Riff, Ram, Bah, Zoo! Football Comes to TCU

Hood begins with the university’s conception in 1873, when it was known as AddRan Male and Female College, and describes the rise of football’s popularity in Texas. From there, the book chronicles each of TCU’s football seasons from its first year in 1896 to its final year in TIAA play, before it joined the Southwest Conference and went on to become, in Hood’s words, “the prince of the Southwest in the 1930s.”

 Hood captures particular details of each season—noting significant coaching changes and highly-touted recruits—all the while providing anecdotes from local newspapers as a way to capture the community response to TCU football in both Waco and Fort Worth. And while the book focuses largely on the ups and downs of the program, Hood also captures the impact of the times on both TCU and the many towns of central and north Texas—the impact of the first World War, for instance, on the state of football nationwide and the loss of notable TCU players to the war effort.

 Thanks to Hood’s exhaustive historical account, this book will be a valuable reference for both fans and historians of TCU and the game of football.