They called him “The Saturday Fox,” “Old Iron Pants” and “Mr. Razzle Dazzle,” but everyone knew him as “Dutch.”
Leo “Dutch” Meyer ’21 had very different challenges than Gary Patterson when he took over the Horned Frogs 78 seasons ago.
By the time he was handed the reins of the Frogs in the spring of 1934, Meyer, who starred as an end for TCU in the early 1920s, was 36 years old and had been a Horned Frog assistant coach for 10 years. The all-time win mark that year was 45, established by Meyer’s mentor, Francis Schmidt [1929-1934], who in just five seasons guided the Frogs to nine or 10 wins every year — plus the school’s first-ever Southwest Conference title in 1929. Schmidt added another crown in 1932. Both years, TCU was undefeated and a national power.
The construction of 30,000-seat TCU Stadium (named in 1951 for city-father Amon G. Carter) also happened on Schmidt’s watch. The Frogs built it in time for the 1930 campaign as a replacement for 20,000-seat Clark Field, which the school had erected just six years before as a condition of admittance to the SWC in 1923 while under the guidance of Coach Madison “Matty” Bell [1923-1928].
Schmidt’s shadow loomed large when he left in 1934, but Meyer had his own credentials. His freshman Wog teams had not lost a game in three years, and he would now coach those same boys on the varsity. He’d also get a chance to install his innovative forward-passing attack, and he had a sophomore triggerman named Sam Baugh to make it work.
While the rest of the world ran the ball to set up the pass, the Frogs did exactly the opposite out of Meyer’s never-before-seen formations — the Triple Wing and the Spread.
“Most teams would try to pound at you with the running game and then, in desperation, throw on third-down and long,” Baugh explained years before his 2008 death. “Even then, they would try to throw it as far as they could and hope the fastest guy could run under it or nobody could get to it. It was a safe play.
“Dutch taught us the short passing game, and it was a radical thing. We would just move the ball right down the field — with little risk for interception — and nobody could figure out how to stop it.”
“The Meyermen,” as sportswriters would call them in 1935, would roll to a 12-1 record, a Sugar Bowl win and the school’s first national championship. The Frogs would add a second national title in 1938 with TCU’s first undefeated and untied team, led by 5-foot-7 quarterback Davey O’Brien, who won the program’s only Heisman Trophy.
The Frogs would bring home four SWC titles in 18 seasons under Dutch, who surpassed Schmidt’s 45 wins in only his sixth year, in 1939.
Meyer would finish with 109 victories over parts of three decades, eventually turning the reins over to his protege Othol “Abe” Martin, and assuming the role of athletics director.
Together, they kept the Horned Frogs nationally relevant, racking up seven SWC crowns to constitute the program’s original golden era. In the 1950s, thanks to stars like Jim Swink ’57 (RM ’90) and Bob Lilly ’61, the Frogs regularly held braggin’ rights over fellow Texas schools.
Dutch’s short, precision passing attack and aggressive approach would carry on, even into today’s professional and college game. His wing back and spread formations are used under different names and terminology with a tweak here and there, but the brains behind it belong to Dutch.
His words live on too. His famous rally cry —”Fight ’em ’til hell freezes, then fight ’em on the ice” — adorn the walls of the current TCU football locker room entrance, the campus bookstore and an area burger joint named for him.
History doesn’t record exactly when he said it. Some believe Dutch growled it in the locker room of the 1939 Sugar Bowl when TCU was trailing for the first time all season. Others say it came later.
Regardless, the phrase dates back to the Civil War era and is attributed to mouthy newspaperman and politician William Gannaway “Parson” Brownlow, who detested abolitionism, but passionately loved the Union. Like his fellow east Tennesseans, he hated secessionists so much, he vowed to “fight them till hell freezes over, then fight them on the ice.”
Dutch was particularly interested in Civil War history and likely made Brownlow’s quote his own. He made TCU his own, too. At age 11, he served as team water boy in 1909 when the school was still in Waco. His family lived right off campus, moving there from the small central Texas German community Ellinger. Meyer didn’t even speak English until he went off to school.
Young Dutch idolized TCU football player Marshall “Fuzz” Baldwin and developed an attachment to the star. Baldwin was his ticket into TCU games. Dutch would carry his helmet into the park and attendants would let him in for no charge. Eventually, he was helping fetch water on the sideline.
His father didn’t approve of the game and told Dutch before he went off to college to stay away from it. Play baseball instead, he urged. Both knew it was a futile warning.
Dutch not only followed football, he wanted to play. So in 1917, he headed off to Fort Worth with his heavy Oliver typewriter, along with the other 500 Horned Frog students. That first fall, he showed up at the first football practice. Looking at Dutch’s 160 pounds, then-coach Milton Daniel ’12 asked, “Are you coming out for football? You sure are small.”
Daniel put him at end to keep him from getting hurt, and Dutch stuck with it. When one of the regulars cut practice in mid-season, Dutch was on the varsity to stay.
In all, Meyer was associated with TCU football until 1963, serving as water boy, mascot, backup, starter, assistant coach, head coach and athletics director.