It’s an incredible time to be a football fan at TCU. As of writing this article, about three hours before kickoff against Minnesota, TCU is ranked number two in the preseason polls and has been picked by most experts to make the college football playoffs this season. The team has a potential Heisman candidate in quarterback Trevone Boykin, and they have a coach in Gary Patterson who has a career record that is 87 games above .500. There are so many reasons to be excited about this team, and the campus is buzzing with anticipation for the season to start.
I loved walking around campus today and seeing about 95% of our 10,000 students wearing purple. I loved going to Chick-fil-A on Hulen Street and hearing the cashiers say “Go Frogs!” after each order. I hated crying after the loss to Baylor last season, but I loved that a group of very athletically talented TCU students were able to inspire me to care enough to do so.
Coming from New Jersey, I had never experienced the college football craze before I came to TCU. I occasionally would get upset if Rutgers lost a big game, and I enjoyed rooting against Alabama and Ohio State, but I cared way more deeply about the Jets games than I ever thought I could about a college football team. Even when I first came to TCU in 2013, the football hype was nowhere near what it is now because the team was not very good. Yet, somehow, this group of unproven Horned Frogs’ football players were able to string together an incredible season in 2014 that has paved the way for endless possibilities in 2015. And it’s all that anybody at TCU can talk about.
Football can unite a campus, and the TCU players are doing a great job of that right now. I was at the library yesterday, and there was a big group next to me that was working on a project. One of the students started talking about Boykin’s success last year, and then another was talking about TCU’s freshman linebacker, Mike Freeze. Soon, the whole group was talking about TCU football, so I threw in some of my thoughts and joined in the conversation. After that, about seven or eight more people ended up coming and sitting down to talk about the game against Minnesota this season and other pertinent football topics. While this may seem like a mundane story, to me it was exciting because I was able to talk to 18 different people I otherwise wouldn’t have ever talked to just because we had a shared interest in TCU football.
As I said, I had never before had experience with the college football lifestyle, so what is going on at TCU might be commonplace. But, to me, the way an entire campus has rallied around one team is awe-inspiring. I am hoping that TCU will go undefeated and win a national championship, but even if they fall short of their goal, the team has already achieved an incredible victory. They have captivated an entire school and city by playing better than most could have hoped.
In a time where football has been tainted by cheating, drugs, and abuse, it is uplifting to have a team that is creating headlines simply by playing well and bringing a school closer together. I am proud to call myself a Horned Frog, and I hope that everyone, at some point in their lives, gets to experience the joy that I have experienced from being surrounded by fellow Horned Frogs and fans of TCU football. Go Frogs!
