Signs of the times

Sure it was fun to watch Lee Corso don the Super Frog head, but the real highlight of last Saturday's ESPN GameDay coverage was all those clever signs.

A few personal faves included this one featuring a pint-sized Frog fan

"Forget about Swine, we've got Frog Fever"

"Hughes Your Daddy"

"Fear the Murtleneck"

and all those featuring the Biblical verse "And the Frogs shall come up both on thee and thy people" from Exodus 8.4.

Take a moment to vote for your favorite on the official GameDay site and then take a look at our photo gallery for even more shots of the FrogNation faithful who crowded into the Campus Commons for the festivities.

Let us know your favorite.

Campus Reflections: One City United Under Football

Editor's Note: Writing major and The TCU Magazine intern Molly Mahan shares her thoughts on the student section scene on Saturday during the TCU-Utah game at Amon G. Carter Stadium:

As everyone knows by now, TCU’s football team is ranked No. 4 in the Bowl Championship Series and, in the last week, the team has received a great amount of attention. Nike redesigned the new uniform and gave us a new t-shirt. ESPN hosted College GameDay at TCU (the second time the Horned Frogs have been on the show’s schedule this season), and fans broke an Amon G. Carter Stadium attendance record. To be honest when I first saw the uniforms at the book store, I thought it looked a little goofy, something about the grey didn’t jibe with me, but after seeing it in action on the field, the uniforms just look amazing.

The best thing about the game on Saturday, though, wasn’t how good the Horned Frogs looked in their uniforms, or how amazingly they played. As a student and a fan of TCU, the best thing about the game was how many people were there. It wasn’t just students and alumni, neither, but otherwise unaffiliated members of the Fort Worth area who were supporting the Frogs.

Over the last four football seasons of my college career, only once before has Amon Carter been sold out and it looked as if over half of those in the audience weren’t even for the Frogs, but rooting for our rival, the Texas Tech Red Raiders. This time, however, the stadium was filled to the brim with purple pride and fans chanting “Go Frogs!” I think it was the first time this season I even saw the students’ section to capacity, period, let alone an hour before the game. I even heard that some students were beginning to be turned away because the stadium was so packed. The final tally was 50,307.

The Horned Frogs definitely deserve this support from not only the school but also the city at large. They have performed amazingly well this season (and every season I have been here, if I recall correctly), completely dominating the Mountain West and showing true grit at non-conference games to the point that many, with greater knowledge of college football than I, have argued that the Frogs should be ranked higher than they actually are, but given how the BCS ranking system works it’s hard for a smaller conference to make it much higher than 4. Not to say that being ranked fourth is anything to scoff at; it is quite impressive for a team to be ranked in the top five and still have football experts claim that that it’s too low, in my opinion, especially against BCS staples like Florida and Texas. But with that said, and knowing it is not be likely that we will make the No. 1 game this year, I believe that if the city of Fort Worth and the students show up to more games and consistently rally their support of the team, then the BCS will have no choice but to give TCU its due.

But even if the BCS always fails us in that way, the Horned Frogs always show up and give a good game. And who amongst us doesn’t enjoy a good game of football? Here’s hoping that there are more sold out games at Amon G. Carter Stadium in the future, and may TCU grow a greater non-affiliated fan base to rival the likes of Texas and Ohio State.

Campus Reflections: From Paper Citing to Websiting

Editor's Note: Writing major and TCU Magazine intern Molly Mahan has noticed changes in the way English classes and the assignments given in them are conducted:

In the past three and a half years that I have been at Texas Christian University as either an English or Writing major, I have seen the English courses evolve the form in which writing assignments appear. I have slowly watched my writing adapt from the standard five-paragraph essay, which I learned in high school, into HTML and CSS coding Web sites and making certain all the content is understandable to both the target audience and those that may randomly stumble upon the site on their own.

Not all online work is as tedious as the building of a Web site, however. Interaction between my classmates and I have gone from in-class discussion to online message boards, set up by the professor, to help us synthesize ideas outside of the classroom and still have time for a lecture or presentation during the standard class period. And even more adventurous professors now have students create Facebook pages for Shakespearean characters or authors and ask the students to interact using the pages to help us understand how the characters or authors felt and what caused them to act as they did. The latter one works quite well because we students are using a familiar medium and allows for an attempt to be more creative in classes that are generally more theory driven or critical analysis based.

In my current and final semester, two classes I am taking require that I build a Web site and two more classes have a Web page posted to hold the readings and assignments for those classes. The shift in the classroom mirrors the shift society has rapidly taken over the last decade from a hardcopy to digital world. Since college is supposed to prepare us for the “real world,” it is understandable why many more classes are making this switch.

The most amusing thing about this particular point in time is the varying levels of preparedness among students and professors alike. I currently have a professor who believes students still do most of their typing on a typewriter, and I also know many students that do not have much knowledge of the Internet outside of Facebook and Wikipedia and don’t feel the least bit comfortable with the idea of coding their own HTML.

Lucky for me, I was 11 when I constructed my first Web page on Geocities (which only last month was finally removed from Yahoo!’s servers), so when it came time to register my own domain for the English Senior Seminar, I had no qualms about it and am working away on the site with minimal worries. But I am not oblivious to the stress many others in the class are feeling. The class itself is a product of the global change in moving documents from hard to digital form. The class is a requirement for all for all English and Writing majors, and the project is to build a site with a working portfolio of our work, complete with reflections, for future employers or graduate programs to view.

The other class that requires me to build a site is an English class that, for the second half of the semester, is working with a Senior Economics class. The sites deal with the current economic crisis so the bulk of the written content is created by the Economics class (that’s right, an English class without writing for half of the semester!). Instead, the rhetorical strategies of layout and presentation are up to the members of the English class which was based on out-of-class research on how people use the Internet and what is most likely going to keep them on a page and reading.

Perhaps if comic book writing doesn’t work out for me, then I’ll have a career in web design or content writing, since that is definitely what this semester has prepared me for!

Molly's sites:
molly-mahan.com
economics class project (still under construction)

TCU-Utah crowd will be among stadium's largest

TCU Athletics announced that Saturday's crowd at Amon G. Carter Stadium will be at least 44,358 strong, with an unknown number of standing-room only tickets sold and still to be sold.

TCU will continue to sell SRO tickets this week, said Sean Connor, manager of the TCU Ticket Office.

We did a little research and learned that the crowd will at least be the sixth-largest in the stadium's history and may approach the all-time record, set 25 years ago this week.

Crowds of 40,000 or more in the history of Amon Carter Stadium*

11/17/84 Texas 47,280
10/19/57 Texas A&M 47,000
09/16/06 Texas Tech 45,647
09/27/94 Texas 44,821
10/01/66 Arkansas 44,415
11/25/95 Texas A&M 44,282
11/17/62 Texas 43,392
10/21/61 Texas A&M 43,000
09/16/89 Texas A&M 42,960
10/07/72 Arkansas 42,558
10/06/62 Arkansas 42,536
09/28/85 SMU 42,414
11/15/03 Cincinnati 42,161
11/18/00 UTEP 41,068
09/04/93 Oklahoma 40,418
11/14/70 Texas 40,179
11/21/87 Texas A&M 40,164
10/05/85 Arkansas 40,112
11/16/68 Texas 40,000
11/28/59 SMU 40,000

* Official attendance figures date back to 1955

Tickets for TCU-Utah sold out

TCU's Saturday home football game with Utah is sold out, the TCU Ticket Office announced just before noon today.

Buyers snapped up the few remaining upper deck obstructed-view seats and standing-room only tickets this morning. A steady line of 30 to 50 people deep unfurled out the ticket office door along Daniel-Meyer Coliseum.

"We working with authorities to get as many people in the stadium for Saturday that we can," said Sean Connor, TCU Ticket manager. "At this point, I don't know how many standing-room only tickets we will sell."

Fans are encouraged to arrive early on Saturday to avoid long lines at the will call windows and at the entrance to Amon G. Carter Stadium. The will call windows in the Daniel-Meyer Coliseum will open Saturday at 8 a.m.

The will call windows in the Daniel-Meyer Coliseum are also open during the week from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. for fans to pick up their tickets.

Bloodlines gear a hot seller

Monday afternoon at the TCU Barnes & Noble Bookstore on campus, the special Nike “Bloodlines” T-shirts that read “Don’t Back Down” were selling as fast as workers could unpack boxes.

Nike promoted the shirts on its YouTube channel and staged a special in-store promotion handing out cards with special codes allowing shoppers to unlock a small vault and take a peak at the special Nike Pro Combat uniforms that players will wear for the game – with reptile-like simulated scales and black helmets featuring two red stripes representing the blood the Horned Frogs shoot from their eyes when attacked.

Students, faculty and alumni as well as newfound Frog fans were in line snapping up gear offered 25 percent off thanks to the Frogs’ Saturday victory. Walter Allen ’58, ’62 Brite, was buying a jacket for his son, Rob Allen ’91. A season-ticket holder, he said he was fairly confident the Frogs will beat Utah Saturday.

“I have my fingers crossed just in case,” he added.

He got a glimpse of the new uniforms and liked what he saw. “I can’t wait to see them on the field,” he said.

The special Nike uniform is 25 percent lighter than current designs (23.7 ounces vs. 37.4 ounces), the lightest Nike has ever created. Nike utilized a four-way stretch twill that does not hold sweat or water and as a result, the new uniforms are 46 percent lighter than the current designs when wet. In addition to keeping the players dry, the fabric is also supposed to help keep players cool.

There is more padding in the thighs, hips and tailbone. The padding zones are composed of dual-density foam cells that absorb, deflect and disperse the impact of on-field collisions.

Campus memorial emerges for Ron Shirey

Ron Shirey, professor of choral music at TCU since 1976, passed away Saturday in Fort Worth. His choirs traveled and performed in Europe, Asia and Mexico, including the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City with the National Symphony of Mexico and Maestro Herrera de la Fuente, where they performed Mozart’s Requiem, Prokofieff’s Alexander Nevky, and Poulenc’s Stabat Mater.

They also were popular performers at New York's Carnegie Hall and were featured multiple times at the annual convention of American Chorale Directors Association and Texas Music Educators Association.

"We have lost a colleague of very great stature and a friend who transcended conventional boundaries," Provost Nowell Donovan wrote in a campus email this morning. "Ron’s impact on our shared university culture was extraordinary and he is to a large degree irreplaceable. We shall all miss the extra zip that he and his choirs brought to the music of Convocation, the pride that we felt when his choirs and our students performed at Carnegie Hall, and the inspiration that we drew from his baton as he led us all through Verdi’s Requiem at Bass Hall."

With chalk-written messages, flowers, sheet music and more, a memorial created by students and faculty emerged over the weekend and into Monday at his reserved parking space on the north side of campus next to the Landreth Auditorium box office.

Shirey was also an active member in music beyond the campus. He served as chorus director for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra from 1983 to 1993. He conducted both the Chorus and DSO. Haydn was among his all-time favorites. He worked with well-known conductors Robert Shaw, Eduardo Mata, John Nelson and Jerzy Semkow.

Campus Reflections: Playing Dress-Up at 21

Editor's Note: What will TCU Magazine intern Molly Mahan be for Halloween? Staying true to her comic book and philosophy roots, she tells us why playing dress-up is meaningful:

As with every year, I get excited about Halloween the moment autumn officially begins on September 22. Usually, I already have at least one costume in mind, with a backup already in my closet. I begin planning on what I will be doing for Halloween on the first of November of the previous year. Last year, I went to three different Halloween parties dressed as my favorite feline fatale, Catwoman (a la Julie Newmar from the 60’s "Batman" television show). This year, I settled upon the ideal costume in September: Stevie Nicks, the rock n’ roll queen of the 70’s who wrote and performed music with the band Fleetwood Mac.

Over the course of September, when I wasn’t drowning in reading and writing papers, I surfed the Internet, scouted out dancewear shops around town and preened through fabric shops until I had, in my mind and on paper, crafted the perfect costume. However, as the days rolled by and it looked as if none of my friends were holding any parties and the only word on campus was homecoming, I began to doubt whether or not I wanted to spend money on a costume I may or may not be able to wear. Last week was the cutoff date for costume purchasing, and I didn’t hear a peep from anyone, so I scrapped all my work and began to sulk about a Halloweenless year.

Then, Monday rolls around and TCU announces all sorts of activities, the philosophy club proclaims their meeting will be held in costume this week and a friend of mine in the Classics minor sent me an invite to her house for a party the night before Halloween.

Figures.

Luckily for me, I have a backup plan and because I am oh-so-clever, it looks like the backup costume will suffice. I will be Supergirl, as per my comic book nerdiness. Although nothing particularly original itself (at least not in the way the Stevie Nicks costume would have been), I will be able to play with the name of the character a bit. Friedrich Nietzsche, a 19th century philosophy, spoke about a kind of person that is beyond good and evil and called him the Ubermensch, which is often translated as Superman. So when I go to the philosphy club meeting, I will be able to make plays on Nietzschean thinking using comic book lore. For example, Nietzsche is most remembered for proclaiming “God is dead,” likewise, I will proclaim “Zod is dead.” Zod being a Superman villain that is, in fact, dead.

I wish I knew why I liked dressing up so much. Sometimes I wonder if dressing up is something that only children should do, so college is my last chance to get it out of my system (although I know the English department recently had a faculty costume party, so maybe I’m just trying to mature too fast). This may be why I was so worried and disappointed at the thought mid-October that none of my friends would be up to anything in town. Either way, if it’s just for kids or if grownups can play too, I am very pleased that my last Halloween as an undergrad will be costume filled, and while I won’t be able to put on the costume I put most effort into, I will still be in a costume that I am proud to wear and is somewhat fitting of my persona and interests.

How we jumped Boise State in the BCS standings

The latest version of the Bowl Championship Series rankings were released yesterday, and to the delight and surprise of Frog Nation, TCU was sitting nicely at No. 6.

Several outlets, including USA Today, listed the Frogs as the week's biggest winners, not just for the 38-7 beatdown the Frogs put on the BYU Cougars, but also for jumping two spots in the BCS standings. Most notably, TCU hopped over Boise State, the Frogs' primary threat to a BCS bowl. The Broncos dropped from fourth to seventh.

If both win out, the TCU/Boise race figures to become a BCS controversy-within-a-controversy, as schedule strength, margin of victory and conference respectability will be dissected daily. Since both teams play in a league without an automatic BCS bid, only the higher ranked of the two will be guaranteed a spot.

But as Coach Gary Patterson would be quick to point out, there is still almost half a season left to play and much could change. The teams very likely will trade spots each week, separated by hundredths of a point, based on how their opponents fare. The Broncos may well wind up with the single most impressive win (Oregon), but the Frogs will boast a more successful all-around slate (road wins at Virginia, Clemson and BYU, and a looming home date with No. 19 Utah).

For now, though, the Frogs are on top. Here's a look at how it happened:

As you know, the BCS standings are computed by three factors - six computer rankings (with the top five averaged for a composite score), the Coaches Poll, voted on by 59 of the sport's 120 coaches (including Patterson and Boise's Chris Petersen, and Harris Poll, which surveys 114 randomly selected former coaches, players, administrators and current and former media.

The computers

The computers like TCU, improving the Frogs' average rank from eighth to fourth while downgrading Boise from fifth to eighth. TCU is ranked fourth by two (Anderson & Hester and Peter Wolfe), and fifth by three others (Richard Billingsley, Colley Matrix and Kenneth Massey). Jeff Sagarin's rating has TCU eighth. In the BCS formula, the lowest ranking is thrown out, leaving the Frogs' computer rating at fourth.

Boise, however, is all over the map. Sagarin ranks the Broncos fourth, while Billingsley and Massey have them sixth. Wolfe ranks them eighth, Anderson & Hester 10th and the Colley Matrix 11th. Toss out the low one.

The bottom line is that the computer average leaves TCU with a .11 lead on the Broncos. Seems small as a decimal, but it's a significant advantage, to which the Frogs will cling.

The voters

Analyzing the pollsters is the more interesting trend. Boise entered the season ranked 16th (542 points) to the Frogs 17th (461 points) in the coaches poll. With an early victory over Oregon, Boise jumped to 11th (803 points) while the idle Frogs stayed 16th (543 points). A deficit of 81 votes ballooned to 260 in a week.

By the Sept. 27 poll, Boise had climed to fifth, with Frogs in 10th, trailing by 216 points. A month later, the Broncos are still fifth, but TCU is on their heels in 6th and now only trail by 21 points.

Week 4 - Sept 27

Boise 5th 1144 points 216 lead

TCU 10th 928 points

Week 5 - Oct 4

Boise 6th 1133 points (loss of 11) 168 lead

TCU 9th 965 points (gain of 37)

Week 6 - Oct 11

Boise 6th 1170 points (gain of 37) 191 lead

TCU 8th 979 points (gain of 14)

Week 7 - Oct 18

Boise 5th 1153 points (loss of 17) 84 lead

TCU 7th 1069 points (gain of 90)

Week 8 - Oct 25

Boise 5th 1152 points (loss of 1) 21 lead

TCU 6th 1131 points (gain of 62)

In the Harris poll, released after the first four weeks of the season, TCU has gained on Boise significantly. The Frogs have trimed a 606-point Bronco margin to 154.

Week 4 - Sept 27
Boise 5th 2264 points 606 lead
TCU 11th 1658 points

Week 5 - Oct 4
Boise 5th 2245 points (loss of 19) 472 lead
TCU 10th 1773 points (gain of 115)

Wk 6 - Oct 11
Boise 5th 2274 points (gain of 29) 469 lead
TCU 10th 1805 points (gain of 32)

Wk 7 - Oct 18
Boise 5th 2289 points (gain of 15) 274 lead
TCU 8th 2015 points (gain of 210)

Wk 8 - Oct 25
Boise 5th 2273 points (loss of 16) 154 lead
TCU 7th 2119 points (gain of 114)

Final analysis

TCU's lead over the Broncos is far from safe, BCS analyst Jerry Palm told the Associate Press.

"If those two teams keep winning, it's going to go down to the wire," Palm said, who owns and operates CollegeBCS.com.

Palm said the computer ratings are volatile early in the season.

"Boise took a beating for playing Hawaii (2-5). At the end of the year, TCU is not going to be four spots ahead of Boise in the computers," he said.

Ultimately, Palm said, the poll voters will decide between Boise State and TCU.

"Nobody should be making travel plans yet," he said. "TCU is there this week but long-term they have to get better in the polls or they're not going to stay."

"Keep in mind, this probably isn't permanent. A lot can change. We're showing the computers are fickle. TCU gained a lot in the coaches' poll, but not enough in the Harris poll. The computers mean more now because fewer games have been played. But by the end of the season, they won't have as much of an impact. TCU needs to gain more in the polls. If I'm TCU, I'm disappointed in the Harris voters."

Don't mistake Palm's thoughts for a guy who doesn't believe TCU can be this season's BCS buster. He does think TCU will end up ahead of Boise State if both go undefeated. He just thinks it will be very close and could come down to the final weekend.

"If you made me go to Vegas and bet on it, I'd bet on the Frogs," Palm said. "It's just not a sure thing."

Palm said what would help TCU's poll numbers is for Iowa or Cincinnati to lose. "They are taking votes away from TCU," Palm said.

Campus Reflections: Ancient Eats

Editor's Note: As a fan of Greek and Roman culture and history, TCU Magazine intern Molly Mahan, who is studying Classical Studies and philosphy, writes about an Extended Education class she's exploring this semester:

I am an avid studier of the Classics, especially the ancient Greeks. However, currently TCU currently only offers a minor in Classical Studies so it can be hard to find classes geared towards my ancient interests within the four years of my degree tenure. It is especially difficult to find classes that extend outside of history and philosophy and allow you to get a look at what life was like for the less scholarly people of the period.

Lucky for me, this year TCU offered a course this semester through its Extended Education program that offered just that. The course is called “Ancient Eats” and is centered on the anthropological study of food. Sadly, it won’t be credited to my degree, but as a major in the liberal arts school, I know that education is more important than a degree (at least until I start that dreaded, post-graduation job search) and so I eagerly signed up for the course.

Ancient Eats is taught by Jennifer Lockett, an adjunct professor in TCU’s Sociology and Anthropology department, who is a Romanist (i.e., a scholar of the Roman period) and offers Extended Education courses regularly throughout the school year.

The course is divided into two three hour class meetings. The first meeting gives a background on evolutionary development of dining, as only primates eat meals in groups as a social activity, and explains that what is acceptable to eat is, for the most part, set up by social norms rather than what is actually “healthy.” With that in mind, Professor Lockett segues into what and how the Greeks and Romans ate. Some things were old to me, such as the eating of dormice by Roman aristocracy, but other things still came as a shock as it was unfathomable to me that the Romans ever cooked without the use of the tomato.

For the second meeting students in the course are on assignment to bring in an ancient meal. I’m bringing kykeon, which is half-drink, half-food and chocked full of protein. It is more or less the ancient equivalent to a protein shake. From ancient Greek literature, we see that kykeon was used both for religious purposes (as it was given to the goddess Demeter in the Eleusian mysteries) and, because it is filled with protein, it was used to feed soldiers. Depending on the recipe, it is either mixed with water, wine or served on its own. I’ll be serving it on its own, because it doesn’t need to be distributed to hundreds of people and a few students aren’t of age just yet.

It is good to know that once I graduate that I will still be able to place myself in the student setting through TCU’s extended education program. It is also nice that I can take these classes while still a student, although they are generally aimed at those who have degrees already. There aren’t any tests or papers, just lecture and discussion.

There are some other extended ed courses that do require reading, however, and if you take a language course it might be best to study the vocabulary outside of the class. But if you can do that, then extended ed is pretty much the easiest and best thing to do, if you want to learn more and enjoy a good lecture.

And, in case you’re interested, here is the recipe I used for kykeon:

Ingredients
• ¾ cup semolina
• 13 oz ricotta cheese
• 2 tablespoons honey (or to taste)
• 1 small beaten egg

Directions
1. Soak the semolina for 10 - 15 minutes in plenty of water, enough to cover it.
2. When it softens, strain it and add the ricotta cheese, the honey and the beaten egg.
3. Heat the mixture at low temperature and do not let it boil.