, it tears apart 100+ years of tradition, and quite frankly, a unique piece of our American culture. No other country has a university-based sports league like ours.

If anything, the best we can hope for is for the leaders at places like Indiana, Illinois, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Pittsburgh, Arizona, Arizona State, Utah, Colorado, Minnesota, Maryland, Missouri, Purdue, Rutgers, Kansas State, Oklahoma State, West Virginia, Syracuse, NC State, Louisville, etc. to realize that when this all shakes out, some of them may be sitting on the outside, too. I leave out places like Oregon State/Washington State/Cal because, quite frankly, I don't think they care. It will most definitely have an effect on the other privates like Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, Northwestern, Boston College, Baylor, but they have very little influence over this.
 

CryptoMiner

Active Member
Not good news, but just talk

Pac-12 commissioner Greg Kliavkoff: “We believe the move by Texas and Oklahoma strengthens our unique position as the only Power 5 conference with teams in the Mountain and Pacific time zones.”
 

Wexahu

Full Member
We travelled well to Atlanta and Phoenix too…

Yes, we did.

But I don't think we travelled any better than a Kansas State, Texas Tech, Iowa State, Oklahoma State, or Baylor would have. In fact, I'd guess all of those schools save for Baylor would have had more demand for tickets and "travelled" a bit better than we did.

It's simply a numbers game.
 

Eight

Member
Not good news, but just talk

Pac-12 commissioner Greg Kliavkoff: “We believe the move by Texas and Oklahoma strengthens our unique position as the only Power 5 conference with teams in the Mountain and Pacific time zones.”

correct me if i am wrong, but even when texas and ou were in the big 12 the pac was the only conference with teams in the mountain and pacific time zone so nothing has changed
 
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