TCU fans “can’t get enough of the purple and white merchandise” ahead of the team’s CFP national championship matchup against Georgia on Monday, according to Brayden Garcia of the Ft. Worth STAR-TELEGRAM. TCU campus bookstore Operations Manager Sarah Wright said that the store has been “selling merchandise like hotcakes” ahead of next week’s championship game. Wright: “Anything and everything is selling.” She added that “sales of virtually every item” have increased since TCU punched their national title game ticket. Garcia noted the “hottest selling items” currently are player’s jerseys -- “more specifically quarterback Max Duggan’s No. 15” (Ft. Worth STAR-TELEGRAM, 1/5).
LOCAL BANDWAGON LUKEWARM: In Ft. Worth, Mac Engel writes TCU’s visit to the title game “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.” Ft. Worth is “not a college town” and TCU is “not a state school.” Whereas Athens, Georgia, “may be all ablaze in all things UGA,” and pockets of Ft. Worth are “purple, and select neighborhoods have Hypnotoads.” Ft. Worth is the “13th largest city" in the U.S., and TCU’s undergraduate enrollment is “a bit more than 10,500.” Engle writes 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." Engel: “It takes a long time to make a ‘T-shirt fan,’ the college supporter who has no tie with the school other than geography” (Ft. Worth STAR-TELEGRAM, 1/6).
The TCU campus bookstore has been “selling merchandise like hotcakes” ahead of next week’s championship game against GeorgiaMatt Kartozian/USA TODAY NETWORK
