Welcome to the Big 12 TCU: Four Players, 17 Students Arrested in Massive Campus Drug Bust

TCU is a small, private school that has only had a handful of students arrested for drug related offenses.

That all changed this morning.

Seventeen current TCU students were arrested along with four football players on coach Gary Patterson's squad.

Meaning, there are some angry parents out there.

Especially the parents who were already paying nearly $44k a year in tuition, room and board.

Seventeen student drug arrests is a massive number no matter what school you're talking about, but it's even larger when you consider that TCU has only 8,000 undergrad students and is, you know, a private Christian school that is one of the most expensive colleges in the country.

We're talking a drug crime ring of Wire-esque proportions that was the subject of a six month investigation. Students were charged with selling cocaine, ecstasy, marijuana, and prescription medication.

Can you imagine what this was like on a rich private school campus? An early morning drug raid?

TCU student's just made it rain on the criminal attorney bar in Dallas/Ft. Worth. If there were cameras in the top criminal defense firms when this news broke, I guarantee you they were doing fist bumps. (And probably snorting cocaine).

Early this morning TCU posted a message from its chancellor on the university's site.

"We have a responsibility to ensure that our campus environment is free of such behavior. Today's actions highlight that responsibility. The students involved were immediately separated from TCU and criminally trespassed from campus. Further, according to University policy, students arrested and found in violation of distributing drugs are subject to immediate expulsion from TCU."

Welcome to the Big 12, TCU.

We'll update this story as it develops throughout the morning.

In the meantime, if you can find us a 1960's drug bust that involved more than 17 students, I'd love to hear about it.

Maybe everything really is bigger in Texas.

At the very least the cost to the TCU football team was substantial: 2011 starting safety Devin Johnson, a back-up tackle Ty Horn, Tanner Brock, a linebacker and the leading tackler on 2010's team, and D.J. Yendrey, a solid defensive tackle were all dismissed from school.

So, yeah, it's a big hit for the football team.

But a bigger hit for the university.