TCU Travel Journal: Do You Believe in Miracles?

Woke up to find out that the Horned Frogs are the eyes to the world, at least in so far as looking out over the landscape of unseen college football territory. 

And, when your team has that chance at history, driving over 1,000 improvisational miles doesn’t seem unreasonable. On Jan. 1, to start 2023, it’s raining outside of State Farm Stadium in Glendale.

It’s washing away all that was thought to be real, cleaning the slate for new expectations. Or, at least new possibilities. Rain in Arizona is about as common as TCU’s place above the fold in national football news, but — thanks to the powers that be (global warming and Sonny Dykes) — we may be seeing more of the same in the time ahead.

For now, a lot of us are just happy with our place in history, looking to prove 13.5 points wrong in eight more days.

You know who’ll be there … Well, #MaxWouldGo.

Road trips resemble the football game, I’ve found, as I hit halftime of our return trip — essentially the fourth quarter of our Fiesta Bowl road excursion.

In the game of football, as in life, there are momentum swings you can time, create, ride out, or fall victim to.

Example: Random conversations.

They rise up out of nowhere, like the Davis Mountains of West Texas, and can flatten out like the road into (or out of) Odessa. For no real reason, other than semi-explained by the fact that they’re teenagers, my daughters would fill the silence-filled car with jokes, off-color remarks, gossip and opinion. Then they wouldn’t. For hours. Inexplicably, a strong run of banter would begin, be riddled with laughter, and then go silent. The conversational momentum swing could be as haphazardly introduced to the road trip as a swing pass that never works, and then suddenly goes for a first down after three stoppages behind the line to gain. 

As a fan of the road trip and football, you have to be ready to enjoy and ride out both varieties.

There are officiating mistakes, too, ill-timed as often as they are narrowly escaped. For instance: The highway patrol officer lurking behind the barricade like the back judge hiding behind the safety. As holding could be called on every play, find me a road trip without a nine-to-11 mph speed limit overrun and I’ll pay your liability insurance. This Fiesta Bowl, so far, has been thankfully devoid of traffic citation flags.

But the momentum could swing significantly in the next quarter.

Especially as the clock winds down on this return ride from the Fiesta Bowl. 

The Mourer Girls and I stopped in Van Horn, Texas, on the post-Fiesta Bowl travel. This small dot on Interstate 10 is almost equidistant between Maricopa and Parker Counties. The El Capitan Hotel, where we stayed, smacks of historic, early 20th Century architecture.

The Hotel El Capitan was built in 1930 by the Gateway Hotel Chain, led by Charles Bassett, at the crossroads of the forthcoming Carlsbad Caverns, Guadalupe and Big Bend National Parks. The hotel was designed by famed architect Henry Trost and constructed by McKee Construction Company, all of El Paso. Nearly all of the buildings in downtown El Paso constructed between 1910 and 1933 were by Trost, and El Capitan welcomed us with all the fun quirkiness of west Texas.

While it felt like a fun way to break up a 15-hour sojourn home, we received a counter play when El Cap’s restaurant — and, more importantly, the bar — was closed for New Year’s Day. More parallels exist between the road trip and the football game here, as even the best designed plays risk improper execution. 

Your flea-flicker may have a blitz coming you don’t see, kinda like the irregular holiday staff scheduling.