To a great extent, Wilson has created Troy's character as representation of one large flashback.  Troy has not been able to sort through the wreckage of his own past to make sense of the present and future.  This causes him to live with one foot planted in the present and the other back in the past. It is for this reason that Troy has no future.  Troy's flashback- based recollections of the past are what impacts his parenting skills, as he is not able to shake off the abuse he suffered as a child and revisit that upon Cory.  The ruptured hopes of his own dreams of playing ball play a role in his intense opposition to Cory's hopes of pursuing football.  In these instances, Wilson's construction of Troy is one done through flashback and one that is done through the fact that the past is not really the past for Troy because he has not properly understood it.  In these flashbacks, Wilson is able to convey the despair in Troy's present, one that is sacrificed because of the power and pain of the past.