TCU Football Atmosphere (Dallas, Fort Worth, Georgetown: transplants, home, buying)

[widespreadfan]

I come from a family that has had TCU football season tickets for decades. My grandfather played for the Horned Frogs. The "new" Amon Carter stadium is awesome. Last year was a phenomenal year for the football program. This year had been more of a "normal" year for TCU football. What I do not understand is why people do not support the team by attending games. Yesterday, the Baylor game should have been packed. However, it was not.

[ChristieP]

Tickets are expensive.
Concessions are expensive.
Parking is expensive and unless you’re special enough to park close, you have to walk a long way to the stadium.
I can watch the game from the comfort of my couch, using the TV sports package I’ve already paid for, and not have to mess with any of that stuff.

[jbb303]

They've been above 50k for 3 home games against higher profile opponents this year, including breaking their home attendance record against Colorado in week 1. The rest of the games have been above 40k. That's pretty consistent with what they usually do, especially with this year being a down year on the field. Look at the game attendance across town at SMU. Fort Worth is doing a pretty good job of showing up for TCU.

[tcualum]

We enjoy attending games and have access to free parking but the tickets have gotten to be really expensive. We know lots of people who have stopped buying season tickets because of the cost.

[KathrynAragon]

Yep, cost of tickets is a huge obstacle for many people.

[biafra4life]

TCU alum here. I attended during the LaDainian Tomlinson years. TCU has always struggled to get much fan attention. Probably because UT, A&M and OU have such a strong alumni presence here, not to mention they also recruit players from the DFW area heavily. It wasnt uncommon during my college years for the home games against the above teams to feel like away games. The other team fans packed the stadium easily. In talking to people who are from Fort Worth but didnt attend TCU, the perception has always been of an uppity rich private school that local kids who arent from wealthy families dont even bother looking at, whether to attend or to support the sporting teams. That's not to disparage TCU, I think a similar dynamic exists for SMU in Dallas and probably most other small, private schools across the nation. Off the top of my head, there are maybe only a small handful of private schools that were able to capture public attention for their sports teams; USC, Miami, Georgetown and Notre Dame.

[CzechGrazer]

I’m a TCU alum and love TCU. That being said, TCU enrollment is very low for a major conference team.
I looked it up a few years ago and only Wake Forest had a lower enrollment of all teams in a major conference. And enrollment numbers lead to alumni numbers.

[Veritas Vincit]

College teams that pull massive crowds get massive support from non-alumni locals. Outside of a small number of traditional heavyweights that's usually not the case for urban private colleges with a religious background.



TCU strikes me as being more like Boston College i.e. if you went to school there, you might be a big fan, but alumni of other universities in the state don't like them, new arrival transplants from out of state don't identify with them and locals who didn't go to college think of them as snobs.

[As Above So Below...]

Originally Posted by Veritas Vincit

TCU strikes me as being more like Boston College i.e. if you went to school there, you might be a big fan, but alumni of other universities in the state don't like them, new arrival transplants from out of state don't identify with them and locals who didn't go to college think of them as snobs.

Based on my own experience in Texas, non-Alums that are from Texas only dislike TCU if they went to Baylor or SMU. Other than that, TCU is pretty innocuous. I went to a watch party a friend of mine hosted that went to UT when TCU played Georgia and all the UT, A&M, and U of H alums that were there were definitely rooting for TCU.

I did go to a TCU game once after I moved to Texas years ago. Someone I went to HS with went there and we went. I just remember that the girls were far more attractive than your average college and a lot were wearing cowboy boots with what appeared to be their initials on them. A lot of dudes in pastel colored polo shirts too.

[tcualum]

The last time I went to a game one of the stadium food vendors was a charcuterie place. The games are a lot of fun though.