In truth, it was an alignment of moons, fortuitous stars and impetuous conference mates that led TCU to its place in the Sun in December of 1998.
The Horned Frogs, after all, had been orphaned by the dissolved Southwest Conference after the 1995 season. They found themselves in college football’s equivalent of standing on the corner in Winslow, Ariz,, the Western Athletic Conference.
Bold expectations ensued. TCU was going to show the pass-happy WAC how the big boys from Texas played.
But the Frogs’ big splash turned out to be more like a splat.
TCU’s first WAC team finished 4-7 and won only three league games. The next one, 1997, managed to lose to Kansas, Vanderbilt and Rice all in the same season – a coaching death trifecta if there ever was one.
The Frogs’ losing streak under head coach Pat Sullivan reached 12 games before TCU won the season finale, 21-18 over SMU, in front of 19,094 eyewitnesses at Amon Carter Stadium.
Sullivan was fired. Dennis Franchione was hired. And one of college football’s most remarkable rebuilding jobs modestly began.
On Friday, Frogs old and young will honor the team that began the TCU renaissance, the 1998 Sun Bowl champions.
How the Horned Frogs with their 6-5 record even ended up in El Paso is a story in itself, as Carlos Mendez’s visit with the ’98 gang fondly shows.
My column in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that Monday morning tried to make sense of TCU’s unlikely bowl invitation. The Frogs had been to only four bowl games in 40 years.
My story began:
We would like to believe that the generous folks at the Sun Bowl invited TCU because of the Frogs’ illustrious bowl history.
But, no. That’s not it.
We would like to believe that the Frogs were invited because they were the next best thing to Ohio State.
But, no. That’s not it, either.
And I don’t think the invitation had anything to do with those black jerseys.
So let’s be blunt, because for once in this decade, TCU’s football program happened to be in the right place at the right time.
Eight schools, led by BYU, had announced they were leaving the WAC to form the new Mountain West Conference. TCU was left behind, again, but this time it was rewarded.
“The people in El Paso are the greatest in the world,” Sun Bowl executive director John Folmer said in extending the invitation. “I feel as if when the separation happened, it was viewed here as a personal insult to the city and to them.”
When the final whistles sounded before the bowl invites, the Frogs had benefited from previously undefeated UCLA’s loss to Miami and Texas A&M upsetting Kansas State in the Big 12 championship game.
The Aggies were matched in the Sugar Bowl against Ohio State, and the Big Ten didn’t have enough bowl eligible teams to fill its spot in the Sun Bowl.
As Carlos’ story recollects, TCU lobbied hard to be tendered the spot.
“I think, at this point, it’s in our best interest to have a Texas team,” bowl director Folmer explained. “And there are a lot of TCU people here, as we found out from all the letters and faxes.”
The mighty Trojans brought an 8-4 record to El Paso, but not much else, as it turned out.
It was Paul Hackett’s first season as USC head coach. Cowboys fans will remember his name for his brief, unsuccessful fling as passing game coordinator for Tom Landry’s 1986-88 teams. Hackett’s Trojans appeared to show up in El Paso less than inspired, which angered big-money USC alums.
The Frogs and their fans, on the other hand, treated the New Year’s Eve bowl game like Cinderellas at the ball.
An enchanting afternoon ensued, as my column from New Year’s Day morning of 1999 attempted to describe.
On Friday afternoon, TCU will welcome home that 1998 team, the gang that climbed out of the duck blind and the 1-10 pit and launched a renaissance that changed not only the football program but also the entire university and its campus.
Here’s what I wrote on that memorable Sun Bowl day:
EL PASO — The game was over and, being blushingly new at these things, the Family Frog – TCU players, coaches and fans alike – didn’t seem to know whether to leave the field quietly or just stand there and shout.
So they wandered from one pair of hugging arms to another. Coaches hugging players. Fans hugging coaches. Cheerleaders hugging tuba players, as if this was some giant Hollywood dream that none of them ever wanted to end.
Thirteen months ago, as the athletic director was reminding someone, the TCU football program had stood on this very spot. It had lost to Texas-El Paso in the same stadium to fall to 0-10 for the 1997 season.
“Who would’ve believed,” athletic director Eric Hyman asked yesterday, “that we would’ve been back in the same place for the Sun Bowl just one year later, beating Southern Cal?”
Beating Southern Cal. Standing on the field, hugging and celebrating, some of the Family Frog stole peeks at the scoreboard again, just to make sure it was still real — TCU 28, Southern Cal 19.
“Southern Cal, Notre Dame – it was teams like that that we all watched when we were growing up,” quarterback Patrick Batteaux said. “This is big stuff.”
It is big stuff. Regardless of how it happened, regardless of how the blasé Trojans viewed the matchup, regardless of whether the 6-5 Frogs even deserved to be in a bowl game in the first place, the fact is that TCU toppled one of college football’s card-carrying giants here yesterday. And did it in convincing fashion.
The last time that TCU won a bowl game (1957), its coach, Dennis Franchione, was in first grade.
So now he shivered, his teeth chattering as he talked, because people wearing black shirts had dumped a New Year’s Eve toast of Gatorade on him because, rumor had it, this is what players do to coaches when they win a bowl game.
You’ll have to forgive the Frogs, but no one left behind a 1957 bowl celebration manual.
So now they signed autographs for strangers, and they posed for pictures — even Franchione – with guys who were wearing togas and had spiked purple hair.
“This raises the bar real fast,” said TCU’s first-year chancellor, Dr. Michael Ferrari. “It raises it for the whole university, not only in athletics but also in everything else we’re going to do.
“It really says that we can compete at any level, with any major university in the country, on the field and off the field.”
Hold that thought for a moment. Not to spoil the party or anything, but USC came out yesterday and looked bored. Half interested. Even when Batteaux and TCU bolted to a 21-0 lead, you almost expected to see the Trojans, wearing sombreros, sunning on the Sun Bowl bench.
“We had heard all kinds of things,” said Basil Mitchell, whose 185 rushing yards earned him the game’s MVP trophy. “Some people said that they weren’t even practicing for us. We didn’t know. We really didn’t care. We knew how hard we were working, and that was all that mattered.”
“They had given it to us – a few of them – all week long, saying stuff like, ‘Y’all don’t even belong here,’ ” TCU safety Curtis Fuller said.
The Trojans, 16-point favorites, did indeed practice, eyewitnesses confirm. But they seemed to be baffled by what Franchione and Batteaux were trying to do with the quarterback option. USC had faced only one other option team during the 1998 regular season – Notre Dame – and the Irish had played that game without their No. 1 quarterback.
By the time Franchone and his staff had finished studying the Trojans game film, the lightbulb was on. “There was a script there for us to win,” the head coach said.
The Trojans, it seemed, gravely underestimated TCU speed, especially in the backfield.
“When we scored on them on the first possession,” safety Fuller said, “you could see them saying, “Omigosh, what’s going on?’”
Until some dashing young team with a Malibu tan proves to me otherwise, I’m going to remain convinced that all Pac-10 teams, and most Big Ten ones, have eyes only for their great-granddaddy, the Rose Bowl. When the Trojan horse was gutted and examined here yesterday, only about 1,500 fans poured out. The Trojan players seemed to react accordingly.
“I told our players that the pressure was on Southern Cal,” Franchione said. “I told them that if we could get to the fourth quarter and were close, tied or ahead, that the pressure would really be on them, not us. They were the ones that were supposed to win, and win convincingly.”
As quarterback Batteaux put it, “We didn’t have anything to lose. We played free, loose. The pressure was all on USC.”
To the Frogs this was, indeed, big stuff. A 6-5 team, the chosen pick of the Western Athletic Conference litter, didn’t have to look a gift Trojan horse in the mouth when it was tendered a postseason invitation.
Winning the game provided, according to Franchione, “a great boost for us in so many ways. Great for the university. Great for the goals we want to set for next year.
“And great for our fans. Even they had to learn to believe in this team.”
In the end yesterday, the east side of the stadium was awash in proud purple. TCU fans, watching the final seconds expire, didn’t know whether to storm the field or stay in their seats and wipe the happy tears from their eyes.
The long road back from 1-10 finally ended yesterday.
Feel free to hug the tuba player. Let history record that this was big stuff.