A Chaos Theory Part II

By Andrew Brown 

A Chaos Theory Pt. 2: Rise from the Ashes

“It's best to have failure happen early in life. It wakes up the Phoenix bird in you so you rise from the ashes.”

-Anne Baxter

Johnny Football has drawn a lot of scrutiny during the offseason for his various shenanigans and general disregard for the NCAA rules (agree with them or don’t, but rules are rules). The media has done a fabulous job of completely running the story, as well as JFF’s credibility, obnoxiously into the dust.

What the media has failed to cover in much depth is the story of a quarterback who tumbled from the graces of national prestige, fell victim to the allure of his own shadow, and is now rebuilding and rising from the ashes of the failure that nearly destroyed his future.

In other words, Casey Pachall (AKA Professor Chaos, as he is so loveably called by the good people here at YHTS) is the anti-Johnny Football.

When Professor Chaos drunkenly drove his and TCU’s inaugural Big 12 (10) season to an abrupt end last October, the result was sorrow, disappointment, and a feeling of betrayal held by one of the fastest growing fan bases in the country.

At the time, Chaos was cooking hotter than a Walter White kitchen, leading the country in passing efficiency and picking apart defenses with surgical precision that led the Frogs to a 4-0 record to start the 2012 campaign. Chaos was wreaking his namesake on each opponent he faced, cruising to a tidy 10 touchdowns versus a lone interception.

Then one night Chaos happened, and everything changed.

The story of Pachall’s descent from the top is well documented. He was shipped off to rehab under the supervision of Gary Patterson. During his time there, old stories about Chaos’s drug use and part in the infamous TCU drug sting (unnecessarily) resurfaced their ugly faces to further shame the estranged quarterback.

It would have been easy for Chaos to roll over and try to move on from the school and the sport that had each, in their own way, played a major role in Pachall’s evident demise. It would have been a sad, but not unforeseeable plummet into a Jesse Pinkman style mental and emotional collapse – shamed by the things he had done and driven to a place where he was finding questions faster than the answers.

If Pachall had simply given up and sworn off TCU, Patterson, and the football team that had taken everything the young quarterback had been given and more, nobody would have batted an eye. The story would have ended in the tragic destruction of one of Ft. Worth’s most promising sons. There would have been sorrow and shame, but no one would have been surprised.

That, however, is not how this story ends.

Facing the crossroads of his life, Pachall could choose the life of cowardly reform that surely would have led him deeper down the path of darkness and struggle. Instead, Professor Chaos chose to fight back against his inner demons and cast away the illusions of darkness that he himself had helped to construct. Chaos chose to rise up from the ashes of his own pedestal that he himself had burned to the ground.

This writer can personally attest to the difficulty of the struggle that Chaos has been subject to for the past year. When an event like this happens and you are left metaphorically beaten and bloodied, laying in the grim of your self-manufactured rock bottom, you realize that there is nowhere to go but up.

Though Pachall had the help and support of a powerful ally in GMFP, the struggle was truly his and his alone. He realized that he nearly destroyed his promising future because of his own selfish disregard for those that had helped build that future, and he realized that the fault was his and his alone.

Chaos fought and fought and fought. Chaos’s fight will never end, but that is the way it should be. Pachall has realized that all of his actions have consequences. While not every thing in life is controllable, the way adversity is handled is.

When Pachall crashed his car last October, he nearly destroyed everything else too. Chaos was a boy who had been given national prominence and a gun-slinging reputation, and it nearly ruined him because he simply did not know how to handle it.

Nearly a year later, though, when TCU storms the field in Arlington for arguably the single most important regular season matchup in the history of the school, they will be led by a man who has been to Hell and back and survived to tell the story.

TCU’s leader has grown and matured faster and harder than any individual in the country through determination, a renewed belief in loyalty, and the love and support of the school and the coach he had once selfishly betrayed.

Pachall is focused and determined to prove himself, but most of all he is determined to repay a debt to the man who gave him a second chance when most had turned a cold shoulder and forgotten him as another victim of the national spotlight.

From all reports I have heard from TCU camp, Pachall is looking more focused and sharper than we have seen him. He is running faster, his throws are strong and on point, and he is developing into the leader that the team always needed him to be.

Imagine that guy that manhandled Boise State on the blue turf, scoring and completing impossible ball after ball; nearly at will it seemed.

LSU will be the biggest challenge of Pachall’s career, and he is coming in more focused, determined, and motivated than he has ever been before. He is guiding in an experienced, athletic offense and a powerful veteran defense that is led by an equally focused leader in the potential All-American safety Sam Carter.

I’m not going to try to convince anybody that everything happens for a reason, but this would certainly provide solid evidence for anyone who was going to.

Regardless, the point is that YHTS has taken many good-humored shots and jabs at Professor Chaos and the perilous path he has taken to get to where he is now, but not today.

Today we say congratulations to a talented boy for fighting through the legions of his inner demons to grow and become a focused, driven man and leader for the team that has ignited so much hope and school pride for one of the best and fastest growing schools in the country.

YHTS believes in Casey Pachall in every since of the word. And we believe that he is an example that given the right mentors and direction, anybody can better themselves as a person and live up to their full potential. Gary and Casey proved that.

Your professor has returned, TCU.

School’s in suckas.