A TCU basketball fan has attended 30 away games since 2013. The Frogs are 0-30.
Curses are nothing new to sports.
In baseball, the Boston Red Sox toiled in purgatory for 86 seasons before ending the “Curse of the Bambino,” a fate that fans traced to the team selling Babe Ruth to the rival New York Yankees in 1920. The Chicago Cubs dealt with the “Curse of the Billy Goat” for 71 seasons after the team asked the “Billy Goat Tavern” owner and his pet goat to leave during Game 4 of the 1945 World Series.
Then there’s the “Madden Curse” and the “Sports Illustrated Jinx” where players featured on those covers are prone to disappointing seasons or injuries.
Add the TCU men’s basketball team to the dreaded “curse” list.
The Horned Frogs have lost 30 consecutive away games that fan William Leiss has attended. Seriously.
Leiss, an avid supporter of TCU hoops who was a walk-on football player during the Rose Bowl era, realized his dubious road record reached 30 straight as TCU blew a nine-point lead with 3:16 left at Oklahoma State 12 days ago.
“I was talking to the Oklahoma State fans who were sitting around me and they asked me if I go to a lot of road games. I told them, ‘I try when I can,’” Leiss said.
“We were ahead at the time and they asked, ‘Are you a sore winner when you win on the road?’ I was like, ‘Um, come to think of it, I don’t know the last time I was at a game we won away from home.’ I was like, geez, it was in Alaska against Tulsa in 2013. I couldn’t believe it’s been that long.”
Leiss is hopeful the “curse” ends Monday night. He’s planning to drive up to Norman, Oklahoma, for the Frogs’ game against the Sooners. Tip-off is set for 8 p.m. at the Lloyd Noble Center.
TCU (14-4, 3-3 Big 12) is coming off an impressive victory over No. 19 LSU on Saturday, while Oklahoma (13-8, 3-5 Big 12) fell to Auburn in the Big 12/SEC Challenge.
If TCU loses, don’t blame the loss solely on Leiss. There are more factors than his “streak” working against the Frogs. They are 0-14 all-time in Norman. Leiss has witnessed four of those losses in person in 2013, 2014, 2018 and 2019.
Heartbreak City
TCU isn’t a basketball power by any stretch. It’s lost more games than it’s won since the inaugural basketball season in 1913-14 (1,264 wins, 1,435 losses). This is a program that improved to 3-93 against ranked teams on the road with its victory at Iowa State nine days ago.
Still, despite TCU’s lackluster basketball history, it’s hard to envision a scenario where a fan would see 30 straight losses away from home. The Frogs aren’t that bad.
Leiss posted about his road woes recently on Reddit and a user calculated “lottery ticket-type odds” that TCU would have lost all 30 games. In all, Leiss has a 4-46 record in games away from home and an 0-34 record in true road games.
“As bad as TCU basketball has been over the years, you don’t really think about there being a streak or anything,” he said. “I’ve been to nonconference games at home against bad teams when they won, so you don’t really put it all together.”
That was until Leiss started talking about his road record with nearby Oklahoma State fans a couple of weeks ago.
The Frogs had a 54-45 lead following a dunk by Chuck O’Bannon with 3:16 left. Then they led 56-50 with 1:33 left, but the Cowboys closed on a 7-0 run to win it in stunning fashion.
“When Chuck O’Bannon had the dunk to go up by nine against Oklahoma State, Oklahoma State fans started to get up like they were leaving,” Leiss said. “I always become friends with the other team’s fans that I’m sitting around. They’re usually nice people. I said, ‘Where are you guys going? You guys are dealing with a curse.’
“I’ve seen bigger collapses than this. I’ve seen overtime losses, double-overtime losses.”
Yes, Leiss has seen this movie play out a number of times. It wasn’t his first heartbreaker. He’s been watching the Frogs lose away from home for two-plus decades, whether the coach was Billy Tubbs or Neil Dougherty or Jim Christian or Trent Johnson or Jamie Dixon.
Leiss was there when TCU blew a 15-point lead with less than eight minutes left against Clemson in Las Vegas in 2019. Two days later, TCU knocked off Wyoming in Las Vegas without Leiss present.
Leiss recalled being in Austin for TCU’s 99-98 double-overtime loss to Texas in 2018 when Jaylen Fisher missed a game-winning layup at the buzzer. And Leiss hasn’t forgotten about the 2015 game at West Virginia when the Mountaineers won with a couple of free throws in overtime following a foul at the buzzer.
So he wasn’t counting his chickens in Stillwater even though TCU has proved to be a more competitive road team under Dixon.
The Frogs have played well away from home this season, too. Leiss just wasn’t able to make those trips.
TCU knocked off Texas A&M in Houston and Georgetown in Washington, D.C. in nonconference play. And it defeated Kansas State in Manhattan on its first Big 12 road trip.
Following the Oklahoma State loss, TCU responded by defeating then-No. 15 Iowa State in Ames. Leiss thought about making the 11-hour drive to Ames, but woke up feeling sick the day before.
“It’s crazy how there’s been no win in that time frame,” he said. “I was supposed to go to the game (at Iowa State) but I woke up Friday morning feeling bad. I didn’t want to make that 11-hour drive to Iowa.”
Legacy at TCU
Leiss grew up in a TCU family. His father, Chris, played football and baseball at the school in the 1980s. William followed by walking on to the football team as a wide receiver from 2008-10, ending his playing career following the Frogs’ Rose Bowl victory.
But basketball has always been his passion. He grew up during the Tubbs era when TCU basketball was better than the football program.
“It was always basketball first,” said Leiss, who graduated from Hurst L.D. Bell before going to TCU. “Football didn’t get good until later, so I have a lot of great memories as a kid of TCU basketball. I was a huge college basketball fan growing up.
“It really bummed me out when I was a student as well as after I graduated (in 2011) just how bad the fan support was. I kind of took it personally. Hey, if no one else is going to support TCU basketball, I might as well. I started to go to as many away games as I could.”
Leiss has attended 45 road games since graduating in 2011. He’d been to five games prior to that with his first road game coming in 1998 when TCU lost to Florida State in the first round of that year’s NCAA Tournament in Oklahoma City.
Leiss has since seen the Frogs across the country, from a game against Washington in Seattle in 2015 to the Great Alaska Shootout in 2013 to Big 12 games at West Virginia and Kansas. Leiss worked in the TV industry coming out of college and it took him to jobs in Iowa, Seattle, Louisville and San Diego. Those career stops allowed him to make some of the more remote games over the years.
Among his favorite stops include New Mexico in 2012, Alaska in 2013 and Vanderbilt in 2018.
“Alaska was fun just because it was so unique, seeing how the residents of Anchorage took to college basketball,” said Leiss, who is now working in the Fort Worth area.
“Vanderbilt just had a unique gym they play in. New Mexico in 2012 was by far the loudest arena I’ve been in — louder than Kansas, louder than Iowa State, which are probably the two loudest in the Big 12. Texas Tech gets loud when they’re good.
“But New Mexico, ‘The Pit,’ was the loudest.”
Those basketball experiences outweigh any loss as far as Leiss is concerned. He plans to make plenty of more road trips with the Frogs in the future. And, given how many losses he’s seen, maybe the odds will finally flip in his favor with a few more wins.
“I like road trips. I like driving,” he said. “It’s therapeutic to kind of unplug from your computers and electronics. Just drive without any screens. It’s very relaxing.”
This story was originally published January 31, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
