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Anyone who has spent even a little time on this site knows where my collegiate loyalties lie.  Like several of the other members here, I am a proud citizen of the Longhorn Nation. However, within my own family I am in a burnt orange majority of one. My mother, sister and nephew are all graduates of that fine institution of higher learning in Fort Worth known as Texas Christian University.

Accordingly, I grew up following the Horned Frogs, as well as the Horns. TCU has always been my second favorite team, and the school’s rise to pigskin prominence has brought a lot a joy to my family members. After decades of watching Texas, Arkansas, Houston and SMU pound the purple-and-white, they finally had something to cheer about.

This was supposed to a great week in Cowtown. The Big 12 released its 2012 schedule, the first featuring TCU as a member of the league. The Horned Frogs had finally arrived. Even the school’s under-achieving men’s basketball team made a statement by knocking off 11^th ranked UNLV.

And then things began to unravel. Four members of the football team (linebacker Tanner Brock, defensive tackle D.J. Yendrey, safety Devin Johnson and offensive tackle Ty Horn) were arrested for dealing marijuana in a campus-wide drug sweep. Head coach Gary Patterson immediately kicked the quartet off the team, and in all probability they will be expelled from school.

If that is as far as the story went, it would still be somewhat of a PR nightmare. However, it got worse, much worse. Soon we began hearing that as many 80 members of the football team had flunked a surprise drug test. We were led to believe that cocaine, ecstasy, LSD and opiate use was rampant among the players. Surely, this was a major step backward, perhaps even a death blow, for a program that once held so much promise.

All across the state, TCU alumni were in shock. They sat and stared numbly at computer screens and televisions, their hearts breaking with the news that “their boys” were nothing but a pack of thugs. My 82 year-old mother, perhaps the biggest Horned Frog fan alive, kept muttering, “This can’t be happening, it just can’t be true.”

Turns out, Mom was right as usual.  It didn’t happen as reported, and what we were led to believe was patently false.

The truth, as it turns out, is somewhat more benign. Here are the facts as we now know them:

1. On February 1^st, Patterson sprung a surprise drug test on every member of the TCU football team. Five (not 80) players tested positive for pot. Another 11 players had trace amounts of marijuana in their systems, a quantity that is within the margin of error for the test. Marijuana was the only drug detected, and 86 players tested clean, according to the report; and

2. The only drug sold by the players was marijuana, and all amounts sold were less than four ounces.

Just a guess, but I would wager that if you performed a similar drug screening in other major college football programs, the number of positive tests is going to be a lot higher than five.

So who is to blame for this deception? Some would say it is Brock and Johnson, two of the arrested players. Brock signed an affidavit claiming 60 players flunked the recent drug test and Johnson claimed there were 80. But can you really fault a pair of kids in handcuffs, who were probably shaking in their boots and being coaxed for information by some detective? I can’t.

No, the real villain here is the national sports media, particularly ESPN. This is an egregious example of irresponsible journalism.

The untrue statements made by Brock and Johnson in their affidavits were pure unadulterated and uncorroborated hearsay. They contained allegations which, if true, could have cost the University its reputation, the football program its credibility and Patterson his job. A responsible journalist, a real truth seeker, would not have made mention of anything contained therein until he first ascertained its veracity. This used to be a fundamental principle of journalism.

Apparently, it is not anymore. The Dallas-Fort Worth media broke this story and intimated that 60-80 players flunked a drug test, based solely on the affidavits. The big boys in Bristol picked it up, and before the clock struck midnight, TCU was branded as an out-of-control program. This story was featured prominently on the home page of ESPN all day yesterday. Who knows how many potential recruits’ minds were poisoned by this story?

And today, now that we know the details are quite a bit tamer than first thought, where do you suppose the real truth is being reported?

I will give you a hint – it is not on ESPN's home page.  

And while a handful of players selling dime bags and smoking weed is a far cry from an entire football program snorting coke and tripping on ecstasy, I am not minimizing what the four drug dealing players did. I am also not minimizing marijuana use, which for many people is a dangerous gateway drug.

But I am not going to maximize or misstate the facts either. And that appears to be a lesson many of the so-called professionals have forgotten.