Celebrating one of the best stories in college football: Landrey Eargle is a teenager

Some of the best stories in college football have nothing to do with what happens on the field, or even the coaches or players that make the game a national obsession on fall Saturdays.

I’ve covered national championship games, the Rose Bowl, Nick Saban, Peyton Manning and Cam Newton.

But nothing rises to the level of being able to share Landrey Eargle’s story.

Today, by the grace of God, Landrey is officially a teenager. She turns 13!

And to get there, she’s fought every single day of her life with every ounce of love, care and support from her family. Her dad, Joshua Eargle, is UTEP’s offensive run game coordinator and tight ends coach. Her mom, Kristen, founded and hosts a national podcast, Coach’s Wife Life, and works for D1.ticker. Her older sister, Kourtney, is a budding star softball pitcher, and her younger brother, Stallings (aka Smash), is the next great tight end for the Dallas Cowboys.

Together, they make up Team Eargle.

People ask me all the time who my favorite team is. That’s an easy answer — Team Eargle.

I met the family in 2018 when I traveled to Clarksville, Tennessee, to share Landrey’s inspirational story. Josh was then the offensive coordinator at Austin Peay after previously serving as the head coach at East Texas Baptist. The UTEP job is Joshua’s fifth since his time at Austin Peay, as he’s moved his family all over the country from Clarksville, to Lawrence, Kansas, to Memphis, to Miami and now to El Paso. The volatile nature of the coaching business is always hardest on the family. All of us, media and fans alike, oftentimes lose sight of that when coaches are fired.

When I first met Landrey, she was a week away from turning 6 and already a miracle. Joshua had emptied his retirement in chunks, rolled it over from different jobs, taken the penalty and used as much of it as possible to pay for Landrey’s medical care.

She wasn’t even supposed to make it out of the hospital alive after being born six weeks premature via Caesarean section and then undergoing open heart surgery at 7 weeks old. She spent the first 73 days of her life in a hospital — six weeks at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, the first 10 days on a ventilator, before being transported to Children’s Medical Center in Dallas, where she had the open-heart surgery. She coded four times in nine days post-operation as doctors frantically brought her back to life.

Landrey, who weighed 3 pounds, 14 ounces when she was born, didn’t walk until she was 4. In 2018, she was diagnosed by doctors at Vanderbilt University Medical Center with a rare mutation of the CSNK2B gene. She was one of only four documented cases in the world to have that gene mutation, and the only one in the United States. In addition to a weakened immune system and serious cardiac issues, she has frequent epileptic seizures.

Just from her two hospital stays in Dallas as an infant, there are 10,000 pages in her medical records.

Fast forward to today, and while her immune system remains significantly compromised, her seizures are still frequent, and she’s had to weather some harrowing hospitalizations. Landrey now claps when she gets excited, delights in listening to her praise music, and has even competed in Special Olympics.

Along the way, Joshua and Kristen have drawn strength from Landrey’s infectious smile and her indomitable strength.

The family’s motto: Choose joy today.

Well, today, we celebrate one of the bravest little girls — make that bravest teenagers — that I know and her incredible family.

So, yes, if you hear some raucous (and emotional) cheering this afternoon when they show tributes to Landrey on the Sun Bowl video board as part of her big birthday celebration, that will be me.

If you want to help, donate to Ruler of Hope, whose mission is to provide support and research to medically fragile children.

How fitting that Landrey’s middle name is Hope.