Riff, Ram, Bah, Zoo!: Football Comes to TCU

Ezra Hoods Riff, Ram, Bah, Zoo! Football Comes to TCU (named after TCU's Riff, Ram cheer, one of the oldest known cheers in the nation) traces the origins of Texas Christian University, a tiny liberal arts college in Waco, Texas, to its induction into the Southwest Conference in 1922 as an up-and-coming collegiate football power. Drawing from numerous newspaper sourcesmost notably from the TCU Daily SkiffHoods book provides an in-depth, game-by-game history of a football program that struggled to find its place amongst established Texas football programs in the early twentieth century.

Hood begins with the universitys conception in 1873, when it was known as AddRan Male and Female College, and describes the rise of footballs popularity in Texas. From there, the book chronicles each of TCUs football seasons from its first year in 1896 to its final year in TIAA play, before it joined the Southwest Conference and went on to become, in Hoods words, the prince of the Southwest in the 1930s.

Hood captures particular details of each seasonnoting significant coaching changes and highly-touted recruitsall the while providing anecdotes from local newspapers as a way to capture the community response to TCU football in both Waco and Fort Worth. And while the book focuses largely on the ups and downs of the program, Hood also captures the impact of the times on both TCU and the many towns of central and north Texasthe impact of the first World War, for instance, on the state of football nationwide and the loss of notable TCU players to the war effort.

Thanks to Hoods exhaustive historical account, this book will be a valuable reference for both fans and historians of TCU and the game of football. See more