Note: This story is part of Deseret News sports team’s Flashback Friday series, which revisits memorable moments involving Utah teams.
The TCU mascot may be the Horned Frogs, but older BYU fans likely associate it with crickets.
That’s because thousands of field crickets were present for the first meeting between the two schools’ football teams in Forth Worth in 1987. The leaping, chirping insects invaded Amon G. Carter Stadium and then swarmed the field.
The game carried on despite the appearance of the gross — and unticketed — guests, and many of the crickets ended up dying after getting too close to the action, giving new meaning to the phrase “tackles for loss.”
In 1996, Mike Jones of the Forth Worth Star-Telegram spoke to some of the players who were on the field that night and noted that they remained a bit traumatized by the unusual mess.
- It was “slippery, mushy. Almost obscene,” said David Rascoe, who played quarterback for TCU, to Jones.
- Clint Hailey, a former TCU offensive lineman, called it “wild” and “disgusting.”
- The game was “crazy, weird, strange,” said Kent Tramel, a TCU defensive tackle.
Jones explained in his 1996 report that the crickets were thought to have been present in such large numbers that night because it was mating season.
The field crickets were “like teenage parkers caught in a lover’s lane inexplicably transformed into a freeway fraught with 18-wheelers,” he wrote.
The crickets, which regularly appear in swarms in the late summer or early fall in Texas, were likely attracted to the stadium lights. KVUE, an ABC affiliate in Austin, reported earlier this year that Texas home and business owners bothered by black field crickets should dim or turn off outdoor lights.
“Lights are the top cause of a cricket infestation,” KVUE reported.
After the 1987 TCU-BYU game, which BYU lost 33-12, stadium custodians undertook a major cleaning effort to clear out the cricket remains.
“According to TCU’s sports information department, after the game custodial crews filled more than 100 55-gallon plastic garbage bags with dead crickets,” the Deseret News reported this week.
As the Cougars prepared to return to Carter Stadium nine years after the cricket game, BYU’s then head coach, LaVell Edwards, joked that he would bring some birds to Fort Worth to protect his team.
“This time we are bringing seagulls with us,” Edwards said, according to the Star-Telegram.
TCU Magazine included the cricket game on its 2005 list of the most memorable football games in school history. It was the only entry on the list that was recognized for something other than what players did on the field.