Has Fort Worth caught TCU Horned Frog fever? It’s complicated.

A common question from out-of-towners to anyone associated with TCU, or who lives in Fort Worth, is if the city has been repainted purple, and everyone in town is still drunk from this entire season.

A Disney-style season which will end in the national title game on Monday night against No. 1 Georgia, not too far from Disneyland.

The answer is not black and white. More like purple and white.

It’s not a yes. It’s not a no. The answer is, “It depends on where you live.”

TCU reaching the national title game in football has not generated the visible effect in this area as the Texas Rangers making the World Series in 2010 and 2011, or when either the Dallas Cowboys or the Dallas Mavericks go on a run.

“We are a small private school that has a really good history,” TCU head coach Sonny Dykes said Tuesday. “There has been success here. For whatever reason it’s been a little bit of a secret in college football.”

And in Fort Worth.

Because Fort Worth is not a college town. Because TCU is not a state school.

Whereas Athens, Georgia, may be all ablaze in all things UGA and every dog there is a dawg, pockets of Fort Worth are purple, and select neighborhoods have Hypnotoads.

These realities make TCU’s appearance in the national title game even more astounding.

College football is set up for big power schools, like Georgia, with the exception of one. That one is not TCU. (Hint: It’s the one in South Bend, Indiana.)

Where TCU is the rage

The parking lot at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, before the Fiesta Bowl was a massive TCU all-class reunion.

In the TCU neighborhood, and throughout the TCU community, the football team is the only point of discussion.

The TCU bookstore is routinely re-stocking playoff-related merchandise. The No. 15 Max Duggan jerseys sell out so quickly there is a back order.

The creative types who made the “Hypnotoad” merchandise have sold out of hats, shoes, sweatshirts and other gear.

The grocery stores in the TCU neighborhoods sell TCU-related items. There are TCU signs decorating the front yards throughout the neighborhoods that surround the university.

TCU fans have made an all-out effort to crash YouTube to re-watch TCU’s win over Michigan.

Fans and alums were doggedly trying to figure out how to travel to, and pay for, a trip to Los Angeles to watch the national title game in person. This little adventure is basically the price of a nice beach vacation.

Outside of these neighborhoods, however, and the TCU football team may be a point of interest.

TCU’s presence in DFW

Fort Worth, Texas is the 13th largest city in the United States, and TCU’s undergraduate enrollment is a bit more than 10,500.

You could take all of TCU’s living alums (98,871) and fit them inside Texas’ Darrel K. Royal Stadium (100,119), or Texas A&M’s Kyle Field (102,733).

TCU is easily lost amid the Cowboys, Rangers, Stars, Mavericks, and 4 million other distractions all over a region that does nothing but grow.

TCU has the same challenge as Northwestern, Vanderbilt, Stanford, Miami and a few other places. These are all small, private schools in major metro areas.

The schools are affluent, and as such there can be a divide between the school’s community and the rest of the large city. Generating interest throughout those types of cities in the local, rich, private college team can be tough.

It takes a long time to make a “T-shirt fan,” the college supporter who has no tie with the school other than geography.

Former TCU head coach Gary Patterson made it a priority to make TCU fans out of people who aren’t TCU alums.

To reach people who didn’t graduate from college, or maybe graduated from a Texas Tech or a Texas, but would support TCU because the school is local.

TCU had some success doing that, and at least created a game-day atmosphere that became a quality see-and-be-seen party.

It’s all an improvement over what was, and it’s just all still relatively small.

In 2022, TCU reported an average attendance of 46,562 at its home football games. Georgia’s average attendance was 92,746.

Michigan’s average attendance was 110,246.

Although TCU announced a few of its games as sellouts, if you attended any of them you noticed empty seats in the upper deck.

For such a small school, an attendance figure of more than 40,000 in this era of live sports is an achievement.

No number can diminish what a school the size of TCU has accomplished in this era of college football. This is Notre Dame type stuff.

It also doesn’t necessarily mean all of Fort Worth is drunk on TCU.

It’s not a black and white answer. More like purple and white.