Game Day

Good morning from Irving, Tex. As far as we know, all the BYU players are here and accounted for, including Harvey Unga. The team participated in its traditional pre-game fireside last night. This morning, players and coaches have meetings and are keeping busy before they leave for Amon G. Carter Stadium in Fort Worth this afternoon. It is overcast and cool right now, but no rain. When we arrived yesterday afternoon, it was raining hard. Let’s hope it stays dry during the game.

While this BYU-TCU game has big implications, and has received a good share of national attention, it was interesting to see the kind of coverage it is receiving here in Dallas. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, of course, covers the Horned Frogs and the Mountain West Conference very well. Here at the hotel in Irving, just outside Dallas, I picked up a copy of the Dallas Morning News.
I turned to the sports page and the lead story was on this weekend’s matchup between No. 1 Texas and No. 11 Missouri, with the focus on quarterbacks Colt McCoy and Chase Daniel (who was McKay Jacobsen’s high school QB). Then, of course, there were a couple of stories on the Dallas Cowboys. Below the fold on the left column, there was one paragraph about the BYU-TCU game and a brief story about it on page 4C. On that same page we got more stories about Texas, Missouri and the Big 12. Then there were a couple of more pages on Cowboys coverage, then three pages devoted to high school football.

It gave me a feel for TCU’s situation down here, struggling to get noticed even when the Horned Frogs have proven to be a solid program for several years. Maybe that’s part of the reason for TCU’s success — the Frogs seem to play with a chip on their shoulder. To attract any attention at all, they need to win big games, like tonight’s showdown with BYU.