TCU Claims They Own Fort Worth, While Blocking Tickets from Texas Tech Fans
Before we get into the TCU drama, let's go back to the last basketball season quickly.
On February 1st, 2022, Texas Tech beat Texas in Lubbock and the atmosphere was incredible. So good, in fact, it embarrassed the Longhorns' athletic department as they looked inward at their own inadequacies.
On the other hand, Texas Tech fans thought it was so good that they wanted to try to recreate the atmosphere in Austin's half-empty arena. A Twitter user calling himself El Jefe found a code needed to purchase single-game tickets and released it on Twitter. Chaos ensued, and Red Raiders fans proceeded to sell out Texas' final contest against Texas Tech at the Frank Erwin Center. The game was at least half red a few weeks later and the insane atmosphere allowed Texas Tech to sweep the Longhorns and their new coach.
Fast forward to football season and TCU. Historically, Texas Tech has traveled well to the DFW area to play the Horned Frogs, whether it's the American Airlines Center, Dickey's Arena, AT&T Stadium, SMU's facilities or somewhere else. Texas Tech fans love the DFW, either traveling there or living there. It's the home of a gigantic alumni base for the university.
That being said, TCU's Amon G. Carter Stadium has had to deal with what Austin's Frank Erwin Center had to deal with last February. A strong shade of red packs the purple sea every time the West Texas Championship is held in Fort Worth. Even though TCU was victorious in basketball this past season in Fort Worth, that arena also looked about 50/50 on TV.
When Texas Tech fans wanted to buy tickets in Austin they did in droves before getting cut off by Longhorns Administration and Athletic Director Chris Del Conte, who had to do some underhanded tactics to stop the bleeding. It didn't work.
TCU doesn't want to get into the problem at all, so they're just making it extremely difficult for Texas Tech fans to buy tickets period.
Seriously.
If you want to buy tickets to see TCU play Tarleton or Oklahoma, you can.
If you want to buy tickets to see TCU play Oklahoma State or Kansas State, you can. In fact, for both Oklahoma above and Kansas State below, they're offering BULK TICKETS for a discount. They're so sure they'll have space in October that they are discounting tickets in July.
Skip to their last home game and what do you get? Iowa State is on sale.
So shouldn't the single-game tickets be available to the public for Texas Tech to come to town? Not exactly. Under the Texas Tech game on the ticket website, it features a "Keep it Purple Plan" so they can avoid a red stadium on TV. Amazing.
You can totally still buy tickets to the game, but you'll have to buy a mini-season ticket package to do so. But you can't buy tickets to just the West Texas Championship. They don't even give the option to look for them on the page. You have to go back to the season ticket page to find the mini-package, which doesn't appear to be on sale yet.
TCU is so worried that they aren't the most popular brand in Fort Worth and that Texas Tech fans have a stronger pull that they won't even open the tickets to the public.
If that wasn't weak enough, the official TCU Twitter handle responded to a Texas Tech fan, unprompted, to claim TCU is "THE University of Fort Worth."
Their tweet got absolutely ratioed, as expected, and the replies and quote tweets were great:
Fair questions were asked.
Also some suggestions.
And predictions.
I wonder if the poor intern knew what they were getting into.