For Ken Seals, the journals were the telltale sign.
I spoke years ago to his private quarterbacks coach when Seals was a freshman in high school at Azle. Seals was something of a phenom then, the starting QB of the Hornets’ varsity team. Did I mention he was just a freshman?
Anyway, Ryan Roberts, a former Baylor QB who I presume is still in the business of quarterback instruction, mentioned something he’d never seen from any 11-year-old before.
“In six years of doing this,” Roberts said then of Seals, “he’s the only guy I’ve had who, after the first session, went home and journaled every drill that we did and implemented his own training regimen on his own.”
Did I mention Ken Seals was a fifth grader at the time?
Fast-forward to today — 10 or so years later — Seals will play in his last college football game, starting for TCU in its Alamo Bowl game against Southern Cal on Tuesday in San Antonio.
A backup the past two years, Seals will start in place of Josh Hoover, who left the team for another pasture — who knows what he’ll find in it — to enter the transfer portal.
You can bet your last tailgate Frog Dog that the guy journaling football workouts in the fifth grade will be prepared for the moment.
“Even as a backup, I tried to prepare like I was going to play in the game,” Seals said on the eve of the bowl game. “It was always my thought process: How unfortunate would it be if I actually got the opportunity that I wanted, got in the game, and then was disappointed in the way that I played because I didn’t prepare the right way?”
Like Seals and Eric McAllister — an NFL prospect who, by today’s conventional wisdom, shouldn’t be playing but is — the Horned Frogs are trying to end the season the right way.
TCU can finish 9-4 for a second consecutive season with a victory. Southern Cal, led by coach Lincoln Riley and a member of the Big Ten, is 9-3.
Kickoff is set for 8 p.m. on ESPN — still, I think, The Worldwide Leader in Sports.
In addition to Hoover, TCU will also be without offensive coordinator Kendal Briles, who left to take the same job in South Carolina, ending a tenure defined as much by the blowtorch applied to his backside the second he stepped foot on campus as by scheme and results. Tight ends coach Mitch Kirsch will call the plays.
But McAllister is playing. So, too, are Bud Clark and tight end Chase Curtis. All three have some combination of size and experience NFL scouts value. McAllister, who had one of the best seasons by a receiver in TCU history as a Biletnikoff Award semifinalist, is the most highly regarded of the three.
McAllister is playing “because of my teammates.”
“These guys have counted on me all year, and then I found out Ken was going to play, and I wasn’t going to leave no one out there high and dry,” McAllister said. “Our OC left us, QB left us, and I really wasn’t going to sit at home and watch my teammates play a game that I really wanted to play in.”
Seals interjected with levity: “I told him I’d throw him the ball.”
“Yeah, that, too,” McAllister said.
It was also McAllister who rallied the team around Seals, Kirsch said. It was a powerful moment, the coach said, that reset the team for the postseason.
“The day after Josh left, Eric McAllister got up in front of the whole team and said, ‘Ken’s our guy; we got his back,’” Kirsch said. “I thought that was really powerful and speaks to the culture of this team, as well.”
Seals said the moment carried real weight, especially given the uncertainty surrounding the team at the time. He had gone into the meeting prepared to address the group himself, sensing nerves and unanswered questions after the decision. Instead, McAllister spoke up first. McAllister taking control of the moment helped settle the locker room and refocus everyone on the task at hand — winning one more game.
“When you’re the backup quarterback sometimes, especially when you’re older than the starter, it can be tough,” TCU head coach Sonny Dykes said Monday. “It can be tough to practice at a high level, be mentally focused and go out there and give it your all every day when you know there’s not a great chance that you’re going to play. Ken never did that. He showed up every day. Had the best attitude.
“I’m thankful for him and his commitment to his teammates, what kind of person he is. Again, the guys have really rallied around him and they’re excited to play for him.”
Seals began his college career at Vanderbilt, signing out of Weatherford High School after transferring from Azle. He started for the Vols as a freshman and sophomore, becoming only the third true freshman in the SEC since 1972 to start a season opener. His 1,928 yards in nine games were a record for a Vanderbilt freshman. He also had three 300-yard games. As a sophomore, injuries limited him to seven starts in 2021.
Seals took a redshirt in 2022. He played in 10 games as a redshirt sophomore in 2023. That December, he graduated from Vanderbilt and transferred to TCU.
“Everything that Josh could do, Ken can do,” Kirsch said. “Let’s not forget, Ken started 20-plus games in the SEC. So, we felt as a staff for the longest time that we’ve had the best backup quarterback in the country, and now he’s got a chance to kind of ride off into the sunset for TCU, a team that he grew up watching.”
Dykes said that there were times “we got into fall camp and we thought he performed just every bit as well as our starting quarterback performed.”
The reason I caught up with him in 2016 was because of the figurative high-rise he was scaling.
Seals appeared to be well ahead of his time. He was making national headlines long before leaving for college as the first back-to-back national champion of the National Football Academies Invitational Quarterback Competition in Canton, Ohio, as a seventh- and eighth-grader. He also stood out in state competitions and earned recognition as an eighth-grader at the Nike/Dallas Cowboys Elite 11 quarterback challenge, part of a nationwide competition for high school players.
Said Dykes: “He loves being at TCU. He’s a local guy. I think it’s meant the world for him to have a chance to come home and just be a part of TCU and go to school and be around these teammates.”
“This last season, not certain if I was ever going to get to play a game, my whole approach has been just enjoy it,” Seals said. “Enjoy the time that you have with your teammates, playing in your hometown. I’ve really tried to kind of step back a lot of times and just appreciate the situation I’m in.”