‘We don’t want any handouts.’ The story behind TCU football’s #EarnTheChip motto
Recruiting at high schools across the country and working on a college campus have kept TCU coach Gary Patterson up to speed on the various lingo being thrown around by kids these days.
But that didn’t come into play when he decided TCU’s motto in 2019 would be “#EarnTheChip.”
Asked about the correlation between the motto and kids referring to championships as “chips,” Patterson smiled and said: “I haven’t thought about that, but that’s a good carry over. Hopefully it works for us.”
Yes, TCU is looking to get back to “championship” caliber after a frustrating and injury-plagued 2018 season saw it go 7-6. The Frogs feel good about their chances of rebounding this season, and are taking an edge with them into the season.
They’re all focused and motivated to “#EarnTheChip.”
“Nothing is given to us, you know?” junior linebacker Garret Wallow said at Big 12 Media Days earlier this month. “You don’t want anything given to you. If anything’s given to you easily then it’s not worth anything. Everything that we want needs to be earned. We don’t want anything given to us. We don’t want any handouts.
“We want to earn everything with our hard work and dedication.”
For Patterson, the new motto came to him when he watched Nike’s motivational video as it released TCU’s new football uniforms for the upcoming season.
Former TCU safety Derrick Kindred, who is now with the Indianapolis Colts, narrated the piece that went through TCU’s history under Patterson. The glory years under Patterson have ranged from LaDainian Tomlinson becoming a Heisman Trophy finalist (when Patterson served as defensive coordinator) to winning a Rose Bowl in 2010 to pulling off one of the biggest comebacks in bowl history at the 2015 Alamo Bowl.
In it, Kindred said: “The saying goes, ‘To whom much is given, much is expected.’ But what about to whom nothing is given? To those of us born with a chip on our shoulder. Without that chip, there’s no Coach P. There’s no LT. There’s no Rose Bowl. Or comeback. Without that chip on the shoulder, there’s no TCU. It’s woven into our fabric.
“When you’ve earned that chip on your shoulder, you are ready to don the armor of the Horned Frogs.”
Patterson loved that message and feels it’s fitting for this year’s team. After all, this is a group that sustained injury after injury last season but managed to make a bowl game.
This year, the goal is to get back in the conversation among the nation’s top teams.
As Patterson explained, “At the end of the presentation, you’ll see [Kindred] talking when the guys are walking out of the tunnel and they start showing the uniforms. The guys who wore this uniform -- how they all, at some point in time when they became Horned Frogs, they learned how to earn the chip.
“To me, that was it. What do people think about a TCU player? A guy that plays with a chip on his shoulder, plays hard every snap, wears the uniform with pride. That’s why #EarnTheChip came about.”
