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Coming up roses

I rarely talk about sports, but there is something to say about the TCU victory at the Rose Bowl. There's actually plenty to say, but let's not turn this into junior sports talk.

For me, I distinctly remember when Dennis Franchione took over the head coaching job. It was my first semester at TCU after completing my freshman year at Kingwood Community College. Though my head was in the clouds with many other things beyond football, I was aware how Franchione turned things around for the Horned Frogs from his first season on.

I remember when Gary Patterson got the job after Franchione left the Frogs hanging before a bowl game. I was working at KTCU at the time and heard soundbytes from Patterson's speech to the team after they lost.

Aside from seeing TCU play a couple of home games, I didn't really follow the team. In my nine years since graduating, my knowledge of their seasons has been very small. If it weren't for my dad mentioning their bowl placement or college friends posting about the team's accomplishments on Facebook, I would have been completely out of the loop.

Football was something I used to follow quite closely. But after seven years of high school football, coupled with a few years of following the Oilers and Cowboys, my fandom was reduced to watching the Cowboys play a good game. Since that hope has been unpredictable since I moved to the area twelve years ago, I've been very reluctant to go further than casual watching.

Yet there was a sense of pride and a nice post-script on Saturday night. When that two-point attempt was swatted away in the final minutes, I cheered. When the victory had been reached, I found this to be a logical conclusion to a memory I had from college. And I look forward to hearing more in the coming seasons. Thinking about my immediate future, I also hope to have a nice post-script to things that were planted in college.

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