The celebration should be on the field, but there are extenuating circumstances. Maybe later.

On Friday and Saturday, significant players and coaches in TCU’s history will reunite for an anniversary of the teams that played in the 1984 Bluebonnet Bowl, 1994 Independence Bowl, and 2014 Peach Bowl.

There will be a large tailgate before TCU’s home game on Saturday against Texas Tech, and former coach Gary Patterson and quarterback Trevone Boykin are expected to attend. The events and celebrations will be hosted by the Block T Association, the old letterman’s association, the group of former student athletes, team managers, coaches and trainers.

This association routinely hosts reunions, so this one is not out of the ordinary even if celebrating the 10th anniversary of that 2014 team should be on the actual field can’t happen just yet. This is complicated.

TCU’s 2014 team is arguably the best in school history, and it left an impression all over college football. Its controversial exclusion from the first college football playoff bracket is still relevant.

The team was coached by a man whose exit from the school in October of 2021 was messy. There are still “feelings” between both parties that haven’t completely waned.

The team featured a starting wide receiver, Kolby Listenbee, who later sued the coach, and the school.

The team was led by a quarterback who was kicked off the team before his last game, a man who later was sentenced to prison for assault. But Trevone Boykin sounds like a man who has moved on.

Trevone Boykin today

Boykin is 31 and proudly boasts of his 7-year-old daughter. He has a job, and lives in Dallas.

He has played football for the last two years in Tijuana, Mexico. The money is decent, and it’s a chance to play football.

“It’s definitely different. There is a language barrier. I am teaching things to my teammates that I learned in pee wee,” Boykin said in a phone interview. “It’s fun. Well, some games were fun and others weren’t. I didn’t always get a lot of blocking. The experience was fun.”

He sounds “all grown up.” He has been through a lot; even if much of it is self inflicted, he still had to go through it.

“I hurt a lot of people. A lot,” Boykin said. “I hurt myself. I have to own it. Not to run from it. We do live in a different time today, and people make mistakes back then, and they do now. I have to give myself grace. I try to get people to like me for who I am today.”

Boykin is well aware of what happens when you “Google” his name.

Boykin was kicked off TCU’s team after he was arrested for getting into a fight with a police officer in San Antonio the night before the Alamo Bowl on Jan. 1, 2016. He issued a statement, and was not there to play, or watch, one of the greatest bowl games ever played, when TCU rallied from a 31-0 halftime deficit to defeat Oregon in overtime.

After the 2016 NFL Draft, Boykin signed with the Seattle Seahawks as an undrafted free agent. He was Russell Wilson’s backup for one season, appeared in five games that season and threw one touchdown.

Boykin was on the practice squad in 2017, and he resided on the edge of being just good enough to be an NFL backup.

His NFL career effectively ended in March of 2018 when he was charged with aggravated assault of his girlfriend, and tampering with a witness. The particulars are disturbing. In Feb. of 2020, he was sentenced to three years in prison.

His aspirations to play in the NFL were over, but his life was not.

Boykin’s TCU legacy

Boykin came to TCU out of less than ideal circumstances in West Mesquite as the player Patterson preferred over Johnny Manziel. In fairness to Patterson, Manziel was passed over by nearly every program but Texas A&M.

An obscure detail to Boykin’s career: He was pushed into the starting quarterback spot as a redshirt freshman when starter Casey Pachall was arrested the week of TCU’s first ever Big 12 game, in October of 2012.

Boykin would start the rest of the season and led TCU to the Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl, a one-point loss to Michigan State.

The next season, Pachall returned and Boykin bounced from quarterback to receiver to running back as TCU finished 4-8. Nothing on Boykin’s resume suggested he was about to be at the top of college football.

Boykin was named the starting quarterback for 2014, and he took off. For those who coached, played, or watched the final two seasons of his career, was a breathtaking blur. An avalanche of moments, plays and games that for those who coached, played, or watched, are some of the best football experiences of their lives.

In 2014, Boykin was named a finalist for the Davey O’ Brien Award, which was given to Oregon’s Marcus Mariota. The banquet planners invited Boykin to attend the ceremony, which he did along with then Mississippi State quarterback Dak Prescott.

That TCU team’s ultimate mark was that it was left out of the first college football playoff, a scar for the entire team. In Boykin’s final two years as the starting QB, TCU was a combined 23-3, and finished No. 3 and No. 7 in the final respective AP polls.

When asked to recount his favorite memories from those days, Boykin references not a game, touchdown pass, run or win. There’s just a name.

Trevone Boykin and Abby

Fort Worth Star-Telegram photographer Paul Moseley recognized there might be a good picture when he asked to head to midfield for the pre-game coin toss between TCU and Iowa State in Ames on Oct. 17, 2015.

One of the Iowa State players was pushing a 6-year-old girl in a wheel chair, Abby Faber, who was diagnosed with a form of cerebral palsy before her third birthday. After the coin toss, Boykin walked over to Faber, squatted to her level, put his hands on her wheel chair and asked, “What’s your name?”

Moseley’s photo went viral, and the scene started a relationship between Boykin and the Faber family that has endured.

When asked what is his fondest memory of those memorable times at TCU, Boykin just says, “Abby.”

“That’s the one that pops out to me is that Iowa State game because of Abby,” he said. “When you look at this young kid, who is not looking for anything in return, and they don’t even know what a gesture like that can do. It was a situation that speaks more to me than just football.

“I remember the football things, but that moment I remember more than the rest. She’s in high school now. She’s 18, and we talked a few months ago. We’ve always kept in communication.”

Trevone Boykin and lost NIL

Boykin is well aware of the dates, and he just missed the cut. NCAA Division I athletes who played from June 15, 2016 to Sept. 2024 can apply for a claim in a class action lawsuit filed against college sports’ largest governing body that until recently banned players from being paid.

The payout is expected to be close to $3 billion.

Boykin’s last game with TCU Nov. 27, 2015, the memorable overtime win against Baylor in the freezing rain. Had the “rules” that exist today been in place when he played at TCU, when “Deuce Boogie” was a thing, Boykin would have cashed in.

“Just thinking back to that time, we had just enough money to survive. My parents paid my phone bill,” Boykin said. “I didn’t have anything to pay for anything. I was able to be on the cover of magazines, drive donations for Abby, and I would definitely have been able to do something for my family. I couldn’t.

“It wasn’t just me. There were so many of those guys like that; Tim Tebow, Vince Young, Reggie Bush. On and on.”

Bush, who won the Heisman Trophy in 2005, is suing the Pac-12, NCAA and USC and for compensation during his college career. A lot of other prominent former NCAA student athletes whose career preceded the class action lawsuit time cutoff are expected to file similar suits.

Trevone Boykin’s future with TCU

When Boykin graduated from TCU, the level of celebration went far beyond the standard reaction for a student athlete who walks across the stage to receive their diploma. Everyone who knew Boykin, and specifically where he came from, was well aware that the rigors of college course work was not easy.

“It was a goal that I set for myself, not knowing when I was going to leave school or how things were going to play out,” he said. “As good as everyone thought I was, I had doubts how things would pan out. Education was one of those things that I wanted to be able to hang my hat on if football didn’t work out.”

When TCU people learned of Boykin’s arrest, the reaction was disgust and disappointment on multiple levels.

Since he was released, the administration waited a while to welcome him back with the understanding that there has to be an understanding. He has come back for games, but nothing official.

“I am in a way better place than I was then, mentally. Just going through some of the things I went through,” he said. “The best way to say it is TCU is a place that treated me like family. It has been all love. I have nothing bad to say about any of it.”

School administrators readily acknowledge he did wonderful things for the football team, for the school, and that he also served the punishment for his crime.

But … this is just complicated.