TCU Horned Frogs vs BYU Cougars Football Preview

On the same day that Texas and Nebraska conduct a farewell feud, the same nasty dynamic will unfold in Forth Worth, Texas.

Yes, at Amon Carter Stadium on the campus of Texas Christian University, the TCU crew will want to give Brigham Young's football team a very severe spanking in return for leaving the Mountain West. The offseason that shook up the college sports world will be foremost in the minds of many players, coaches and fans as kickoff time approaches in the Lone Star State.

TCU is a school that has been tossed around by the fickle fingers of fate. The Horned Frogs weren't included in the Big 12 Conference when their longtime home, the Southwest Conference, got broken up after the 1995 college football season. TCU wasn't able to sustain longstanding rivalries with Texas, Baylor, Texas Tech, and Texas A&M. TCU moved to the Western Athletic Conference and joined a league that was populated by BYU, among other teams. Yet, in 1999, BYU and the other longtime WAC schools from Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Colorado decided to band together and form the Mountain West Conference. TCU once again became homeless, and in 2001, the program joined Conference USA, which had a really good Louisville team on hand to give ballast to that particular league.

However, after the 2004 season, Louisville marched from C-USA to the Big East, and once again, TCU had to find a new home with greater football stature. In an interesting completion of the great circle of football life, TCU returned to BYU's neck of the woods, joining the Mountain West in 2005. Coach Gary Patterson's rising program had seemingly found a long-term home that would serve its football interests.

Now, yet again, that's not the case anymore.

> Find a great selection of TCU Horned Frogs apparel & merchandise online as well as the MWC Football Scoreboard!

On August 31 of this year, BYU decided to become independent and leave the Mountain West for good. Two months earlier, Utah had spurned the Mountain West for the Pac-10, despite the fact that Boise State was welcomed to the MWC just a few days before that development. When Boise State joined the Mountain West, the league had a chance to become a 12-school juggernaut with Boise, Utah, TCU and BYU all packing a punch. TCU would have existed in a framework that would have allowed the Horned Frogs to be competitive on a national scale. However, in a repeat of the past 15 years, TCU lost its ideal situation just when it was about to get comfortable. For the second time, BYU was the school centrally involved in inconveniencing Texas Christian University.

Think TCU will be a little ticked off this Saturday as BYU comes to town as a Mountain West opponent for the final time?

It's bad enough that TCU has waxed BYU each of the past two seasons, 32-7 and 38-7, in revenge for what happened in the 2007 edition of this series. In 2007, the Horned Frogs made BYU fans sweat a little in Provo, Utah. As a decided underdog against the homestanding Cougars, TCU came up with a 94-yard scoring drive that cut BYU's lead to 27-22 with 3:49 remaining in the fourth quarter. The Frogs kicked off and the defense held, forcing BYU to punt after a tipped pass was overturned on review. The Frogs had the ball at their own 32 with 2:39 left in the game. However, BYU's David Nixon sacked TCU quarterback Andy Dalton on second down. Then, 11 seconds later, BYU's Bryan Kehl blitzed from the right side to down Dalton once again. The Frogs' drive was blunted, and BYU held on to win by five. That loss burned deep in the hearts of the TCU players, who spent the next two years whacking the Cougars by an aggregate score of 70-14.

Now, as the 2010 tilt approaches between these two religious institutions, TCU's desire to hammer BYU will be even greater.

The Cougars should be very afraid as they tackle a talented team that has every incentive to blow them out of Fort Worth. This Saturday's game could get very ugly indeed.

By: Matt Zemek
DFN Sports Senior Staff Writer