Texas Wesleyan University’s reborn football program has carried some serious momentum from its best season since starting over in 2017 into the off-season.
Last week, university officials and city dignitaries gathered on campus with hard hat and shovel in hand to break ground on the long-envisioned football stadium, to be named in honor of Karen Cramer, whose lead gift of $5 million got the project off the drafting table.
On Tuesday evening at a gathering of Ram Club members at Rahr & Sons Brewing Company, the Wesleyan football team announced a new partnership, this one formed around an identity of being underdog second bananas in Fort Worth.
National Bank of Texas at Fort Worth chairman Steve Eargle came to the party bearing gifts, a check in the amount of $50,000 that comes with being the title sponsor of Texas Wesleyan’s 2022 season opener against Arkansas State Querétaro at Farrington Field.
Texas Wesleyan football coach Joe Prud'homme presented Steve Eargle a Texas Wesleyan football jersey with the number Eargle wore at the University of Texas as a gesture of thanks for the $50,000 donation National Bank of Texas presented the school on Tuesday.
The game is being billed as the first ever between a university in the U.S. and one in Mexico. Several have been played as exhibitions, but never one that counted in the standings.
“I love history and I love football,” says Eargle, who played football at the University of Texas from 1982-86 under Fred Akers. “We’re looking for a way to celebrate our 50th anniversary. We've been around Fort Worth for 50 years, but the awareness of us is pretty low. The awareness of Texas Wesleyan, in my opinion, is too low. How about we partner up. We have this common heritage, the common history, and this common strategic [plan] to move forward.”
The two, Eargle adds, are “soul mates.”
By the time the game is played in the latest part of summer, National Bank of Texas will be NBT Financial, a rebranding that reflects its changing status as a state regulated bank.
The game will be more a football festival with three days of planned activities around the event, including financial literacy info booths. The event is attracting additional sponsors, Wesleyan football coach Joe Prud’homme says.
The campus in Querétaro City is a branch of Arkansas State of Jonesboro in the state of Querétaro, its capital and largest city, located in central Mexico. The campus there is the first American university in Mexico, according to Arkansas State. The Red Wolf’s football team is equivalent to an NAIA Division II school, according to Prud’homme.
The game was proposed by Global Football and its president and founder Patrick Steenberge, a former quarterback at Notre Dame. Since 1995, Global Football has put together games and events that pit international competition that has made football a cultural exchange. Texas Wesleyan is coming off its best season since restarting football in 2017. The program folded after the start of World War II in 1941. The Rams went 7-3 in 2021, including 4-0 at their home base of Farrington Field, which will be Wesleyan's home stadium one final season before the new home field is ready for play.
The game was originally scheduled for 2020 but was canceled because of the pandemic.
“He said he had this team from Mexico that was dying to come play in Texas,” Prud’homme says of Steenberge, adding that Querétaro would like to establish a recruiting foothold in Texas.
So, it’s on, thanks in large part to the generosity of the National Bank of Texas at Fort Worth.
“I think it’s big for Fort Worth,” Prud’homme says. “It’ll generate interest nationally.”
