FORT WORTH, Texas — The creative media team behind TCU Football's social media has one final, celebratory postgame video it's hoping to show you.
If No. 3 TCU knocks off No. 1 Georgia and wins the College Football Playoff National Championship game Monday, the video will be posted to @TCUFootball.
“People think we make them after the game,” TCU Football Director Of Creative Media Jason Andrews said of his department’s whacky, celebratory post-game videos. “We have them. They're on the phone. They're ready to go. And then, so obviously, we've only not posted one.”
In a season where the TCU football team has won every single one of its games -- except for that heartbreaking loss in the Big 12 Championship -- Andrews and his creative team quickly realized the TCU fanbase and social media following were ready to have some fun.
“We wouldn't be doing them if we weren't having success on the field. You can't do that if you're 3-9,” Andrew said of his team’s social media content this football season. “It's football. It's supposed to be fun. It's supposed to be a good time. And to be able to show those personalities, to kind of show that side of it, has been really rewarding.”
It all started after the double overtime win against Oklahoma State.
“We were like, oh, okay, this team could go on a serious run here. And I guess a serious run led to some unserious memes,” TCU Football Coordinator of Creative Video Jonathan Petrie said.
Petrie created the video, which includes a series of random pictures and videos featuring many frogs, and shared it with his friends. But when Andrews found out about it, the creative team posted it online.
“There's not much of a process,” Petrie said, when asked to describe how he goes about creating the trippy postgame videos. “I like to joke (that) it's jazz. It’s free-flowing.”
For every win after that, Petrie creates a new video and the creative team posts it to Twitter, using the file’s actual name as the caption.
After the win over Texas, Petrie edited upside pictures of animals with horns together and posted hornsdown.mp4.
Then there was the video after the win against West Virginia, which is titled countrytoads final_pleasework.mxf.
“We were on the plane before takeoff trying to post it, and it wouldn't post to Twitter,” Andrews said of naming the file 'pleasework.' “We hit (send) as we took off. So like that one was actually pretty funny and it was like real time.”
Then, there’s the video after the thrilling victory over Baylor called justbearly.mp4, which has one million views.
“I think it's a part of a new trend in social media, a new way of thinking about publicity,” Petrie said. “If you put something like this and you get engagement and people say they're fans of you now, isn't that not the whole point of branding to begin with?”
With one game left in the season, there’s one final, celebratory video, that Petrie said is already made.
Any hints as to what it might include?
“It's the national championship,” Petrie said. “So America's frogs or frogs of America. It’s going to be long. It's going to be over the top. It's going to be the longest one yet.”
Stay tuned.mp4.