Horned Frogs can help heal decades of hurt

By GIL LeBRETON

glebreton@star-telegram.com

This game is for Mike Renfro and Norm Bulaich, who never got the chance to play for a conference championship.

This game is for the TCU quarterbacks — Steve Stamp, David Rascoe, Tye Gunn, Jeff Ballard — who never got to stand at the threshold where Andy Dalton will stand Saturday night.

This is for Jim Pittman, Jim Wacker, Pat Sullivan and Coach Fran, who all played a part in building the TCU football program to where it is today.

This is for Kent Waldrep and Matt Moore, Horned Frogs who paid a tragic price.

And this game is for the Schobels and the Huffmans, for L.T. and Kenneth Davis, and for all the TCU former players, coaches, students, alumni and sidewalk fans who remember what it was like — and now can appreciate how far the Frogs have come.

On Saturday night, a record crowd of more than 47,000 is expected to fill Amon G. Carter Stadium to watch the Horned Frogs play the Utah Utes.

For TCU, the stakes have been well-chronicled. The Frogs’ last visit to a major bowl came 51 years ago, when it tied Air Force in the Cotton Bowl.

With the No. 4 ranking in the BCS standings, the Horned Frogs’ return to one of the four big bowls appears within reach. Representatives of the Rose, Fiesta, Orange, Armed Forces and Las Vegas bowls will be on hand Saturday.

The same kind of gallery, as TCU knows, was in Salt Lake City a year ago, again measuring the Frogs and Utes.

Coach Gary Patterson and the Frogs remember the sounds of that classic showdown still.

All-America defensive end Jerry Hughes recalls the sound of 45,000 Utah students and fans swarming the field after the Utes’ final-minute, 13-10 victory.

"Heart-dropping," Hughes called it.

Patterson, meanwhile, remembers what he heard a few moments later.

"I’ve never been in a locker room," he said, "with 100 people that all had tears in their eyes.

"You understand then that it meant something, that this hurt."

At TCU, the hurt goes back a long way, despite the Frogs’ recent decade of success.

Students who went to TCU between 1974 and 1983 — 10 seasons — saw their school win only 15 games.

Wacker had to rebuild his team from scratch.

Dennis Franchione, with Patterson as his defensive coordinator, inherited a 1-10 team.

What the reps in bowl blazers will see Saturday night, therefore, is a football team and its following that have starved for their turn to get back into the limelight.

In his patronizing remarks this week, Texas coach Mack Brown was right about one thing — the term "non-BCS school" is denigrating.

Nobody questions the credentials these days of Cincinnati, Louisville or South Florida. Yet, they ignore that TCU used to be a conference partner and regularly play (and sometimes defeat) those teams. They just happened to be in the Big East line when the BCS started handing out money and bowl games.

Brown mentioned scrutiny. Yet, the non-automatic-qualifying teams are under far more scrutiny than a team from the Big 12 or Big Ten is. One defeat, as Patterson and Utah’s Kyle Whittingham know, and their BCS bowl chances usually will go tumbling.

But Frogs fans know this going in. And it has made the ride this season all that much more sweet.

"The thing that’s the most exciting to me is hopefully to have the opportunity to share it with somebody else," Patterson said this week. "It’s like when you go on a trip, and you don’t have somebody to enjoy it with, somebody to say, 'Hey, look at that!’

"Fort Worth has been waiting a long time. My goal is to someday get to where we don’t break Fort Worth’s and Frogs fans’ hearts. I’m going to try not to break those hearts in these next three weeks."

As Patterson understands, therefore, this Saturday is for ex-Frogs such as LaMarcus McDonald, Marvin Godbolt, Chase Ortiz and Jason Phillips.

This game is for all the alums and civic leaders who gave the money to build the facilities that affirmed TCU’s commitment to its football future.

It’s for the great Dan Jenkins, TCU’s eternal poet laureate, and all the Horned Frogs who have loyally watched over the Saturdays — and waited.

"This is one of those things," Patterson said, "that maybe you get the chance to remember the rest of your life — because you did it with somebody else."

Patterson apologized, saying, "Maybe that’s being kind of mushy."

No apologies necessary.

For TCU, history finally awaits.

GIL LeBRETON, 817-390-7760

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