Remembering TCU’s first Fiesta Bowl: 2009-10 vs. Boise State and Kellen Moore

TCU’s first Fiesta Bowl trip after the 2009 season seems long ago, but it was the start of something big.

Back then, Horned Frogs fans flooded Phoenix and Scottsdale for TCU’s first January bowl game in 51 years.

They shopped at an exotic grocery with no Texas locations: Trader Joe’s.

For dinner, they went to the West’s legendary hamburger diner: In-N-Out Burger.

TCU lost the game, 17-10, to Boise State and quarterback Kellen Moore, now coach of the Dallas Cowboys’ offense.

But the next Jan. 1, TCU shocked college football by winning the Rose Bowl.

In 2009, the TCU faithful descended on the posh Phoenix suburb of Scottsdale to prove they could show up and spend money in the same numbers as larger schools’ fans.

Coach Gary Patterson even made it a point to promise Scottsdale, the host city for fans, that TCU’s crowd would “have a lot of class — they spend a lot of money.”

That Fiesta was a holiday outing, not a playoff game. The team pep rally filled the center plaza at the Kierland Commons shopping center in Scottsdale.

Fans spread from Banana Republic to Anthropologie and the Frog Horn blasts rattled the sales racks at Victoria’s Secret.

Earlier, the Frog Horn had blasted for Sunday worship at First Christian Church of Mesa, where the day’s scripture was Psalm 150: “Praise Him with the sounding of the trumpet.”

In central Phoenix at the Texaz Grill, a Texas-themed restaurant with Blue Bell ice cream in the cooler and Jerry Jeff Walker on the music playlist, fans came for chicken-fried steak and fold-up paper horned frogs.

The beer cooler bore a well-worn TCU sticker and the restaurant’s slogan:

Roses are red

Violets are blue

Texaz food

Is good for you

Then-manager Tom Mathews said he expected Arizona’s large contingent of Dallas Cowboys fans to be cheering for TCU.

For the highest-ranked TCU team since 1938, the game was a letdown after a 12-0 regular season.

Boise State threw a completely new defense at the Frogs, and quarterback Andy Dalton threw three interceptions. Moore completed 23 of 39 passes for 211 yards.

The Broncos pulled off a fake punt to set up what turned out to be the winning touchdown.

But defensive end Jerry Hughes said the Frogs’ first big-time bowl game in half a century “really put TCU on the map — this is not a setback.”

After the game, Frogs fan Bill Landreth of Fort Worth said proudly: “We did our part.”

“We showed we can support a big-time bowl,” he said: “We came in big numbers and spent money in Scottsdale and Phoenix. We did whatever they told us to, and we want to come back again.”

They’re back. But this one’s for a championship.