The game that got me hooked on TCU football

[TCU2002]

Oklahoma vs TCU, Home Opener in 1998.

I was a freshman at TCU and the Oklahoma Sooners came to town for the first home game of the year. The Frogs had defeated Iowa State on the road the previous week in the first game of the Dennis Franchione era. I was in the TCU band, and any apathy about TCU football was shaken loose by the sight and sound of 15,000 OU fans booing the band's rendition of "Texas, Our Texas" during the Pre-Game show.

It was a heartbreaking loss, but I had never seen any highlights of that game until coming across this video on YouTube, taken from the OU coaches show:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoVqW_GLC8o

Observations:

1) Our team speed from then to now is night and day

2) The seeds of Patterson's defensive greatness already visible. This was only his second game as TCU's Defensive Coordinator, and we held a more talented team scorless until late in the 4th quarter. If the offense had been able to break through from inside the 5 back in the first half, we win the game.

3) Our fans wear purple now. Thank God. The student section is embarassing.

4) Field painting is so much better now. The Frog logo at midfield was weak sauce in those days.

 

[SnoSki]

Mine was also TCU vs Oklahoma in 2005, the one where we beat Adrian Peterson up in Norman. Granted, it was the first TCU game I ever watched as it was my second or third week on campus, but it got me hooked nonetheless.

Older guys kept telling me to not get used to winning because the Frogs were perennial bottom dwellers.. this was just a flash in the pan... yadda yadda. Glad to see we're still on a roll!!

 

[Frog Wild]

Mine was TCU vs. SMU, 1976 at the Cotton Bowl, the first TCU game I ever saw. We got to our seats just in time to watch SMU return the opening kick-off for a touchdown.
The Frogs put up a fight, but the 35-minute+ (I don't think I'm kidding) Jerry Lewis halftime show killed whatever momentum the Frogs may have built and they lost that season opener ... and every other game that year.
Some how, some way, I was hooked.

 

[MCFROG III]

TCU vs UT, 1967. PD Shabay, Ferguson, Thornton beating Chris Gilbert, Ted Koy, Bill Bradley in Austin the year before I enrolled at TCU, 24-17.

 

[Stiff Arm Frog]

My first TCU game was the season opener at Oklahoma in 2006. I was a senior in high school, really didn't pay any attention to college ball at all (I was a Cowboys fan. Ugh). I was flipping through the channels and came into the game somewhere in the second or third quarter, and surprised to see that OU was losing. I didn't know much about TCU but I knew they weren't exactly perennial contenders, and I was happy to watch any Texas team put the Sooners in their place. Well, I watched the rest of the game and loved what I saw.

Later that year I did my college applications and made sure TCU was on the list, and a few months after that I showed up on campus! Man, if I hadn't watch that game, who knows where I would have gone. Probably Trinity down in San Antonio. Ugh.

 

[joefrog91]

It was sometime in 1984. I was a Freshman in high school. I remember following how the team was doing all the way up to the Bluebonnet Bowl. I was so disappointmented when they lost. But I knew I didn't want to stay and go to Baylor. I wanted to go to TCU.

 

[SFA Frog]

My first game was CYF Day in 1994 when I was in sixth grade. I don't even know who TCU played. I came to CYF Day every year but my senior year (2000 season, go figure) and a few years I came to other games too. I know I also came to watch TCU play Vanderbilt in 1998 because my preacher was a graduate of both schools. I didn't actually start paying attention to football until my freshman year (2001 season) and that was because I was in the band.

 

[Tom Brown]

Tcu vs Texas. 1984. SuperFrog and the cheerleaders came to my elementary school to have a Beat Texas Pep Rally.
Then the game ignited my passion for the Frogs and hatred of the whorns.

 

[NubomTurk]

November 20, 1999

TCU was my hometown team, but I hadn't followed them closely until I started dating a certain TCU alum and die-hard Frog fan, the not-yet-but-future Mrs. Turk. I liked Dennis Franchione because he had turned the UNM program around when I lived in Albuquerque. The UTEP coach had been talking smack in the week leading up to the game, and the Miners came into the Carter that day full of confidence. I came into the Carter that day on a date.

The Miners, the NCAA record books, and I were introduced to a certain Mr. Tomlinson that day. I can still hear the band playing "Who Let the Frogs Out."

"Damn," I thought to myself. "These guys have some potential!"

In retrospect, that was a bit of an understatement.

 

[Pharm Frog]

TCU v Louisville in 2003 was my defining moment... Must have been a weekday game because I was attending a sales meeting at the Swan and Dolphin out in Orlando. Was in the middle of my EMBA program at the time and was watching with some sales colleagues at the ESPN Zone on the boardwalk. They were doing live radio programming on-site and some broadcast hack started making fun of TCU on his roving mike just before kick-off: Typical stuff like Christians being fed to the lions, small time school with no following which had gotten lucky in landing Ladanian, overrated, etc.

Then he made a statement that may have cost him plenty that evening. He tried to poll the audience to see who would be cheering for Louisville and who would be for the Frogs. I was pretty alone in my support, and not really interested in what the guy had to say. That is until he announced free beer for everyone in the bar if there was anyone in the Zone that could prove that they attended TCU. An unfortunate miscalculation on his part.... For one of the only times in my life, I was the most popular guy in a bar...and it had to be when I was 35-years-old, 60 pounds overweight, gray haired, and married. Better late than never I guess. And...I don't even drink, but they graciously comped my Diet Cokes.

The whole place turned into Frog fans (at least for the night), and I acquired a nickname: "Old School". I think we may have given up something like 1,000 yards that evening, but when the field goal attempt clanked off the crossbar as time expired, I was hooked big time.

 

[FrogAbroad]

September 24, 1949, an 8PM kickoff. The Horned Frogs hosted the Oklahoma A&M Cowboys at AGCS. I sat with my parents on the west side and I watched my first-ever football game. I didn't really know what was going on but it was thrilling...exciting...and I was hooked on football for life, especially TCU football.

In subsequent years our family followed the Frogs from Section UE in the late upper deck (RIP). As a freshmant at TCU I was even a regular on the AGCS turf...as a trainer. When I married and moved back to Fort Worth after graduate school my wife and I bought season tickets...Section UE again.

Franccione and Patterson have restored success and respectability to TCU footbal, and for that I'm going to be grateful the rest of my days. But it was Dutch and Abe who made me a Horned Frog.

Oh...incidentally...my first game was a 33-33 tie.

 

[halfwaytoheaven]

TCU v Louisville in 2003 was my defining moment... Must have been a weekday game because I was attending a sales meeting at the Swan and Dolphin out in Orlando. Was in the middle of my EMBA program at the time and was watching with some sales colleagues at the ESPN Zone on the boardwalk. They were doing live radio programming on-site and some broadcast hack started making fun of TCU on his roving mike just before kick-off: Typical stuff like Christians being fed to the lions, small time school with no following which had gotten lucky in landing Ladanian, overrated, etc.

Then he made a statement that may have cost him plenty that evening. He tried to poll the audience to see who would be cheering for Louisville and who would be for the Frogs. I was pretty alone in my support, and not really interested in what the guy had to say. That is until he announced free beer for everyone in the bar if there was anyone in the Zone that could prove that they attended TCU. An unfortunate miscalculation on his part.... For one of the only times in my life, I was the most popular guy in a bar...and it had to be when I was 35-years-old, 60 pounds overweight, gray haired, and married. Better late than never I guess. And...I don't even drink, but they graciously comped my Diet Cokes.

The whole place turned into Frog fans (at least for the night), and I acquired a nickname: "Old School". I think we may have given up something like 1,000 yards that evening, but when the field goal attempt clanked off the crossbar as time expired, I was hooked big time.

I also got a free drink out of that game. I was watching at a bar I frequented with some coworkers. I got so carried away watching the back and forth in that game that after UL hit the crossbar on the field goal try the bartender offered me one on the house.

The first TCU game I watched at all was the Sun Bowl. I was a senior in high school. I walked into a room and saw that the game was on TV. "Huh, TCU's in a bowl game. How about that," I thought to myself, "Oh yeah, I applied there. Go Horned Frogs, I guess."

I don't remember exactly when I got hooked. I remember the first game I attended was Arizona in '99 as a member of the marching band. It rained. We lost. I briefly considered quitting.

The '99 UTEP game is probably a good one. I had picked out one guy on the Miners bench to heckle throughout the game. At one point TCU got down to the UTEP goal line. I informed my victim that the next play was going to be LT over the top for a touchdown, and they should probably go try to stop him. It was, and they did not.

 

[hometown frog]

... but when the field goal attempt clanked off the crossbar as time expired, I was hooked big time.

I miss ole Whitewolf......

 

[kgoverton]

It was 1969. I don't remember who the game was against, I was in sixth grade. My uncle took me to the game. The next year I had two older cousins who had just been discharged from the army and were living nearby. They made sure that I got to go to every home game that year. I learned a lot about being a fan from them and my uncle (I owe them a lot for that). I have been hooked for life. Even though I graduated from the other school in Fort Worth, most of my co-workers think I went to TCU because of my assortment of TCU shirts, screen savers, and what not.

 

[AEAfrog]

I was hooked after the 2005 win over OU in Norman. That was my first game as a TCU student. I've been a TCU football addict ever since.

 

[Limp Lizard]

Mine was the 1963 game at ACS against Kansas: my first college game. The atmosphere and the crowd noise was so different from high school. TCU beat Kansas (with Gayle Sayers) that night. Still remember it. Of course that was a very eventful year with the Kennedy assassination and the the wonderful Lee-Breckenridge high school playoff game in San Antonio (for many years known as the greatest HS game of all time; I was in SA for thanksgiving and saw the game on TV). And the longhorns won the NC, beating Staubach-led Navy in the Cotton bowl. Real roller-coaster of an autumn, 1963 was.

 

[docaj]

Mine was 1999. Even though I had been a small time fan before and was trying to get into TCU out of high school (which didn't happen) that game changed it for me. I ended up going to SWT when Fran became the head coach there. I was watching the game against Arizona and noticed how TCU's uniforms had changed from when I was in high school and how his offense had evolved since he was at SWT, so I started diagraming some of the plays and took them to our coordinater the following Monday (yes, what do I know) just because I was so freaked out with it. And since then I have been hooked.

 

[sous vide]

I miss ole Whitewolf......

+1

Was with the frogs by radio and this board that night.

 

[Dutch]

TCU-SMU 1967, Cotton Bowl. The Frogs had beaten Texas a week or two before and my Dad brought me over from our home in Shreveport to see my first Frog game at 11 years old. An ex letterman from our church came with us. At the ticket booth in front of the Cotton Bowl he introduced me to Mr. David O'Brien. He was the first person I ever met at a Frog game ! Jerry LeVias and SMU beat us that day to end our 4 game winning streak and Fred Taylor's first season at 6-4. Our letterman friend knew the coaches and we went around to the tunnel at the CB and they escorted us into the locker room. I remember PD Shabay had injured his knee and was talking to reporters. I met all of the guys that I had been following from news clippings (because my mom and dad were TCU alums we got a Star Telegram from a newstand in downtown Shreveport on Sundays).

I gave my life to the Frogs that day and Jesus has been trying to catch up ever since !

 

[TCU2002]

Well, I meant this thread to be a conversation about the 1998 TCU-Oklahoma game specifically, but it has been cool to read everyone's "conversion" story.

The interception-fumble during OU's last drive was total heartbreak. From "game over, we win" to "oh crap, they are going to be able to kick a FG to win" in the span of 1 second. It took me a long time to get over that one.