"Keep Representing the Brand!"

TCU Baseball soon has begun hosting the Regional at Lupton Stadium. If you're anything like me, you've already been on numerous web sites looking at possible new t-shirts, hats, and other accessories, and have maybe even bought one or two new items already. Horned Frogs love to show our pride in our teams and TCU. As one of my TCU alum friends says frequently about posts on my own Facebook profile featuring my various gear..."Keep Representing the Brand!"

For me, one of the most fun things about running around "purpled up" is when you run into the opposition. One of the best places for this is airports.  I frequently fly a certain blue and orange themed airline based in Dallas, and on their flights I can count on regularly encountering some Big 12 opponent. I make a point of striking up a conversation in a good-natured way, and it's always fun. Sometimes I can be a little ornery though. A couple of years ago I visited my daughter in Madison, Wisconsin, and caused quite a stir when (purpled up, of course) I flashed the "GO FROGS!" in a Bucky themed red and white sports shop in a mall while my wife snapped a picture. That same day, I walked into a grocery store with my TCU cap and t-shirt and received quite the scowl from a guy walking out with his Badgers cap on.

Running around representing the brand means you also run into fellow Frogs! I recently made a new TCU alum friend in my rather large church only because she saw the Horned Frog paraphernalia on my car and left a note on my windshield. We're now Facebook friends and she'll be joining my game watching parties. Another time at a local drive through coffee place, the cashier at the window spotted my cap and I learned that she was the daughter of a former TCU Assistant Football Coach. Once I walked into a smoothie shop and the only other two customers already in there were a woman in a TCU t-shirt and a man in a Boise St. cap. It turned out all three of us had been to the 2010 Fiesta Bowl. This was also after I'd been to the November 2011 game in Boise, so I was able to bring that up too!

My wife and I just celebrated our 35^th wedding anniversary by taking a Memorial Day weekend trip to Mammoth Lakes CA. I should mention that my wife is a great sport about all this TCU mania. I guess she just finds me easy to shop for. All the way up Hwy 395 from Southern California to the Eastern Sierra Nevada, our fellow travelers were treated to Horned Frog license plate frames and decals, and when we got out of the car, my caps and shirts. I spotted at least one Texas and one OU decal we passed climbing the hill! At the top of Mammoth Mountain last Sunday, we made a little snowman and let him wear my TCU cap for pictures.

One of the other fun happenstances of the weekend was driving to the official middle of nowhere to the old ghost town at Bodie State Park and spotting a van with Texas plates and a TCU decal. Unlike the time I was not allowed to chase down a van with TCU decals in the parking lot of a mall when we were on our way to a movie, I had some latitude to look around for this van's owner(s), and eventually connected with a delightful elderly couple who had driven from Texas via Flagstaff and had visited some large chunks of California on their trip. The TCU decal was on their van in memory of her sister, who had taught at TCU for over 20 years.

So there are some great reasons coming up to get some new purple to put on. If you can't personally visit TCU's on-campus stores in Fort Worth, one of the obvious first places to go look for TCU gear on-line is shop.gofrogs.com. This of course directly supports TCU Athletics as the official place to get the latest accessory for your Horned Frog lifestyle.  On Amazon Smile, you can set your account to have all purchases (TCU gear or otherwise) send a little change back to TCU. If it's on licensed TCU gear, that's just gravy. Purchases at many other sites selling licensed TCU apparel and accessories also contribute to the Horned Frogs.

But one of my favorite new finds (SHAMELESS PLUG ALERT) is PowerDecals.com. PowerDecals are very cool little devices you stick on the inside of your car/truck/boat/RV windows. They sense both light and motion, and light up only when your vehicle is moving at night. They're a lot of fun! I have TCU on one side of my car and the Texas Rangers on the other! In my capacity of working for another college, I ran across this company at a trade convention and began working with one of their Sales VP's to develop a PowerDecal for our school. Ours are sold only through our campus store and web site, but TCU is one of many large schools and pro teams that you can purchase a PowerDecal for directly from their site. The VP I worked with has given me permission to tell the Horned Frog nation that you can get a 10% discount at their site by using the promo code TONI where indicated at checkout.

So, let's ALL get one, put them on our cars, and light up the ROAD TO OMAHA with purple!