Shameful C-USA politics open door for move
COMMENTARY
John Ashley Menzies

Look at TCU getting the press now.

Look at those Frogs causing a stir and causing some controversy.

Any publicity is good publicity, right?

The radio talk shows and those so-called sports gurus are abuzz about TCU turning down a chance to go to Mobile, Ala.

You know you’ve caused a stir when turning down the GMAC Bowl gets people talking.

And TCU is playing the academic card. Which is fine. We want to think that our athletics department has TCU’s student athletes’ academics first and foremost. It makes you feel good about the athletics department. But everyone knows what cards TCU has in its hand.

One card is since TCU’s BCS dreams are dead, and the Frogs missed out on the Liberty bowl, why not celebrate the end of the season in Hawaii? That is where TCU wanted to go. They wanted to go spend a few days on the beach and then play a tough Hawaii football team and end a very special season. Not too much to ask for, right?

The other reason is that TCU didn’t want to go back to Mobile. And can you blame them? Maybe it makes them look a little arrogant, but TCU has gone twice in the past four years. The Frogs don’t want to play their bowl game this season in a glorified high school stadium again.

So they play the one card that can get them out of Mobile. Finals. It was a good move by TCU athletics director Eric Hyman. But Jerry Silverstein, president of the Mobile Bowl, invited the Frogs anyway.

Chuck Cooperstein of ESPN radio said TCU should have told these people about the conflict during the summer rather than in November.

Is November not enough time for someone to comprehend that a school, its players and fans are not going to come to their bowl game?

If you tell everyone in July, “TCU will not be able to attend the GMAC Mobile Bowl on December 18, because it will conflict with our finals in little less than half a year,” do you think anyone will even care? Will the GMAC bowl jump up and say, “Oh no, TCU might not come, we better reschedule”?

No.

No one will even blink at such a remark and no one would reschedule anything. TCU was picked to win the conference at that point anyway. Mobile wasn’t even a thought for TCU.

That leaves me a little perplexed though.

Now, I’m not one to stir anything up, but was C-USA trying to snub TCU from any possible bowl game, not just Hawaii, by inviting the Frogs to Mobile anyway?

These are grown men. They wouldn’t hold a grudge against TCU, because they might be leaving right? Grown men wouldn’t keep 53 deserving athletes on a team that had a special season from finishing their season with a bowl game — would they? Grown men wouldn’t do that, right?

Why else would the Mobile Bowl invite a team they knew would decline but to force them to the back of the line for bowl selections.

C-USA has all but told the Frogs to split.

C-USA is going south. Louisville and Cincinnati leave, and it brings in Tulsa, Southern Methodist and Marshall? The Frogs will do one final lap around C-USA and then bolt if it knows what would be best for them.