TCU Athletics
TCU slammed the door shut on Oklahoma on Tuesday.
TCU formally kicked off its yearlong sesquicentennial celebration on Tuesday the Fort Worth way.
We drank to it. Well, not the way Charlie Sheen or perhaps a fraternity kegger would do it, but rather a toast by Chancellor Victor Boschini, who called the gathering at a reception at the Brown-Lupton University Union to raise its glasses and drink together in tribute to the glorious past of the university and its future.
Hear! Hear! We all clinked in wholehearted agreement.
And it wasn’t just any wine I was drinking, either. Rather, a special blend called the “TCU 150,” a cabernet sauvignon made specially for the occasion of TCU’s 150th birthday, all manifested from grapes grown in the vineyard of Saarloos and Sons of California. That’s the same Saarloos family who has given us Kirk Saarloos in service to the TCU baseball program.
He’s the coach, and it goes without saying that when you can bring this kind of product to the party, you’ve provided yourself job security.
From there guests toured a fantastic exhibit, “The Story of Us: An Immersive TCU Experience,” which took the viewer through a history of TCU with video and a display of objects of historical and cultural significance.
Davey O’Brien’s jersey and Heisman Trophy are included, as is the original handwritten charter of AddRan College. Plus, iterations of Super Frog’s ensemble.
That doesn’t do it justice. A full 150 years is represented there, and it’s open to the public. Remember: Don’t touch anything. We’re talking precious and, in some cases, fragile history.
A drone show scheduled for Tuesday was postponed until 7 p.m. Friday because of the weather interruption.
Afterward, we all went over to the basketball game for perhaps the best kept secret in town. The Frogs are ranked No. 11 in the country and turned the screws on Oklahoma on Tuesday in front of the second-largest crowd to see a basketball game at Schollmaier Arena. More than 8,500 watched TCU open a can of whoop-ass on the Sooners, beating the visitors by 27 points, 79-52. (Yes, I checked my work on the complicated mathematical equation.)
This was a mere three days after handing Kansas, the Big 12 basketball colossus, a 20-plus-point defeat in Lawrence. That simply doesn't happen. In fact, just winning in Kansas is an event.
It’s always so fun to beat a team from the traitorous institutions who engaged in such treachery just over a year ago. Oklahoma and Texas announced in 2021 that they were taking off on the family like a drunken, deadbeat father, appropriately enough, for the wife-beater regions of the Deep South.
Well, our Frogs have defended the honor of the Big 12 family by giving the Sooners a beating with the Iron Skillet in both football and basketball. Texas, you’re next. TCU gave the Longhorns a backhand in football, but the basketball team let one slip away in Austin. Put March 1 on your calendar. Texas comes here. Two out of three ain’t bad, I’ve heard.
TCU’s venerable athletics communicator, Mark Cohen, reminded us by tweet that TCU’s largest victories over Oklahoma in school history in both football (55-24) and men’s basketball (79-52) have come this season.
Insert a “Bam! Pow! Thwack!” graphic from the old “Batman” TV series here.
If the outcome of Tuesday’s game wasn’t enough, the highlight was certainly a welcome home to the football team, which was honored at halftime.
Lyndon Johnson came to the exact place in 1964. Not even LBJ could hold the audience in the hollow of his hand like football coach Sonny Dykes, named Wednesday as Fort Worth Inc.'s Person of the Year.
“It’s been an unbelievable year,” Dykes said. “The greatest gift I’ve ever been given is the opportunity to be here at TCU and be around of these young people. It’s pretty amazing what can happen when a group of people get together and work their tail off and doesn’t care who gets the credit. It’s amazing what they can accomplish.
“This group is special, and I think they will go down in history as one of the great TCU teams. I want to say one more thing … that was a heckuva ride last year. Let’s do it again. Go, Frogs.”
Make it so.