Links:
Don Williams write-up
ESPN game recap
CBS Sports game recap

The first game in the post Mike Leach era goes down as a win as interim coach Ruffin McNeill made a strong case for taking the qualifier off of his name. For a guy that’s perhaps one of Leach’s closest friends it has to be awkward in a way campaigning for his job. That’s that’s the nature of the beast though. Leach is gone and he ain’t coming back. If you’re Ruffin you owe it to yourself,  your family and the players to do your best and try and get the job. He may have done just that tonight.

I think Tech officials will still look hard at other candidates including Art Briles ( who never did say he wouldn’t take the job if offered ) and Tommy Tuberville as well as a few others. All that said, Ruffin may have made a solid case that he can lead this program forward, that he can be a Leader during the games and off the field and that he can build on what Leach did and move it forward not just maintain the status quo.

We’ll have more later. For now enjoy the win. If you’re really a Red Raider fan, and not just a fan of a man, you’ll enjoy every aspect of tonight’s win and what it means to the players and the program. Tonight was  a good night. Take it for what it was.

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“Texas Tech will never get a good coach after firing Mike Leach”

–Caller

I don’t know how many times in the past 48 hours we’ve heard the doom and gloom crowd say that Texas Tech football is over and done with the firing of Mike Leach. They say that Tech will never get a coach to come in and work for Gerald Myers and Kent Hance. No one would ever want to be in this environment. It is over.

They’re wrong.

They’re wrong at about Tech’s chances just like they were wrong when Kansas fired Mark Mangino and folks said Lew Perkins would never get a good coach. All he did was capture Turner Gill, one of the hottest names on the market and a guy many thought should have had several BCS jobs before now.

Yesterday we found out former Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville is telling any media outlet that will listen that he’s more than interested in Texas Tech. How could this be?

Texas Tech fans, once they get over the shock of what happened with Leach, will realize that the program has elevated so much over the decade that it is a highly desired job. There’s about 2.5 million reasons most coaches will listen to any overture by Myers. After that you’ve got great facilities, a lot of returning talent, a high-profile conference to play in and an administration that has spent madly on football the last few years and no matter what the Lead Pirate may say seems to have tried to do everything they could to help Tech win football games, perhaps even at the expense of every other program in the department.

That gets the attention of guys like Tuberville.

The bottom line is that interest like this from a guy that went undefeated in the SEC and went to 8 straight bowl games should make Texas Tech fans feel pretty good as the calendar flips over to 2010. It is also the ultimate compliment that can be paid to any coach. Mike Leach leaves Texas Tech a better place than when he arrived. Because of the work he, his staff, the administration and the fans have done since 1999, Texas Tech will be able to hire a coach today that will have much more impressive credentials that the ones carried by Leach when he was hired in 1999.

That’s one of the few positives that’s coming out of this situation right now, but for Tech fans you need to grab on to anything good you can right now.

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Dang it, I’ve got to admit it. I really do love cold weather. I hate what it does to my old creaky bones, but I love the way it looks and feels. It puts me in the right mood for Christmas and even the ice doesn’t seem so bad today. Of course knowing it is going to be gone by lunch helps, doesn’t it?

Meanwhile…

The red Raider men’s basketball team finds itself back in the Top 25 after their win over then 10Th ranked Washington last week. That’s a big step for Pat Knight’s bunch and something that will help fans buy back into the program after a few down years. There were more than a few skeptics out there when Pat was bequeathed the team after Bob Knight abruptly called it quits a few years ago. Already Pat has shown he can upgrade the talent and get a few big wins. Now we’ll find out quickly if it can translate on the road with games against Wichita State and TCU looming.

Down in San Antone

Anyone thinking that Texas Tech fans might not be as excited to go to a bowl game this year after an up and down season were wrong as Texas Tech is moving tickets to the Alamo Bowl against Michigan State fast according to the A-J.

This says a lot about the Texas Tech fan of 2009 vs. the Texas Tech fan of a decade ago. Today Tech fans have by and large built into their budgets the idea of going to a bowl game each year. They don’t know when and where for sure but they’re used to going and having a good time. That’s something that the major programs that have always traveled well, read Nebraska, have done in the past. Texas Tech has a great reputation with bowl officials right now, more so than even the vaunted Huskers if you talk to the right bowl reps.

Most bowl reps will tell you that they can gauge how well a bowl game will do within 48 hours of the announcement of the pairings. If today’s news is any indication the Alamo Bowl is going to have a banner year thanks to Tech fans in a down economy. That may end up being the crowing achievement of this football season. Well played Tech Fans!

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Well, I guess winter was just waiting for Texas Tech to wrap-up the regular season before arriving on the South Plains! I must admit that it feels good and gets my blood pumping more for the Christmas season than the recent warm temps. I like seasons.

Speaking of seasons, bowl speculation season is now upon us after Tech’s lackluster win in Arlington over the Baylor Bears last night 20-13.  The stage was all set for Mike Leach and crew to announce their presence with authority for either a Holiday or perhaps even return trip to the Cotton Bowl.  The Tech fans showed up great. The stadium was rocking and even the Texas Tech defense was ready to do its part. The offense on the other hand laid the kind of egg that doesn’t exactly wow bowl reps and TV execs going into December.

Don Williams has a fantastic write-up of this game so we won’t comment on the X’s and O’s much other than to say again this team just doesn’t have the talent and experience this year to not play its best offensively and expect to win much less dominate quality opponents. Luckily it was a beat-up Baylor team last night and not some one else that might have really sent Tech fans into December on a sour note wondering where exactly this program is after the 2009 season.

And that gets us to the end of season battle damage report and trying to figure exactly how to rate this 8-4 team.

I predicted Texas Tech to go 8-4 so I’ve got no problems with the record. I think that’s right on par with the talent level that this team had compared to the teams they were playing. Of course that was all done in August before injuries to Tech and most other Big 12 South teams played a role in how we’d look at each game week-to-week. That’s what will make this season so frustrating for Tech fans. Not the final record, but how the Red Raiders got there.

If I’d told you in August that you’d lose at Houston and get stomped by A&M at home you’d think Tech was missing out on a bowl for the first time since Bill Clinton was President. If I’d told you Tech would smoke Oklahoma in Lubbock and dominate Nebraska in Lincoln you’d probably be making plans for a BCS trip.

The inconsistency of the season, mainly because of injuries to Taylor Potts at QB, numerous offensive line issues, twitter-gate and Facebook-scandal, the emergence of a split fan-base over Potts vs. Steven Sheffield and a defense that could look great and weak all on one drive drove Tech fans to drinking. Thankfully because of the vote last May by Lubbockites it was a short trip this fall!

Fair or not many fans will look at 2009 as a season of missed opportunity. You got to face Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Baylor all with-out their biggest weapons and you played an A&M team that no one thought could stay on the field with you and you came away with a 2-2 record out of that bunch.

The Houston game for many was decided not by plays on the field but by game-management and decision making on the sidelines by the Lead Pirate. How different might the season had been for Texas Tech had there been no 4th and one debacle and instead Tech takes the points and wins the game? Is there a Brandon Carter post-game melt-down that leads to a suspension and perhaps contributed to Potts getting waylaid by New Mexico? Does Twitter and Facebook-gate ever happen? Does Sticks even see the field other than mop-up duty after that? Does the Tech team team play with greater confidence after a Houston win and sweeps into the A&M game on a massive high playing for BCS hopes? I won’t even get into the ramifications of the cheap money-grab of moving the Texas game up and what it may have cost the program in the final analysis.

No, 8-4 in a rebuilding year is nothing to sneeze at and Tech fans should be impressed with how hard the Lead Pirate worked to keep things together through a year of odd occurences the likes we haven’t seen in his tenure in Lubbock. Had Tech “won the ones they were supposed to and lost the ones the were supposed to” this year most fans would be pretty pleased waking up today knowing it is either Holiday or Alamo Bowl for the Red Raiders.

As it is though, many will look back and wonder what might have been. That’s human nature. That’s college football.

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