Dear Opponent: Kansas State (Part Two)

Each week, we send a letter to that week’s opponent, just to let them know we are thinking about them before the game. This Saturday, TCU will meet Kansas State, again, for the Big 12 Championship, at AT&T stadium, at 11:00 am

This work of epistolary comedy is dedicated, specifically, to the KillerFrog Fan Forum Literary Review Board.  

With love, 

T.  

Dear Kansas State,

The usual spirit of these letters is one of humor and harmless trash-talking. However, relative to how our last game together went, I feel an apology is in order. It is the case, as I’m sure you’re already aware, some of our fans were not as civil as they might (and should) have been, as I detailed here.  I assure you that the shenanigans that these few fans engaged in are hardly representative of our fanbase as a whole. The truth is the majority of us Horned Frogs were rooting for you to join us in the Big 12 Championship. We respect your school, your team, and your culture, and I look forward to the game on Saturday in which the entire A T & T stadium will be one color-coordinated mass of purple and white, with mutual esteem and respect, doing honor together to the Big 12.

And now that mea culpa is passed, it is time for the fun part.  

DISCLAIMER: THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN WRITTEN FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY; ANY ATHLETIC WISDOM OR INSIGHT OR KNOWLEDGEABILITY THEREIN, NOT DIRECTLY QUOTED BY MY COLLEAGUES, IS NOT ONLY PURELY ACCIDENTAL BUT UNFORTUNATE.

"I have come here to chew bubblegum and talk trash.  And I'm all out of bubblegum."  

--"Rowdy" Roddy Piper (slightly amended)

Dear (you know),

Woohoo! We finished our season undefeated, 12 and 0, baby!

And you finished at a (highly) respectable 9-3, with one loss to Tool Lane (as I recall) and another to the castrated cattle out of Austin. And, as the Big 12 motto of "one true champion" syllogistically implies, one loss to ours truly (and, let's be honest, even if you do win, in no conceivable world does it make sense for a team with three losses to be a champion over a team with one).  

It was a hell of a game. One I was certain at the half we would lose. You gave us great competition, and I’ve no doubt you’re going to try to give us more on Saturday. And while I’m sure I speak for all of Frogdom when I say that if we must lose, you or Kansas would be the teams we would choose to hand us our first, please be aware that this is our year, we’ve waited a long time for it, we’ve not won a National Championship since 1938, and our boys aren’t going to give up their claim to greatness easily.

Every time I think of your school, I can’t help but be reminded of the Jerry Clower story about going raccoon hunting. Ever heard it? Here goes: Jerry and his neighbor go raccoon hunting with another neighbor and that neighbor’s tenant, John Eubanks, a professional tree climber. Mr. Eubanks, a man of honor, had taught Clower from childhood to “give everythin’ a sportin’ chance.” This includes of course throwing a raccoon into the midst of a pack of angry dogs, allowing it the option of whooping up on the dogs and walking off if it chooses to do so. So the dogs find a tree and start barking, leaving John Eubanks and the gang with the impression there’s a raccoon way up at the top of the tree. So Eubanks climbs the tree to the top, finds a limb and punches the raccoon as hard as he can. Only problem is he hasn’t punched a raccoon. He’s punched a lynx, “a souped-up wildcat” that proceeds to attack John Eubanks. At which point, now engaged in a fistfight with a lynx, Eubanks begs his friend to shoot up in the tree. His friend protests that he might hit Eubanks, while Eubanks, thoroughly mauled by now, begs his friend to shoot up amongst them, as one of them has to have relief.

What is the moral of the story?

1. Never go hunting.

2. Never give anything a sportin' chance.

Last time we gave you a sportin' chance and we almost got ourselves eaten alive. Not Saturday. This time we’re packing a grenade launcher—its name is Max Duggan—and we’re going to blow you to smithereens, all the way back to Manhattan, where you belong. When we're finished with you, you'll be radically dismembered, one piece hanging from the fiery torch of the Statue of Liberty, another impaled on the Empire State Building's spiked antenna. Your ball players will be dancing the Threepenny Opera and the cheerleaders wandering Times Square, handing out playbills to next evening’s off-off-Broadway production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats at a discounted rate, a performance I assure you I'd pay good money not to see--despite inevitable critical raves as a triumph of avant garde minimalism. 

Best, 

SI 

P.S., I'm still waiting for that money you owe me for stealing our colors--$6 million, as I recall.  

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