… oh okay the quarterback has a drinking problem… But cast your eye back over these posts (scroll down)… TCU’s got an elaborate student drug cartel going, with football players prominent in the game.

Serious, big-time, cartel-type drug business is pretty rare on American campuses, but as San Diego State (a school with many and varied scandals over the years – sports, drugs, presidents with, er, money issues) showed back in 2008, with its guns and brass knuckles and cocaine and all, it does happen.

I suppose it’s marginally more embarrassing when your school has the word Christian, rather than State, in its name, but no matter: Texas Christian University, as its chancellor notes, is, just like SDSU, simply going to have to tough things out until they settle down.

And speaking of tough, the TCU football team is gonna have to be Ram tough. The coach did a surprise drug test “after a prize recruit told him that he would not attend TCU because of drug use by players.”

TCU has not released results of any drug tests, but [one player] told an undercover officer that 82 players failed.

Far out!

You bet your ass.

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I know it’s not fair to brand them all.

We’re all sinners, of course; but when you put “Christian” right there in your school’s name, as Texas Christian University does, you invite more than ordinary sinescopic scrutiny. A quick review of this blog’s TCU entries over the last five or so years definitely reveals more sinners than saints, especially among the football lads, who seem undecided whether they want to drug themselves to the heavenly gates or pummel other people to the heavenly gates.

UD was reminded of this curiously … heterodox school by their latest big national news: One of their most valuable football players has two arrests for domestic violence in the last seven months plus an outstanding bench warrant, since he didn’t show up to court for Dom. Viol. #1.

Since he’s a great player, and since TCU’s quarterback is out with injuries, and since TCU is desperate to win a game, they’ll just suspend him for a game or two.

Two? They’ll probably just suspend him for one. It’s the Texas Christian way.

Texas Christian University’s most militant Disciples of Christ are to be found on its football team, where select players routinely fan out among the non-football-playing student population on campus and beat the shit out of them.

The bloodied president of the team’s booster club, The Flagellants, recently issued a statement: “For the greater glory of God.”

There is the marauding horde at the city’s Christian university, Baylor:

There have been altercations, sexual assaults, hidden police reports and no discipline. Everybody is in on it, trying to keep the football gravy trainrolling unimpeded by pesky justice for victims of the Bears’ marauding horde.

And there is the marauding horde at the city’s breastaurant:

Sunday’s fight escalated to include knives and firearms as gang members fired at each other in the Twin Peaks parking lot, police said, adding that nine suspected gang members died and 170 were arrested.

If you’re a diner or a shopper or a university student, try to stay out of their way. Now that the state of Texas is open carry, this should become easier. The marauding hordes are now likely to be displaying their weaponry.

If you’re a student and would like to study amid the bike engines, gunshots, police sirens, and screams of the dying, UD recommends earbuds.

… when this hero of a school that features the word Christian in its name beat the shit out of a bunch of people at a bar. No one cared, because he runs real fast, and he went on to be drafted by an NFL team.

And of course his Texas Christian University hero page remains proudly up online cuz you know he’s so great y’all and we’re so proud to be associated with him, especially now with his beat-up girlfriend giving interviews about how much she bled in his latest attack on her.

Yeah okay so it’s all too much for the NFL team and he’s been dropped. But you won’t find TCU taking down his hero page! A player who can really draw blood doesn’t come along every day.

[Trevone] Boykin was so aggressive that officers had to threaten use of a stun gun for him to calm down.

Texas Christian’s quarterback is totally ready for the Alamo Bowl day after tomorrow!

Things are hotting up on and off the field between longtime foes Texas Christian University and Baylor, with TCU’s coach boasting that his assaulting players are making far better moves than Baylor’s raping player.

[The coach’s] reference to Baylor during his press conference [about two players who allegedly beat a group of TCU students] did nothing but stoke the rivalry between the two traditional rivals who are both in the top five of this week’s Associated Press poll and are about 90 miles apart.

“… [W]e’ll find out what the facts are. It’ll all come out. I just hope when they all come out, you report it just as strongly as what you’ve done here because it’s not even close to what happened south of here.”

[The coach] was clearly referring to the Baylor situation where [player] Sam Ukwuachu was convicted of sexually assaulting a former Baylor soccer player.

The Battle of the Coaches is on! What will Baylor’s coach say in response? Stay tuned.

… is one of UD‘s favorite headlines, and the claim had at least a spliff of plausibility: Back in 2012 members of the Texas Christian University football team ran a sufficiently notorious drug market that one recruit “declin[ed] a scholarship offer because of the drug culture.”

UD looks forward to more great TCU headlines in the aftermath of the sort of incident so common on big sports campuses that eventually it won’t even be covered by journalists: A couple of football players got angry and drunk and beat the shit out of some students. Eventually all students who choose to attend big sports schools will understand and accept that getting the shit beaten out of you by football or basketball players is simply a risk you run.

Until that day, we at University Diaries can … I don’t want to say enjoy, but there’s definitely something intriguing in the details of these incidents.

The theme of this one is familiar from the story of the University of Idaho Vandals who were caught shoplifting in the bookstore because players are

1. “visible on [security] video and identifiable” and because

2. at the time “the store was open only to members of the football team.”

Similarly, in the TCU case, not only did security cameras apparently catch every punch, one of the players left his cell phone behind. As the police examined it, it flashed the full name of the player.

A Texas sports journalist puts the rape scandal at Baylor in perspective for us. (UD‘s comments appear in brackets.)

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So am I calling Art [Briles, Baylor football coach,] a liar?

On that leave ’em laughing note, we know heads will roll over all this. And we know Art will be watching from a Waco safe place, high above it all. [Hilarious to think that the official head of a football factory has any power. The God who stands above it all directing and watching is the coach. UD read somewhere – can’t find the link – that a sacrificial woman from somewhere in the administration has been selected to suffer for her Art.] [Good one, UD.]

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Remember: This guy is writing about a place that was founded as a university.

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Oh. And here’s a great blast from the past. In a recent tussle with his league over their team ranking system (it placed Texas Christian, the place Briles found Baylor’s most famous rapist, over Baylor), Briles said

[The league is] obligated to us because we’re helping the Big 12’s image in the nation.

Totally, Art, and keep up the good work.

You have to do the hard work of getting inside the culture of schools like Baylor and Louisville (the University of Louisville, a reliable scummy-sports-source on this blog, just recruited a guy — “domestic violence charge involving a gun” — even Texas Christian found too scary).

But it is hard work. Take Baylor. The larger culture of its hometown, Waco, heartland of homicidal Harley honeys, birthplace of branded breastaurant-bred Boss-Hoss boys, is mainly about open carry. That’s the burning social justice issue that fires up so many Baylor/Wacoites — now more than ever:

The day after a deadly confrontation between rival biker gangs in Waco, top Texas lawmakers defended a proposal to loosen the state’s handgun laws [to allow open carry].

What plenty of people in Waco and at Baylor seem to be, uh, shooting for is a campus/town where hotly recruited rapists and criminal biker gangs are placed in an open carry setting…

UD understands that this picture seems unfair to these Texans, whose self-image involves prayer for themselves and for the souls of recruited rapists who shall be redeemed in cleansing local waters. Same as these football programs. And so many others. It’s all about winning football games and redeeming souls.

So you’ve got Baylor’s famous president, Ken Starr, overseeing an internal investigation of his school’s rape-positive policies, and he’s already at a disadvantage, since his experience lies in investigating consensual sex (or, as a commenter at the Chronicle of Higher Education poetically puts it, “President Starr, you went after Bill Clinton for much less. What are you going to do about this ugly mess?”). And you’ve got all the hump-lovin’ folk of this great land, who understand the crucial synergy between sexual and on-field violence, as dramatized so succinctly here.

In this film’s most poignant moment, a father pleads: “Just give it to me straight Doc. Will my boy ever rape again?”

As long as schools like Baylor and Louisville exist, we can answer that question with a resounding Yes.

… has had major drug issues lately (scroll down for posts about the drug scandal) is bad news indeed. The grandson of T. Boone Pickens, a student at Texas Christian University, has died, reportedly of a heroin/Xanax overdose.

This is not the way to bat cleanup. This Sports Illustrated column on the massive drug bust at Texas Christian University – featuring plenty of football team involvement – is the first of what will be many attempts at damage control.

This writer’s prose is the functional equivalent of someone in a crowded room waving madly away at marijuana smoke because it’s so thick everyone’s choking on it. A polite gesture, but futile.

Let’s take a few tokes of this guy’s prose and see what went wrong.

His basic moves are two:

1. Aw shucks.

2. I’m shocked. Shocked.

To get us to the point where we actually believe that big-time university football is made up of clueless saintly coaches and adorable lunk kids who sometimes do the darnedest things, the writer must throw deep into platitude territory. His prose must evoke an Americana that would embarrass Edgar Guest. Let’s see how he does it!

The coach has created a winning team

the right way by recruiting guys who were a step too slow or an inch too short. Patterson persuades his players to use those slights — real and perceived — as motivation to maximize their ability. [Start with the hard-luck, overcoming obstacles, come from behind, motley crew that shows up the sports machine schools — the whole motivational enchilada. Ignore the fact that the investigation began when a recruit rejected a TCU offer because of notorious drugging on the team. Ignore that. Don’t ask why some random recruit knew about this and the coach didn’t. Just keep reading. And keep your hankie ready.]

That’s been the foundation of Patterson’s success, which has ultimately resulted in TCU achieving its dream of being in the Big 12 and becoming, you know, one of the big boys. [Achieving its dream. Maximize their ability. Keep the cliches coming. They feel so damn good.]

In one day, four knuckleheads — linebacker Tanner Brock, defensive tackle D.J. Yendrey, safety Devin Johnson and offensive tackle Ty Horn — destroyed much of the program Patterson has built. [Knuckleheads! Cue the Three Stooges! Adorable! Clowns!]

Having shooed away the dealers on the team, the writer will concentrate for the rest of his piece on the clueless sainted coach.

[W]e can only imagine the cauldron of emotions that must’ve been bubbling within him.

After all, he must’ve felt dumb that so much illegal activity seemed to be hidden in plain sight. And he probably felt betrayed by the players and disappointed because he let down the parents who trusted him with their kids.

Kids is always a good choice for stories like this one. The basic dynamic the writer’s going for, after all, is familial – the coach is the fond, too fond, dad, incapable of imagining his kid a dealer; the player is… just a kid!

And oh lord the churning, churning cauldron of emotions he must be experiencing as it hits him so hard out of thin air that the kid sells drugs…

Knucklehead v. Dumb: The sad sorry story of our sports family… But the coach and the team “will survive this shameful day.” We will survive!

[TEXAS CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL]
PLAYER DENIES ENTIRE ROSTER FAILED
DRUG TEST