Tommy Tuberville's "explanation" of Slap Down is highly entertaining

All Texas Tech coach Tommy Tuberville had to say was, "We were losing to Kansas. In the third quarter. At home" and that would have explained why he popped one of his assistant coaches on Saturday in Lubbock.

Now Tommy Tuberville is like former Red Raiders basketball coach Bobby Knight.

Instead, Tuberville offered up some lame, "I reached to grab him and pull him off" away from the playing field pile of BS.

In the third quarter of Texas Tech's double-OT "win" against Kansas, Tuberville appeared to slap the headset off of graduate assistant coach Kevin Oliver. Facing a 4th and short from midfield, Tech was called for an illegal formation. On the next play, it was penalized 5 yards for a delay of game.

At this point, Tuberville popped and video shows him slapping the headset off Oliver.

After the game, Tuberville "explained" it. He said: "He was on the field, and I reached to grab him and pull him off. When I pulled, I missed his shirt and grabbed his (headset) and his microphone ripped off his head. I was trying to get him off the field."

Watch the video and you can clearly see this was not the case.
The case was Tommy Tuberville was irate that this game was remotely close.

 

 

 

 

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Call Senator Craig James - Mike Leach is at it again

Entering play on Saturday the Washington State Cougars were 2-7 overall and 0-6 in the Pac-12 in their first season under former Texas Tech coach Mike Leach. This sounds pretty typical of Washington State football.

Cougar WR Marquess Wilson has let it be known he is not a fan of Pirate football. This week Wilson was suspended for violating a team rule; he reportedly walked out on a conditioning test after WSU's 49-6 loss against Utah on Nov. 3. 

On Saturday, Wilson left the team and issued a statement to the Visalia Times-Delta newspaper in California. Click here for this story.  Wilson is from that area. 

He wrote:

“Dear Cougar Nation:

“It is with a heavy heart that I announce my decision to forgo playing football for Washington State University. I realize the school is saying that I am suspended for violating team policies and may return next week, but this is a lie. This is an attempt by the athletic department to cover up what is really happening in that locker room.

“It is been a privilege to be a Cougar, to perform on your field and wear the Crimson and Gray. I would like to thank Washington State University for giving me the opportunity to do what I love most, to play football and receive a quality education for the past three years. I’m grateful to the athletic department for the coaching, care and encouragement I have received prior to this season.

“This was going to be our year. My teammates and I were aspiring to be the winning team you deserve. Unfortunately for all, the new coaching staff has destroyed that endeavor. I believe coaches have a chance to mold players, to shape men, to create greatness. However, the new regime of coaches has preferred to belittle, intimidate and humiliate us. This approach has obviously not been successful, and has put a dark shadow on this program.

“My teammates and I have endured this treatment all season long. It is not “tough love”. It is abuse. This abuse cannot be allowed to continue. I feel it is my duty to stand up and shed light on this situation by sacrificing my dreams, my education and my pride. I resign from this team. I am deeply sorry to those I am letting down. I am not a quitter. I was raised by my family, and many previous coaches to exhibit dedication and embrace sacrifice, but there comes a time when one has to draw a line in the sand.

“Lastly, I thank my fellow teammates, those who also have left the program this year, and those we are leaving behind. I hope our departure will bring awareness to the physical, emotional and verbal abuse being allowed in the locker room and on the field. I pray for healing and recovery for all those who have been hurt by this treatment

“Sincerely,

Marquess Wilson”

You know Craig James, his son Adam, and a whole lot of Texas Tech administrators are laughing over this.

This is the way new coaches often operate in an effort to essentially run off players they don't want, and to let the current group know there are no handouts.

Washington State and Leach have not commented yet.

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What the stupid??!! Plenty of good seats available for Texas Tech vs. Texas

Remember the day when playing Texas meant something, and the Longhorns were not the University of Kansas at Austin?

Even in this wonderful season that is Texas Tech football, Red Raider nation doesn't even give a poop about the potential of kicking Bevo when he is really down. 

'Tis a sad day when at 9 p.m. on Thursday evening - two days before No. 20 Texas Tech hosts No. 22 Texas in a game of amateur football in Lubbock - the Red Raiders can't even sellout this game.

On the Texas Tech website, I applied to buy a pair of $95 "best available" tickets for the game. Nooooo problem. Level T, section 121, row 51, seats 20 and 21.

Then I put in to buy six tickets - together. Noooo problem. Level T, section 121, row 51, seats 35 - 40.

This likely means the Univesity of Texas did not buy the amount of tickets alloted to the school, or the good people in Lubbock simply do not care about the prospect of beating up Mack Brown and that vaunted Manny Diaz defense.

BTW: Vegas has the Red Raiders as 7-point favorites.

 

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It's official: The North finally caught the South in Big 12 football

As a Kansas Jayhawk undergrad grad, this aggrivates me no end but massive kudos to the Kansas State Wildcat football program for daring to be better than Nebraska.

Perhaps because they never had the chance, but the Wildcats never played the victim card as members of the Big 12 and ran east to play its equally slow-footed members of the Big 10 like the University of Nebraska did.

Instead, Kansas State just got better and now have officially become the best team in the Big 12 conference. The Big 12 is  no longer split by North/South regions, but the Wildcats are proof you don't have to live in Texas, or be bordered by Texas, to win this league.

Since the league was formed in 1996, the North won the conference title game a total of four times, and not once since 2003. (The league dropped the title game last year).

The conference that was born out of football and all but catered to its members in the south - Texas, Oklahoma - now is officially looking up at Kansas State.

Texas Tech got run out of the state by Kansas State over the weekend.
Had Texas played any other team but Kansas on Saturday the Horns would have lost.
Oklahoma is in denial.
Iowa State is Iowa State.
Baylor and Oklahoma State are both rebuilding.
TCU is too young, and not nearly deep enough.
West Virginia has to at least fake defense before it can become a serious threat.

The Wildcats host No. 24 Oklahoma State on Nov. 3 before traveling to TCU and Baylor and finishing the season on Dec. 1 at home against No. 23 Texas.

The Wildcats should have the Coach of the Year in Bill Snyder and the Heisman winner in QB Collin Klein. If all continues to go according to plan, the Wildcats will be the team to reach the BCS title game for the right to get crushed by Alabama.

The Wildcats may be boring led by their boring head coach, but they do deserve credit.

 

 

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The reason Texas football is average - start with the Longhorn Network ... duh?

Hope the ESPN executives are listening, and listening good, because Mack Brown and the fine folks at the University of Texas have had enough of ESPN's unfair requests for original content to air on The Longhorn Network.

Texas would merely prefer to take the $300 million from ESPN/Disney and the network giant politely just leave them alone.

On Monday afternoon, Texas football coach Mack Brown had the brass stuff to tell the AP that his program is "a little overexposed." Mack Brown said that Texas football is overexposed.

Let that sink in - Mack Brown said that Texas football is overexposed. 

Do not think for a moment that several members of the media, and other coaches, are not enjoying this complaint a great deal. The network that Big 12 commissioner/UT AD DeLoss Dodds fought so hard to protect, and played such a huge role in Texas A&M's decision flee to the SEC, not to mention all but cost Dan Beebe his gig, is now an unfortunate headache.

Brown is tiring of the many needs the network requires to fill the 24/7 station, and he has expressed concern that anyone can watch the increased access that could give an advantage to an opposing team.

"It's a true advantage (for opponents)," Brown said. "They can watch our attitude, they can watch our coaches."

Yes, yes ... that's why Oklahoma rolled you out of the Cotton Bowl. And why Baylor went for 50 on you in Austin. It was because the other teams could see your team's attitude, watch Manny Diaz dial up that Longhorn defense, and study the no tackling techniques employed in Austin.

What were Brown and UT expecting when they agreed to a 20-year deal with ESPN for $300 million - all softball all the time? The only way this network was going to be sold to more cable carriers was increased access to a football team that wins a lot. Softball and women's soccer isn't going to cut it.

Mack is as PR and politically savvy as any coach in recent memory and he would be better served to take this money, and to shut it when it comes to this network.

 

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Looks like Texas Tech & Tommy Tuberville made the right call, & TCU is just too young

After having just so much fun with Texas Tech and football coach Tommy Tuberville's wise decision to back out of the 2011 game at TCU, a serious tip of the cap to the entire program for said decision, and their Game of the Century win in Fort Worth on Saturday.

Tech's 6-1 record is the type of proof this administration desperately needed to justify dumping Mike Leach a few years ago. Tech may still be a house divided as a result of that decision, but wins such as the one against West Virginia and TCU can make people heal quickly.

Tuberville has been around college football long enough to know that it's not about who you beat but how many wins you have. He realized last season he didn't have a team so he lined up his non-conference schedule with dogs in an effort to become bowl eligible.

Since TCU joined the Big 12, TT had no choice but to play TCU in Fort Worth but he obviously has a team that can play - the Red Raiders' 56-53 3OT win makes them bowl eligible in the giant scam that is the FBS level.

As for TCU, this was part of the deal when it signed on to be in the Big 12. No more 30-point blowouts against New Mexico, UNLV, etc. This is just bigger, and harder. Saturday was a wonderful scene and atmosphere, but losses like this are far more likely than in the Mountain West.

Gary Patterson wasn't kidding on Tuesday when he said his team could win every game remaining on its schedule, or lose them all. GP may have as much talent as he has ever had in his tenure at TCU, but they are just so young. This team never stopped, obviously, but it never looked like it knew how to close this out.

GP has played a nation-leading 16 true freshmen this season, and that much inexperience is going to cost TCU games. It will payoff huge next season, but in the meantime both he and his team are going to lose in a way this program was no longer accustomed.

Either way, a great day for college football in Fort Worth.

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TCU, Baylor, etc. wants to keep people in the stands? Follow UTEP's lead

The college game day atmosphere is the "place to be on Saturdays", but in our hyper competitive society with decreasing attention spans people now need a draw to come back to watch the games they paid a ticket to enjoy from the seat rather than the parking lot.

A potential solution? Beer.

On Tuesday afternoon UTEP announced that it will implement the sale of beer at home football games and home basketball games at the venues that are owned and operated by the univeristy. UTEP will begin sales of beer beginning with its home game on Saturday against Tulane.

You have to think one of the primary reasons fans leave the games for the halftime tailgate scene is the chance the drink without having to hide it. We all know fans smuggle in a little container of something to mix in with their Diet Coke (don't want those calories). 

With athletic departments searching for any additional way to increase revenue, selling beer is not a final step but an inevitable one to sell tickets.

“That’s obviously part of the equation here.  We will see.  We will see how ticket sales react to this," said UTEP executive vice president Ricardo Adauto III in a press conference on Tuesday. "And we hope it does.  And hopefully Saturday night will be a nice night, people will want to come out and we’ll see how this works."

Prediction: A lot of schools have embraced selling beer in suites, or in a designated beer garden, but general beer sales to the rest of the stadium in university-owned venues has been mostly verbotten.
It will take a while, but expect that within the next 10 years most college football and men's basketball games will sell beer so fans can enjoy watching their favorite amateur sports team.

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Gary Patterson doesn't believe Texas Tech ducked TCU; plus, the Tooth Fairy is real

FORT WORTH, Texas - Kudos to TCU head coach Gary Patterson for refusing to publicly stoop so low as to state the obvious - that Texas Tech deliberately avoided playing TCU last season. Because I am quite certain he is not mentioning this to his team over and over and over again this week in preparation for TCU's highly anticipated home game against Texas Tech on Saturday.

There are two ways to do this: Talk about what is at stakein the Big 12, and the return of TCU to its Southwest Conference roots and playing home to a regional rival. How exciting.

Or ... we can talk about how one year ago Texas Tech told TCU it would not play them, as originally scheduled. Tech needed to drop one game from its non-conference schedule last season, but rather than drop Texas State, New Mexico or Nevada the Red Raiders took a pass on TCU. Now this is what makes a rivalry fun.

I asked Patterson today if his players are aware of the fact that Texas Tech appeared not to want to play TCU last season.

It would seem that GP maybe, just maybe, was aware of the fact that a little more than a year ago I posed this scenario to Texas Tech coach Tommy Tuberville, which he candidly admitted. BTW - major props to Tuberville for being honest about it.

"It wasn't that their team didn't want to play us. You keep making that being that," Patterson said.

ME: Their coach said it.

Gary Patterson: "Their coach said it was because they were new, and they were young, that they would be better to schedule it a different way. That's the way I took it. They are upset with us right now as a revenge game. They are saying we said they were chicken. Nobody at TCU, not Gary Patterson, not my team, nobody said it. It can be for the fans or you media people, but outside of that I'm going to play a game on Saturday."

No. 1: GP has his PhD from the Bill Snyder School of Non-Conference scheduling, so he can appreciate what Tuberville was doing in trying to build the Red Raiders. If you are trying to keep your job, and you don't have the greatest team, you do not deliberately schedule a risk game.

Playing TCU, at that time, was a risk for Tech. Today? The Red Raiders are 2.5 favorites on the road.

"Everybody changes games. (TCU's future) game against Arkansas has been pushed back 10 times, nobody makes a big deal out of that," GP said. "To be honest with you, if I had my choice, not because I don't want to play LSU, I wouldn't play LSU (next season). Because of the Big 12 schedule. ... Everybody does things for their own reason. He was trying to build his program and get to six wins. ... Coaches, we make business decisions. There is no such thing as a coach or a team that doesn't want to go play somebody. I didn't give it a second thought about him changing that ball game last year."

Suuuuuuuuuuuuure you didn't.

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The game we want is here - Texas Tech now MUST play TCU

TCU was originally scheduled to play Texas Tech on Sept. 10, 2011 in a non-conference game. The Red Raiders backed out, and wanted to delay playing TCU until potentially 2015.

In July of 2011, coach Tommy Tuberville said of TCU, "That's not the type of team we want to play right now."

With TCU in the Big 12, Tech has no choice. The good news for Texas Tech is that Tuberville obviously has a team that can play TCU.

Texas Tech at TCU on Oct. 20 in Fort Worth. Don't worry Red Raider fans, you can find tickets on EBay and other outlets from the many TCU folks who are pawning their many extras.

Both Texas Tech and TCU are 5-1 and 2-1 in the Big 12, and both are coming off their most impressive wins of the season on Saturday.

This is what makes TCU joining the Big 12 highly entertaining. It is October and rather than watch TCU play New Mexico it hosts a regional rival where the outcome is unpredictable.

Both the Red Raiders and Horned Frogs will enter this game ripe to come down off the respective emotional highs of blowing out West Virginia at home, and crushing Baylor on the road with a young team.

Any outcome is conceivable.

VERY EARLY PREDICTION (these things are fluid): Home team wins. Barely.

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Aggies carrying the Texas state football flag after an ugly weekend

The great state a Texas took a beating in the world of college football, and if it weren't for the Aggies the state that places such a priority on football would have had an o-fer weekend.

The Aggies rallied for a 30-27 win at Ole Miss to improve to 4-1, and are arguably the best team from this state after the best from Texas were mostly beaten from the out of staters.

Texas A&M 30, Ole Miss 27 in Oxford, Miss.
No. 8 West Virginia 48, No. 11 Texas 45 in Austin
Iowa State 37, No. 15 TCU 23 in Fort Worth
No. 17 Oklahoma 41, Texas Tech 20 in Lubbock
Rice 10, Memphis 14 in Memphis
Texas State 13, New Mexico 35 in Albquerque

North Texas played Houston and SMU played UTEP. Thank God Baylor had a bye. 

As of Sunday, the only two teams from this great state ranked in the AP Top 25 are ...
No. 15 Texas (4-1)
No. 22 Texas A&M (4-1)

Somebody do something!

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