sportsjabber.net

As it happened, I learned rather early in life that the result of a college football game was more important than wars or depressions. I learned it at the first college game I ever attended which was three days before my seventh birthday on the contemptuous afternoon of November 30, 1935. This was the day of the biggest thing that ever happened to Fort Worth, Texas, a game between TCU (11-0) and SMU (11-0) to see who got the Rose Bowl bid. My father has never revealed how he got us tickets, which went for $100 each, but getting to go to the game was my birthday present.

Now, of course, all I knew at the time was that it was an event of some vital interest around the household. Only later would I discover how immense it was, with Bill Stern and Grantland Rice and all such celebrities as that coming down for it. I would remember that there were more people than I had ever seen before in, around, outside of, down on the field of, and trying viciously to get into, the stadium. The grandstands at TCU in those days held only 24,000, and the best estimate is that maybe 40,000 somehow got in, largely by driving their cars through the wire fence that surrounded the place.

I recall that we arrived two or three hours before the kickoff and that my father, a long-suffering TCU fan who still hasn’t recovered from that game, bought and pinned on me a huge purple and white button with a picture of a player on it and printing which said: I AM FOR SLINGIN’ SAM BAUGH AND THE FIGHTIN’ FROGS. [...]

http://www.sbnation.com/ncaa-football/2011/8/19/2371585/2011-tcu-horned-frogs-football-preview