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Test Results Refute “82 Players” Assertion

By Paul Myerberg   //   Feb 16, 2012

As detailed in his arrest affidavit, former T.C.U. strong safety Devin Johnson told undercover police officers that “82 players failed” an impromptu team-wide drug test given on the first day of February. For his part, Tanner Brock told officers that his teammate, Ty Horn, had suggested that “there were only 20 players” on the team who could possibly pass the drug test. Per his affidavit, Brock said that there “would be about 60 people being screwed” by the test results. If true, these numbers pointed to one inarguable fact: T.C.U. needed to address how it monitored the football program. However, as detailed today by Stefan Stevenson of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the statements given by the three former T.C.U. players were wildly inaccurate.

According to a source, Stevenson writes, five T.C.U. players tested positive for marijuana in the Feb. 1 drug test. Another 11 players tested positive for trace amounts “within the margin of error.” By the standards of the test itself, in essence, only five players drew failing grades.

In fact, more people passed the test without drawing even a trace amount of drug use than Johnson suggested would fail the test altogether: 86 passed with flying colors, while Johnson believed that 82 players would test positive. Why Johnson – or Brock, or Horn – thought that the team’s drug use was so rampant is open for interpretation.

Perhaps it’s what Johnson wanted to believe; there’s strength in numbers, or something to that degree, and seeing that he, Brock, Horn and D.J. Yendrey were heavily involved with drugs, it might have only been natural for him to assume that the rest of the team was partaking in the same illegal activity.

It’s a positive moment for T.C.U., even if there’s nothing positive about five players failing a random drug test, let alone four players being arrested for dealing drugs to fellow students and undercover police officers. But the results of the test, as disclosed to Stevenson by a source, slightly vindicates the university in the wake of yesterday’s developments.

While the timeline remains somewhat hazy, it seems, based on the knowledge at hand, as if Gary Patterson and T.C.U. acted as proactively as possible in a difficult situation. Patterson was informed of his team’s alleged drug use by a recruit, who told Patterson that the drug use had him shying away from T.C.U. as his college destination.

T.C.U. had two big recruiting weekends after the end of the regular season: beginning on Jan. 20 and beginning on Jan. 27. If Patterson was informed by a recruit who visited during the latter weekend, T.C.U.’s head coach held the team-wide drug test mere days later, on the first day of February – if he was told on Sunday, Jan. 29, the final day of that recruiting weekend, Patterson called for the test on that Wednesday.

The news still reflects poorly on T.C.U. as an institution; the football program, which housed those four players, will also come under increased public scrutiny. And there’s no sugarcoating what has occurred over the last 24 hours: Brock, Johnson, Yendrey and Horn were arrested on charges of selling drugs, and that fact can’t be ignored.

But the situation is far less devastating than was first indicated by the court affidavits connected with the four former players. Most notably, the results of the drug test suggest that there is no team-wide issue, as implied in statements from Johnson, Brock and Horn.

Tags: D.J. Yendrey, Devin Johnson, Gary Patterson, T.C.U., Tanner Brock, Ty Horn

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