NCAAF TCU Horned Frogs

General Information

• Conference: Big 12 Conference (2012–present)
• Conference: Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS)
• City: Fort Worth, Texas
• Stadium: Amon G Carter Stadium

Championships

• Championships: 20
• National Championships: Two (1935, 1938)
• Conference Titles: 18 (1920, 1929, 1932, 1938, 1944, 1951, 1955, 1958, 1959, 1994, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2005, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2014)
• Divisional Championships: None

Past Conferences

• Independent (1896–1913, 1921–1922),
• Texas Intercollegiate Athletic Association (1914–1920),
• Southwest Conference (1923–1995)
• Western Athletic Conference (1996–2000)
• Conference USA (2001–2004)
• Mountain West Conference (2005–2011)

TCU Horned Frogs Standings & Analysis

Check out all the information related to team stats.

All-Time TCU Horne Frogs Standings & Records

Passing yards

• Trevone Boykin: 10,727
• Andy Dalton: 10,314
• Max Duggan: 7.511
• Max Knake: 7,370
• Kenny Hill: 6,360

Rushing yards

• LaDainian Tomlinson: 5,387
• Tony Jeffery: 3,749
•  Andre Davis: 3,182
• Lonta Hobbs: 3,071
• Kenneth Davis: 2,994

Receiving yards

• Josh Doctson: 2,784
•  Mike Renfro: 2,739
• Josh Boyce: 2,535
• Jimmy Young: 2,316
• Stephen Shipley: 2,251

TCU Horned Frogs Football History

Team History

The Texas Christian University Horned Frogs are a Division I FBS Football team based in Fort Worth, Texas. Initially founded in 1896, Texas Christian’s football team has an overall record of 654–549–57.

Originally known as AddRan Christian University, they were located in Waco, Texas, and they developed a rivalry with nearby Baylor University, a school of Baptist faith. Texas Christian moved to Fort Worth in 1910, after a fire destroyed the school’s main administration building in Waco.

 Before entering the Southwest Conference in 1923, TCU was dominant, with a record of 165 wins and 15 losses. In 1912, the Horned Frogs went 8-1 with a season score margin of 230-53 and in 1920.

TCU won their first Texas Intercollegiate Athletic Association conference title off a 9-1 season, earning the program its first bowl berth in the Dixie Bowl against Centre College. Centre won the contest 63–7, despite the game being held in Fort Worth

 Upon entering the Southwest Conference, TCU established strong stability, hiring just four coaches over the next 43 years, and wouldn’t fall in last place again until 1953. During that span, the Horned Frogs accumulated a record of 262–165–30. Matty Bell began coaching the program in 1923 and had his best year in 1928 (his final year as coach) finishing with 8–2 overall record, good for second in the conference.

The 1929 season brought on the hiring of head coach Francis Schmidt and TCU winning their first Southwestern Conference Championship, clinching the title in the last game of the season, a 7-7 tie with rival Southern Methodist University.

A Steep Downturn in the Making

In 1935, under Coach Dutch Meyer, the Horned Frogs posted a 12-1 record, culminating with a 3-2 victory in a rain-soaked Sugar Bowl against Louisiana State University. Despite losing their final regular season meeting with SMU that season, one of the many final season polls that existed during this time period ranked TCU as their number one team, lending their claim to a national championship.

Shortly thereafter, the Associated Press sportswriters started doing a poll, which remains to this day as the highest-ranked poll. It has been used as the barometer for national championships for decades until the initiation of the Bowl Championship Series in 1998 and, currently, the College Football Playoff. Meyer coached TCU from 1934 to 1952, compiling a record of 109 wins, 79 losses and 13 ties while winning seven Southwest Conference titles.

During the late 1950s, the Horned Frogs made five bowl game appearances, with their only win coming in the 1957 Cotton Bowl Classic, beating future National Football League all-time rusher and Hall of Famer Jim Brown and his Syracuse Orangemen in a 28-27 thriller, in front of a sold-out crowd of 68,000 spectators.

Texas Christian University’s football program took a steep downturn for the next few decades. During a nine-year stretch from 1974 to 1982, TCU won just 14 games overall while losing 82 with three ties, one of the worst showings for any Division I-A (now Division I FBS) team during this period.

Only Northwestern had a worse record (12-86-1) during this stretch among power conference teams. In 1983, the program posted a winning record of eight wins and three losses under new coach Jim Wacker, reaching the Bluebonnet Bowl and losing 31-14 to West Virginia.

The Horned Frogs would go another ten years before reaching another bowl game. The mid-1980s saw the program hit rock bottom when they self-imposed sanctions on themselves after it was revealed that players were collecting money, which is a serious NCAA violation. This led to reductions in scholarships and the program would only record three winning seasons between 1985 and 1997.

A Bowl Game Every Season of the Decade

After the dissolvement of the Southwestern Conference in 1996, the other schools merged with the Big Eight to form the Big 12, with TCU being left out and forcing the school to join the lesser-funded Western Athletic Conference. In 2000, thanks to future NFL Hall of Fame running back LaDainian Tomlinson and head coach Dennis Franchione, the Horned Frogs went 10-2 on the year, reaching their third-straight bowl game appearance and clinching their second-straight WAC Championship.

The next season saw TCU depart for Conference USA for four years, winning one conference title before joining the Mountain West Conference, where, under Gary Patterson, the Horned Frogs would clinch six conference titles. TCU has made a bowl game in every season this decade except for 2004 and 2013. In 2009, TCU received national acclaim with its second-ever perfect regular season since the 1938 National Championship team. It would duplicate the feat again in 2010, finishing the year with a win in the historic Rose Bowl over Wisconsin.

The Horned Frogs would miss out on a third-straight Bowl Championship Series National Title game despite a strong 11-2 record in 2011. Frustrated by the quality of opposition holding back their rankings, TCU joined the Big 12 conference the following season, reuniting them with some of their old Southwestern Conference foes. Patterson retired in 2021 as the longest-tenured head coach in Texas Christian University football.

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