No. 21 TCU football heads to Air Force
10/21/2005 12:00:00 AM | Football
Oct. 21, 2005
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- The TCU football team, ranked 21st by both the Associated Press and USA Today, returns to Mountain West Conference play Saturday at 2 p.m. Central when it travels to Air Force for its second straight contest against a service academy.TCU became bowl eligible following last week's 38-17 victory over Army. The Frogs are looking for their seventh bowl trip in the last eight seasons.
The TCU-Air Force game is being televised on ESPN+Plus and will be seen in the Fort Worth-Dallas market on UPN 21. It's also available on ESPN GamePlan. Trey Bender (play-by-play) and Irv Brown (color) will call the action.
The TCU radio call can be heard on 103.3 ESPN and KTCU-FM 88.7. The broadcast is also at www.gofrogs.com. Play-by-play voice Brian Estridge is joined by color analyst John Denton and sideline reporter Jeff Williams.
TCU and Air Force are facing each other for the first time since a 35-34 Horned Frog victory over the 23rd-ranked Falcons on Sept. 26, 1998 in Fort Worth. It was the only meeting between the teams during a three-year period (1996-98) when both were members of the Western Athletic Conference.
The 1998 win over Air Force came in Gary Patterson's first season at TCU. He was the defensive coordinator under then-head coach Dennis Franchione.
As a player or coach, Patterson has faced Air Force just twice and is 1-1 versus the Falcons. In addition to the 1998 contest, Patterson was on the 1995 Navy staff as secondary coach when Air Force defeated the Midshipmen 30-20 in Annapolis, Md.
TCU is 2-1-1 all-time against Air Force. The first meeting in the series was a scoreless tie in the 1959 Cotton Bowl before a crowd of 75,504. Air Force and TCU split a pair of games in the late 1980s. The Falcons won 21-10 in Colorado Springs in 1987, while the Frogs took a 27-9 decision in a 1989 contest in Fort Worth.
TCU is 6-1 or better after seven games for the fourth time in the last six seasons. In each of the three previous occasions, the Frogs went on to win at least 10 games (10-2, 2000; 10-2, 2002; 11-2, 2003).
At 48-19 (.716), TCU has the 16th-best record in Division I-A over the last six seasons. The Frogs have advanced to six bowl games in the past seven years.
