LaDainian Tomlinson had just begun introductions: TCU, NFL, Hall of Fame and …
“Say it again,” TCU strength coach Kaz Kazadi yelled out, “Pro Football Hall of Fame.”
“First ballot,” LT added.
The 2025 Horned Frog football players had gathered and began to whoop, a din that only grew as LT pulled out his 2017 momento, his gold Pro Football Hall of Fame jacket — the one that will now hang in the Horned Frogs football facilities, thanks to his surprise gift this week.
“I was Hall of Famer 309,” the runnin gback told them. “Only a hundred-and-some men in the world got this gold jacket, and we are keeping it here right at TCU.”
A Horned Frog Football legend, NFL MVP and Walter Payton Man of the Year winner, standing in TCU’s state-of-the-art football facilities that rival the very best in the country with a coach who took the Horned Frogs to the National Championship. Not a single part of that would have seemed likely to LT when he arrived in 1997.
“That’s a special group of guys I started with at TCU. I’d like to think we kind of laid the foundation and the groundwork of what TCU Football has become,” LT said. “I think what Coach (Sonny) Dykes’ team did to get to the National Championship game, they took it to another level. They allowed even us alums to see what is possible. Because you know, you wonder: What is our ceiling? Can we go to the National Championship? And they answered that. They knocked the doors down and blew them open to the possibilities.”
For the Horned Frog players present this day in the recently unveiled Jamal Powell Strength Room, this is the only TCU they know. They watched quarterback Max Duggan reach New York as a Heisman Trophy finalist and played an undefeated regular season to become, under Dykes, the first Texas football team to reach the College Football Playoff. All as a member of a Power 5 conference.
Fiesta Bowls, Rose Bowls, ESPN College GameDay on campus, all of that can be traced back to the foundation laid by LT’s teams, starting with their 1998 Sun Bowl victory against the University of Southern California.
“We put the Sun Bowl banner in the indoor facility because, when you go and look at the program-changing wins, that obviously is what put TCU on the map,” Dykes said. “And it set them up for the run they had before we got here and the run we had in 2022.”
Dykes took LT on a tour of what years of investment in and commitment to TCU Athletics has produced, including the recently completed Mike and Brenda Harrison Football Performance Center, the Simpson Family Restoration Center, the Jamal Powell Strength Room and expansive upgrades to the existing facilities made possible by the Jane & John Justin Foundation.
LT and his fellow TCU Trustees greenlit a lot of these projects in support of Chancellor Daniel W. Pullin and the university’s recently launched strategic plan, LEAD ON: Values in Action. It just hits different to walk through the “car wash,” step into the “purple” snow room, recover in the relaxation pods and experience it as an athlete who has competed on the highest levels of the game.
“I appreciate and embrace my role as a Trustee, to do my part in leaving a legacy for this university,” LT said. “It’s a humbling experience to think where I’ve come from to presenting this gold jacket and to be able to give back to this program that has given me so much.”
Of his many accolades, though, the Walter Payton Man of the Year designation may be LT’s most impressive. It honors him for the very values that guided TCU then and now: integrity, engagement, community and excellence. They helped make LT the student-athlete he was, and the man he is.
Underrecruited by coach Pat Sullivan to a TCU team that had finished 1-10 the previous year in the Western Athletic Conference, LT worked his way into national conversations practice after practice, yard by yard, until that day he went for 400 yards and set an NCAA record.
Former Horned Frog football head coach Dennis Franchione remembers learning LT only needed 3 more yards against UTEP. What they both remember is what Coach Fran said as LT went back onto the field for the record.
“I told him, ‘If you get hurt, I’m going to bury you at the hash mark,’” Franchione recalled. “But he went in and did it. … That was the thing with him. If you had third and 8, you just gave it to LT because he always got it.”
What NFL scouts saw is what anybody who watches film from his nine seasons with the San Diego Chargers sees. Their offenses lined up in a lot of two-back formations and everybody knew what was coming. They still could not stop him.
“I like to describe it as the height of your superpowers where you go out there and feel almost untouchable,” LT said about his cannon year, 2006. “It’s like in the movie The Matrix when people see things in slow motion. That’s what it felt like for me on the field.”
On this hot July 2025 day, the weight room had mostly emptied. One of the last players remaining was sophomore running back Jeremy Payne. He has watched plenty of LT highlights. You do not come to TCU as a running back without watching the GOAT.
“I’m here to follow in his footsteps,” Payne said. “Everybody looks up to him, and to have him here, talking to us, moving us, that hits hard.”
Payne started to leave, and then turned around.
“Jeremy Payne,” he said. “No. 26.”
Say it again, Jeremy. Because as LT proved, anything is possible from here.