TCU football once again in the national spotlight. What’s the attention worth?
The college football season kicks off in full force this week with a lengthy slate of games Thursday through Saturday and a couple on Sunday. But come Monday, it’ll be TCU and the University of North Carolina standing squarely in center stage, with football fans’ full attention on Chapel Hill for the Labor Day night contest.
Adding intrigue to the matchup is that it will be the legendary Bill Belichick’s first game as North Carolina’s head coach, creating a sense of hype that usually accompanies bigger rivalry games.
It’s eerily similar to the situation TCU was in two years ago, nearly to the day, when it hosted head coach Deion Sanders’ highly anticipated first game with the Colorado Buffaloes. That ended in a Colorado upset over 16th-ranked TCU.
Having all this attention is nice for the schools involved and for the fans, but there’s also pressure on TCU to leverage it. The university has made no secret about wanting to grow its student body, its campus and its profile over the next 10 years, and Ryan Peck, TCU’s senior deputy athletic director, said games like the one on Monday support those goals.
“There’s the potential for a huge viewership number,” Peck said, which is like gold in the world of college athletics.
When asked to make a prediction, Peck said he’s anticipating at least 10 million people will tune in to ESPN for the game. That would put it up there with last year’s Texas-Texas A&M football matchup, the first between the rivals following a 13-year hiatus.
“One of the biggest questions is what does the Bill Belichick factor do?” Peck added.
What’s a game like this worth to TCU?
After the game, Peck and his team will analyze ESPN’s ratings numbers and evaluate the impact to the university. For context, Peck said TCU’s run to the 2023 College Football Playoffs National Championship game was worth hundreds of millions when you quantify things like increased website traffic, increased social media engagements and increased brand recognition, in addition to ticket sales and merchandise sales.
Another area where schools like TCU see the impact of athletic success and attention is in the number of applicants. After TCU’s 2011 Rose Bowl victory over Wisconsin, for example, the university saw a 40% increase in applications, and TCU said applications “were up across the board” following the 2023 championship game appearance.
TCU’s pregame prep
Peck and others in TCU’s athletics department began working with ESPN months ago to secure the Monday night slot for the game. Horned Frogs head coach Sonny Dykes was willing to rearrange the team’s practice schedule to accommodate the primetime kickoff, and Peck said everyone saw the value in taking advantage of opportunity once it presented itself.
“Opportunities like this let us punch a little above our weight,” Peck said, referencing the fact that TCU doesn’t always get the respect afforded to the “blue-blood” programs around the country, despite the school being one of only 10 to have reached the national championship game since 2015, the first year of the College Football Playoff.
Next year, TCU will face North Carolina in Dublin, Ireland. That, Peck said, will be yet another opportunity to grow the university’s profile, in a game that he expects will draw football fans from across the Emerald Isle.
On Aug. 23, Iowa State and Kansas State played at Dublin’s Aviva Stadium. In a social media post, Kansas State said the game, which was also broadcast on ESPN, garnered 4.7 million viewers. The media value alone topped $190 million, the school said.
Given the “Belichick factor,” Peck expects the ratings for TCU-UNC to be much larger.
Making Horned Frogs a household name is team effort
Football, of course, is the sport that generates the most revenue and interest, but Peck said other programs are helping buoy the university’s brand. He referenced former women’s basketball star Hailey Van Lith playing in the 2024 Olympics and the four TCU men’s tennis players — Cam Norrie, Jake Fearnley, Jack Pinnington and Lui Maxted — who competed at Wimbledon this year.
It all adds up to name recognition, Peck said, which, hopefully, contributes to overall growth at TCU.
“When things like this happen, you may not see an impact for a year,” he said, “but it all gets us where we want to go.”
This story was originally published August 28, 2025 at 4:50 AM.