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Books > Sport & Leisure > Sports & outdoor recreation > Ball games > American football
Riff, Ram, Bah, Zoo,
Lickety Lickety, Zoo Zoo,
Who Wah, Wah Who,
Give 'em hell,
TCU
Ezra Hood's "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 sources--most
notably from the "TCU Daily Skiff"--Hood's 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 university's conception in 1873, when it was
known as AddRan Male and Female College, and describes the rise of
football's popularity in Texas. From there, the book chronicles
each of TCU's 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 Hood's words, "the prince of the
Southwest in the 1930s." Hood captures particular details of each
season--noting significant coaching changes and highly-touted
recruits--all 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
Texas--the 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 Hood's exhaustive historical account,
this book will be a valuable reference for both fans and historians
of TCU and the game of football.
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