Editor’s note: This is an opinion column by Jason Phillips, a former TCU and NFL player, examining the debate surrounding TCU’s decision to withhold the Fort Worth Star-Telegram media credential and the impact of the controversy on the student-athlete at the center of it.
Everybody has an opinion about TCU withholding the Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s media credential.
Most of those opinions begin with the newspaper.
Mine begins with the player.
The easiest position to take is that a university should never punish a newspaper for reporting something it does not like.
I understand that argument.
Actually, I think it is an important one.
The media has a responsibility to ask uncomfortable questions. A football program does not get to decide which stories qualify as news simply because the timing is inconvenient or the subject is embarrassing.
Independent reporting matters, and there is a legitimate debate about whether withholding the Star-Telegram’s credential was an appropriate response.
The Football Writers Association of America has called for the credential to be restored. Reasonable people can agree with that position. FWAA president Shehan Jeyarajah publicly said he strongly disagreed with TCU’s decision and called for Steven Johnson’s credential for the game in Ireland to be reinstated.
But there is another responsibility in this story receiving considerably less attention.
Who is responsible for protecting the player?
I am not talking about Jacob Fields, the player TCU dismissed following the Aug. 13 locker-room altercation.
I am talking about the other player involved.
The player who was reportedly injured.
The player whose family, according to TCU athletic director Mike Buddie, received threats after what the university says was inaccurate information that advanced a harmful narrative. Buddie said the original unnamed source lacked firsthand knowledge and that TCU had strongly disputed the information.
Everybody wants to debate the rights of the newspaper.
We should.
I just do not think we should debate those rights so loudly that we forget there is a young man standing in the middle of the story.
What Happens Inside a Locker Room
I spent a large part of my adult life inside college and NFL locker rooms.
They are competitive places. Sometimes incredibly competitive.
The competition does not stop when practice ends. Players are fighting for starting jobs, playing time, scholarships and futures. Two guys competing against each other every day do not automatically become best friends because the whistle blows and practice is over.
Arguments happen.
Tempers flare.
Guys get angry with one another.
None of that excuses violence.
That is important to say because I do not want anything that follows to sound like I am minimizing what reportedly happened at TCU.
According to public reporting, an altercation occurred inside TCU’s football locker room on Aug. 13. TCU football personnel contacted campus police the following day. On Aug. 18, the university dismissed Fields, a senior safety expected to play an important role this season. The Star-Telegram’s own archive confirms the dismissal story and subsequent altercation story were published Aug. 18.
Think about that for a moment.
The season opener was less than two weeks away.
TCU did not give a projected contributor a token punishment and move on.
It removed him from the football program.
That is relevant.
You can question how much information TCU initially released. You can argue that announcing a dismissal for a “violation of team rules” did not adequately explain why an important player suddenly disappeared from the roster.
Those are fair questions.
But whatever else we think about TCU’s handling of the situation, the university did take action involving a player who could have helped it win football games.
The program acted.
Then the Story Changed
This controversy became more complicated when the reporting moved beyond the existence of the altercation and attempted to explain what led to it.
On Aug. 18, the Star-Telegram published a report citing an unnamed source it described as having “direct knowledge of the incident.” That report attributed to the source allegations that Fields felt targeted by teammates with insults and threats and that the coaching staff had not de-escalated tensions.
Those were allegations contained in the Star-Telegram’s reporting. I was not there, and I am not presenting those allegations as independently established facts.
Three days later, however, the Star-Telegram published a materially different account.
On Aug. 21, a second source, described by the newspaper as authorized to speak for Fields and his family, said Fields and his family did not believe he had been bullied or mistreated. According to that report, the tension instead stemmed from competition and questionable plays during practice.
The Star-Telegram’s archive confirms that clarification was published Aug. 21 at 10:04 p.m.
Those are not small differences.
“Competition between teammates became heated” is a very different narrative from one suggesting a player had been repeatedly targeted and mistreated before an altercation.
And the sequence matters.
The initial account appeared Aug. 18.
The Star-Telegram itself published the Fields-family clarification Aug. 21.
TCU did not make the credential dispute public until several days later. The Star-Telegram’s Jim Barnes, who is the newspaper’s sports editor, published the credential story Aug. 26.
That chronology matters because it shows something important about this debate.
There were competing versions of what led to the altercation before the dispute over media access exploded publicly.
I do not know which version captures every detail of what happened inside that locker room.
That is exactly the point.
When a published account portrays one player as having been repeatedly targeted, threatened or mistreated before an altercation, it inevitably shapes how readers understand the people around him.
It assigns roles before every version of the events has been established.
And that matters for someone besides Fields.
It matters for the player on the other side of the altercation.
That is where I believe the injured player became lost in this debate.
What TCU Actually Said
TCU’s stated objection was not simply that the newspaper published the injured player’s name.
That is an important distinction.
The Star-Telegram says it did not identify him until after he publicly identified himself in a since-deleted social media video.
TCU’s objection went further.
Buddie said an unnamed source without firsthand knowledge provided inaccurate information used in the newspaper’s initial reporting. He said TCU strongly disputed that information and that its inclusion advanced a narrative that endangered a student-athlete and resulted in threats to him and his family. TCU said that was what led it to withhold the media credential pending additional conversations with the newspaper’s sports staff.
Whether withholding the credential was the right response is absolutely fair to debate.
But the concern itself should not be difficult to understand.
You can update an article.
You can add another source.
You can clarify information.
You can publish new information that conflicts with an earlier account.
What you cannot do is reach into every phone and pull back the first version somebody read.
You cannot delete every screenshot.
You cannot erase every social-media post.
You cannot unring the bell.
And if threats were made against a player or his family, as TCU says occurred, a later clarification does not make those threats disappear.
From the outside, this is content. It is something to debate, share and eventually leave behind when the next controversy arrives.
Inside that locker room, the story follows the player into meetings, meals and conversations with his family.
The public gets to move on.
The player still has to live inside the story.
A Press Credential Is Not the First Amendment
There is another part of this discussion that deserves some precision.
I have seen the credential decision described as a violation of freedom of the press or the First Amendment.
Freedom of the press matters enormously.
But a media credential and the First Amendment are not the same thing.
TCU is a private university. The First Amendment generally restricts governmental action, not the decisions of private institutions. The Supreme Court also has long recognized that freedom of the press does not create a general constitutional right for journalists to receive special access to information or places that are unavailable to the public.
That does not mean TCU’s credential decision is automatically wise, fair or beyond criticism.
It does not mean universities should retaliate against journalists because they dislike critical coverage.
And it does not mean media access is unimportant.
It means something much narrower: withholding a press credential does not, by itself, establish a First Amendment violation.
Those are different questions, and we should be capable of discussing them separately.
I believe TCU benefits from independent coverage. Its fans benefit from it. College athletics should not become a place where access depends entirely on whether the people being covered approve of what is written.
But we can defend that principle without pretending a press pass itself is a constitutional right.
Players Are People Before They Are Content
College athletes are more visible than ever.
They are making money, building brands, signing NIL agreements and appearing in video games. Some have agents and large social-media followings.
I understand why the public increasingly views major college football players like professional athletes.
But increased visibility does not make them public property.
They are still young men attempting to navigate situations plenty of adults would struggle to handle.
I have been the player whose performance was discussed publicly.
I have been criticized.
That comes with playing major college and professional football.
But there is a difference between criticizing how somebody played and constructing a public understanding of his character, conduct or role in something that happened behind closed doors.
That is why accuracy matters so much.
It is also why protecting the player matters.
Those two ideas are not enemies.
The Star-Telegram can have a legitimate responsibility to report the story, and TCU can have a legitimate responsibility to protect its player.
The press can deserve independence and still deserve scrutiny when its reporting produces real-world consequences.
TCU can have a legitimate concern about its player’s safety while reasonable people believe withholding credentials was the wrong way to address that concern.
All of those things can be true at the same time.
Buddie has said the credential is being withheld until additional conversations can occur between the athletic department and the newspaper’s sports staff.
I would like to see those conversations happen.
I would like to see the credential issue resolved.
TCU benefits from independent coverage. Its fans benefit from it. College athletics should not become a place where access depends entirely on whether the people being covered approve of what is written.
But accountability cannot travel in only one direction.
We ask coaches and universities to protect their players.
We criticize programs when winning becomes more important than a young person’s well-being.
We demand accountability when serious incidents happen.
In this case, TCU football personnel contacted campus police after the incident, and the program removed an expected contributor before the season began. TCU coach Sonny Dykes has since publicly acknowledged the incident, calling it unfortunate and out of character and describing it as a teaching moment for the program. The Star-Telegram listed that story as updated Aug. 27 at 5:08 p.m.
Then, when TCU said inaccurate reporting had advanced a harmful narrative and contributed to threats against another player and his family, the university acted again.
You do not have to agree with how it acted.
I am not sure there was a perfect answer available.
But I understand why TCU believed it had a responsibility to do something.
If you are going to sit in a family’s living room during recruiting and promise parents that you will take care of their son, that responsibility cannot disappear the first time protecting him becomes publicly inconvenient.
That is the part I keep coming back to.
Everybody is asking who will protect the press from TCU.
That is a legitimate question.
I am asking who is supposed to protect the player from everybody else.
The Star-Telegram has a job to do.
TCU has one too.
Media access matters.
Accountability matters.
But there is a young man caught in the middle of all of this whose name, reputation and future will outlast this week’s argument over credentials.
TCU, the Star-Telegram and the rest of us will eventually move on to the next story.
He still has to live with this one.
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