To wear an SMU logo on anything in Fort Worth would make you about as popular as a guy in a Yankee’s hat at Fenway Park.
Fort Worth folks go to great lengths to perpetuate the one-sided rivalry: a popular barbecue restaurant in Cowtown whose employees wear T-shirts that say, “Life Is Too Short to Live in Dallas,” their city magazine with an annual, “100 Reasons Not to Live in Dallas,” cover and a list inside extolling the virtues of Fort Worth versus the horrors of living in “Big D.”
I moved to Fort Worth to be involved with my children and, of course, have lived in Dallas by way of SMU (I tell everyone that I once “had a place in Highland Park for four years.”) But, all things being equal, I’d rather live in Austin.
The “rivalry” is seemingly in jest but not really. Many people in Cowtown really do believe that people who live in Dallas are snobs and are rather “plastic,” though my research shows just as many bleach-blondes, breast implants, expressionless, botoxed faces and lot-line-to-lot line homes in both cities.
Whenever I’m sitting with my Dallas buddies over at Al Biernat’s, they are quick to ask how things are “over in Fort Worth,” and most complimentary of all things concerning the town.
If I’m sitting alone in a bar in Fort Worth-not by choice-I get remarks like, “I see you went to SMU. Best team money can buy, huh?” One TCU old timer looked at my SMU hat, then at me, and asked, “If you love Dallas so damn much, then why don’t you live there?” I told him it was because I was in a Witness Protection Program.
TCU and its purple patrons will come to Dallas this weekend, though some will hold their noses and others will be dismayed that we don’t have a place on campus for their covered wagons. Frog fans will converge on the Boulevard and probably remark about the smallness of it all, compared to the acres of “tailgates” that surround their newly, incredibly well-done (and it is) stadium.
If they’re honest, they’ll acknowledge that their over served students and alumni mirror those of our own. Perhaps this will be the year that they throw down their swords and embrace SMU in a Love Fest, but I doubt it. TCU is back to avenge the Pony Surprise of last year when the Mustangs came over to Fort Worth and ended the Frog’s 22-game home winning streak and knocked them out of the top 25.
Though the Frogs are 3-0 and looking good and SMU is at a tipping point, TCU coach, Gary Patterson has chastised his team for not being nearly as good as they should be.
This might be the time to take the Frogs and the points given Patterson is a mastermind at rallying his troops, especially after seeing a complacent Frog team underestimate the Ponies last year. A loss to SMU, again, would derail TCU in its debutante, Big 12 season.
The Ponies are going to need more than a penny on the track to shake that train. Is there another Christmas in June Jones? I hope so, though I doubt either he or I would be allowed back into Colonial Country Club if that happened.
But there’s DCC, right down Mockingbird, where he’d be most welcomed and I could stand another year of insults from the locals. I’ll have my red on around here, all week.
Larson is an SMU alumnus from the class of ’82.
