TCU’s ‘chaotic’ 2016 Alamo Bowl rally: Bram Kohlhausen, halftime exits and a marriage proposal

This season, as TCU marched toward a 12-1 record and a spot in the College Football Playoff, Bram Kohlhausen often dropped in the locker room after home games.

Kohlhausen is a local legend of sorts. During his time as a walk-on quarterback, he started only one game for the Horned Frogs, but it’s among the most memorable in program history: TCU’s 47-41 victory over Oregon in the Alamo Bowl on Jan. 2, 2016. The No. 11 Horned Frogs rallied from a 31-0 deficit to defeat the No. 15 Ducks in triple overtime in San Antonio.

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“I’ll walk into a locker room after a home game, and maybe not some of the star players but some of the other walk-ons and other kids around there will tell me I’m the reason why they chose TCU,” Kohlhausen recently told The Athletic. “Because of that Oregon game.”

Former TCU coach Gary Patterson calls it one of the three most memorable games of his career, ranking it just behind TCU’s 2011 Rose Bowl win over Wisconsin and its 2014 Peach Bowl win over Ole Miss.

“You want to hear some great stories, just bring up that game,” Patterson said. “There are people who left at halftime. There are people who are sitting on their private planes on the tarmac, watching a 14-inch TV because we’re coming back.”

Contributing to the drama: TCU won without the 2015 team’s best player. Three nights before the game, quarterback Trevone Boykin, who had finished 10th in Heisman Trophy voting, was arrested for striking a bicycle patrol officer following a bar fight in San Antonio’s River Walk district. He was suspended and sent home.

The Horned Frogs, ranked as high as No. 2 during the regular season, already were without receiver Josh Doctson, a consensus All-American who had set a school record with 79 receptions, and starting center Joey Hunt because of injuries. In wake of the Boykin news, they went from a one-point favorite to a seven-point underdog.

Then the game started. And it got much worse.

“What comes to mind first?” said All-Big 12 defensive end Josh Carraway, who met his future wife on the field after it was all over. “Just a chaotic game. Very stressful.”

A senior walk-on, Bram Kohlhausen was in the team hotel when he first heard the news. A friend had texted him, notifying him that Boykin had been arrested. It was around 2 a.m., two hours after the team’s curfew.

Kohlhausen’s room overlooked a lobby where TCU’s graduate assistants stayed up after bed check playing cards. The backup quarterback opened the curtains and knocked on the window.

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“Trevone just got arrested!” he yelled.

Two GAs took off down the hallway to alert coaches and staff members. As the night unfolded, word spread. Quarterbacks coach and co-offensive coordinator Sonny Cumbie found out around 2:30 a.m.

“My first thought was I hoped Trevone was OK,” Cumbie said. “You kind of know in your gut that this is not good for him long-term, this is not good for his future. And this is not good for our football team.”

The next morning, Patterson informed the Horned Frogs that Boykin had been suspended and sent back to Fort Worth.

“It was pretty wild,” right guard Brady Foltz said. “Especially, I mean, that’s the guy I had been in college with for five years. We had gotten really close, blocking for him, being by his side for so long. We took it pretty hard that morning.”

“It was like a nightmare,” offensive analyst Hudson Fuller said.

Kohlhausen was next man up. A three-star high school recruit, Kohlhausen had started his career at the University of Houston, where he played sparingly over two seasons. In 2013, he attended Los Angeles Harbor College, but a shoulder injury cut short his season.

In 2014, he transferred to TCU.

Kohlhausen had already had an emotional season. On Nov. 7, before a road game against Oklahoma State, he learned that his dad had died after a year-long battle with melanoma. A Houston attorney, Bill Kohlhausen had always been there for his son, waiting for him after games.

“The last game he attended was the (Oct. 3 Texas) game,” said Kohlhausen, referring to a 50-7 win in which he threw two passes in mop-up duty. “Then I went home for one day, and I knew it was the last time I was ever going to see him again.”

On Nov. 14, Kohlhausen replaced Boykin, who had injured his right ankle, and completed 13 of 19 passes for 112 yards in a win over Kansas. The next week, he replaced starter Foster Sawyer and nearly led an upset of No. 7 Oklahoma. Down 30-13 late in the third quarter, Kohlhausen had rallied the Horned Frogs, throwing a touchdown pass in the final minute to bring them to within 30-29. Oklahoma, however, batted down Kohlhausen’s pass on the two-point conversion attempt to escape with the win.

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In San Antonio, once it got over the loss of Boykin, TCU knew it could win with Kohlhausen. After the team attended an FCA breakfast, Fuller got Kohlhausen an updated practice script and game plan. The Horned Frogs had one walkthrough session to prepare.

“Bram was a gunslinger,” Cumbie said. “He was going to throw the ball down the field. He was going to take chances. He was going to be very aggressive. When it’s going well, that’s really good. When it’s not going well, it could mean the other team getting the ball. But Bram had a lot of confidence in himself and I think the players sensed that. They had belief in him.”

But to start, nothing went right. Behind quarterback Vernon Adams Jr. and running back Royce Freeman, Oregon scored on four of five possessions to lead 28-0.

How bad was it going for TCU? With five minutes left before halftime, Oregon lined up to punt. TCU linebacker Garrett Kaufman blocked it, but Oregon defensive lineman DeForest Buckner caught the deflection and ran 10 yards for a first down.

“When plays like that happen, you’re like, ‘Man, this is just not our night,’” Cumbie said.

“It was like, ‘Are you kidding me?'” said Sawyer, the backup quarterback.

TCU trailed 31-0 at halftime.

“We were more stunned than anything,” said Carraway, the defensive end. “Everybody was, like, looking around at each other, not knowing what to say.”

In the locker room, graduate assistant Jason Phillips tried to fire up the Horned Frogs, urging them to show some program pride. Meanwhile, the TCU specialists congregated outside.

“I just remember I was sitting down eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich,” kicker Jaden Oberkrom said. “I mean, I was checked out. I was like, ‘OK, this is my last game, I might get one kickoff if I’m lucky, one extra point maybe.’ But we were done, man. We were checked out.”

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Patterson reminded the Horned Frogs that they were a 10-win team.

“I didn’t go in and raise my voice,” he said. “It was one of those situations where, ‘Hey, look, we have a good football team. There’s not really anything that has gone our way.’ I don’t think anybody thought we were going to go out and win the game. We just wanted to make it competitive.”

“I will say this about Coach Patterson,” Cumbie said. “In moments like that, as a quarterbacks coach/co-offensive coordinator, I’m like, ‘Oh, boy. I’m going to get fired. This is going to be terrible.’ But in my seven years with Gary, he always led very well. He was a strong leader at all times, but especially in adverse situations.”

After the dismal first half, Kohlhausen thought for sure he would get benched — “I didn’t think I was playing football ever again,” he said — but TCU stuck with him. After Oberkrom kicked a 24-yard field goal on TCU’s first second-half possession, the game suddenly felt different.

“I’m telling you,” analyst Mack Brown said on the television broadcast, “you don’t want momentum to change with a bunch of young people. It’s hard to get back.”

Oregon played the second half without Adams, who had been injured on a designed run late in the second quarter. The Ducks struggled without him. After a three-and-out, Kohlhausen led TCU on its first touchdown drive, hitting Jaelan Austin on a 26-yard pass.

Oregon fumbled the ensuing kickoff. TCU recovered. Seven plays later, Kohlhausen scored on fourth-and-goal to pull TCU within 31-17. The Horned Frogs were alive.

“It was kind of what we preach every week: We’re never going to be out of the fight,” said Foltz, the offensive lineman. “That was just the culture we had there.”

TCU outscored Oregon 31-0 in the second half to force overtime.

“We started to get our confidence and swagger back,” Carraway said.

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The teams traded touchdowns in the first overtime. They traded field goals in the second.

In the third session, Kohlhausen ran right on an option. An Oregon defender covered the TCU running back, the pitch man. Kohlhausen turned the corner and raced eight yards into the end zone. After TCU missed the 2-point conversion, the Ducks had a chance to tie or win.

A poor snap on third down resulted in a loss of six yards. On fourth-and-8, Oregon quarterback Jeff Lockie threw a pass near the goal line but TCU safety Denzel Johnson knocked it down, securing an improbable 47-41 comeback win.

“Just a sigh of relief,” cornerback Corry O’Meally said.

As confetti fell in the Alamodome, Carraway spotted a TCU cheerleader named Chelsea. The defensive end didn’t know her well; they had followed each other on Instagram and added each other on Snapchat, but he never had talked to her before. Confident from the win, Carraway introduced himself. They started dating six months later and were married in June 2022.

Kohlhausen, who was named the game’s Offensive MVP, passed for 351 yards and accounted for four touchdowns. The 31-point comeback matched the biggest in bowl history, tying Texas Tech’s rally from the same deficit against Minnesota in the 2006 Insight Bowl. (Coincidentally, Cumbie, who was TCU’s quarterbacks coach in 2015 and is now head coach at Louisiana Tech, worked on the Texas Tech radio broadcast crew for that bowl contest.)

Kohlhausen called it one of the best feelings of his life. From his dad’s death to the suspension of his close friend Boykin, so much had happened that season. The Horned Frogs had overcome so many injuries, so much adversity. His coaches and teammates felt the same way.

As Patterson walked to the locker room, he passed Oregon donor Phil Knight. Not sure what to do, the TCU coach simply shrugged his shoulders as if to say, “Man, I don’t know what to tell you.”

Nearly seven years later, Bram Kohlhausen still gets asked about the Alamo Bowl. People tell him what they were doing that night, whether they stayed for the whole game or left at halftime. It was a great moment in school history.

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Another arrives Saturday in the College Football Playoff.

No. 3 TCU faces No. 2 Michigan in the Fiesta Bowl. Under first-year coach Sonny Dykes, the Horned Frogs are two wins from a national championship, a place many never thought they would be. “Everybody’s excited,” Kohlhausen said. “This is something we’ve never done before. We’re a small school of like 10,000 students. You would think that A&M or Texas or one of the bigger schools would be the first Texas school in the College Football Playoff, but it’s little ol’ TCU.”

“It’s good to see the Frogs back,” said Foster Sawyer, the backup quarterback. “To see what Coach Patterson has built and to continue that, and it’s really cool to see all the players rally around Coach Dykes. It’s a special time. It’s cool to feel in this town, just the quiet confidence.”

Several former TCU players said they felt like everyone counted out this year’s team, but the Horned Frogs never went away. They just kept showing up, proving they belong, just as TCU did in the 2016 Alamo Bowl.

“Even with a backup quarterback against Oregon we were able to take care of business,” Kohlhausen said. “And I really believe this team is special. No matter how much people want to talk about Michigan, we’re not going to be afraid of that yellow ‘M’ on anybody’s helmet.”

(Photo: Ronald Martinez / Getty Images)