How TCU football helped a famous fan stay sober and deepen the bond with her father

TCU Horned Frogs fans already knew they had at least one big-time media honcho in Bob Schieffer in their midst.

But there is another. Political commentator Ana Marie Cox has written a moving story for Sports Illustrated detailing her devotion to the Frogs.

Cox tells a harrowing story of her addiction to alcohol and prescription pills and how an overdose landed her in an Austin psychiatric hospital in 2011.

Her father, Sam, a TCU graduate and long-time Frogs’ diehard, helped her get sober. Slowly but surely, with a little help from a burgeoning love for TCU football, Cox rebuilt her life.

“I can’t pin down the exact moment that Frogs football moved from something to chat about on Saturday to something to fight about with strangers online, but I do remember being smitten in the 2012 season,” Cox writes. “That was when freshman Trevone Boykin filled in at QB after starter Casey Pachall was suspended, and Boykin’s still-immature performance was punctuated by moments of sheer magic — the kind of fourth-down saves and last-minute heroics he’d polish and repeat over the next three years.”

Her TCU allegiance (all the way from her current hometown of Minneapolis, Minn.) not only helped ease her through sobriety, but also helped strengthen the bond with her father, mostly through text messages.

“We engage in trash talk both petty and profound, from mocking [Baker] Mayfield to opining that Baylor doesn’t just deserve the NCAA death penalty but should probably be tortured, too,” she writes of her dad. “We linger over specific plays and commiserate over boneheaded penalties or commentators who do not seem to be giving TCU its proper due.”

This story was originally published December 21, 2017 at 5:50 PM with the headline "How TCU football helped a famous fan stay sober and deepen the bond with her father."