Friday, October 13, 2006

GQ visits Woody's Horned Frogs of TCU










On October 9-12, Brian went on a work trip to Arlington, TX, and had an afternoon free to visit the TCU Horned Frogs. Pictures are attached (taken in person). This coming Saturday is a bye week for TCU, but fortunately for the rest of the football pool, the Frogs thought the last two weeks were bye weeks, went through the motions, and lost to BYU and UTAH.
The campus looked pretty nice as I drove through it.
Here's some history for you.
Amon G. Carter Stadium is an open-air football stadium on the campus of Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. It is the home stadium of the TCU football team, the Horned Frogs. It also hosts the annual Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl, which has been played since 2003. It was named after Amon G. Carter, a prominent Fort Worth businessman, newspaper publisher, and city booster.
The stadium was opened in 1930, with a seating capacity of 22,000. It was built to replace Clark Field. Dedication of the stadium was on October 11, 1930. TCU defeated the University of Arkansas, 40-0. Several different expansions of stadium's end zone and east grand stands took place in the 1940s and 1950s. The first of which took place in 1948, with construction raising the capacity by 8,500 to 30,500. In 1951 and 1953, 2,500 and 4,000 more seats were added to the sections giving the facility 37,000 seats.
An upper-deck and two-level press box were added to the structure in 1956. They were placed above the southwest grandstands. Improvements were made to the seating in 1985 and 1991. First the seats in the lower grandstands were removed and aluminum seats were put in their place. Then the upper-deck seats were replaced with the aluminum seats. In 1992, the artificial turf, which had been in place since 1973, was replaced with natural grass. Today the stadium seats 46,083 spectators.
Amon G. Carter Stadium most recently sold out on September 16, 2006 when TCU defeated Texas Tech, 12-3. The previous time the stadium sold out was November 17, 1984. That day 12th-ranked TCU fell to 10th-ranked Texas in a nationally televised contest on CBS.
The stadium, which now stands to the northwest of Daniel-Meyer Coliseum, has been home to such greats as Sammy Baugh, Davey O'Brien, Jim Swink, Bob Lilly, and LaDainian Tomlinson.

3 comments:

Rob Robinson said...

That is an awful lot of purple for a Christian school. Jerry Falwell would not be happy.

Rob Robinson said...

Then again, his school's mascot is the Flames. That's awfully close to "flaming." Oops.

Brian Bauman said...

It was kind of cool. I bet the part of the stands in the lower level that is covered by the upper deck gets pretty loud under the concrete.