Tech Fan is currently debating whether TCU's admission into the Big 12 was a mistake. What seems on its surface to be the type of objective examination of an issue one might find on the nightly news is in reality another page from so many of Tech Fan's tired playbook of deriving self-worth and meaning by making sure others know their place. Remember, Texas Tech is the school whose Super Fan is a guy in his early 50s who drives hundreds of miles to flip off and heckle teenagers. With a clown like that as their cheering section’s frontman, it's hard to take this kind of discussion seriously.
The Big 12 knew what they were getting – a comparatively tiny school with a historically bad basketball program, a solid baseball program, and a football program that had enjoyed unprecedented success but which was obviously undersized compared to the rest of the Big 12. So to pretend to be surprised at how the past two years have played out is transparently self-serving and disingenuous.
Who can honestly be surprised that the basketball team is struggling, given how bad they were before joining the Big 12 and given their biblical plague level of injuries? If Moses could compare notes with TJ he would tell the Israelites to stop complaining. No, of course not, but I’d like to think he would be sympathetic. Take a look at TCU's bench right now, and consider that they played KU even for the first half, and that’s pretty damn impressive. Given the talent TJ has attracted, if he can keep these guys healthy then this team is going to start winning games.
The baseball team was disappointing last season. No way around that. From what we read here on FOW it seems there was a cancer in the clubhouse. I don’t think that had anything to do with being in the Big 12. Hopefully that cancer has been cut out and replaced by a new attitude and a team that is hungry to reach its potential.
As for football, it hasn’t helped that absolutely nothing has gone right since we joined the Big 12: Tanner Brock et al, Casey in trouble, the Dynamic Duo of Anderson & Burns, Casey injured, Fields injured, bogus officiating calls in Lubbock made relevant thanks to the ineptitude of the aforementioned Dynamic Duo. Despite all of these impediments:
**TCU still won as many conference games in its first Big 12 season as Baylor did in its first seven seasons.
**TCU still went to a bowl game in its first season.
**TCU joined KSU as the only Big 12 teams that could and should have beaten Baylor this past season.
**TCU played Oklahoma, West Virginia, Kansas State, and Baylor this past season with its entire offensive unit napping on the team bus and still only lost each of those games by three or fewer points.
On a broader level, consider:
**TCU has won as many conference titles in its two Big 12 seasons as Texas Tech has won in its 19 Big 12 seasons.
**TCU has won as many Big 12 men’s basketball titles as Texas Tech, Texas A&M, Nebraska, Colorado, and Baylor, combined.
**TCU has won as many Big 12 regular season baseball titles as Iowa State, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State, combined.
So, if there is a pressing need to call TCU’s Big 12 existence into question after less than two full years, perhaps others, including Tech, should be questioned as well. I hardly think it would be worthwhile, productive, or constructive, but you can rest assured that if anyone is up to the task, it will be someone from Tech.