Hit 'em! Wreck 'em, Texas Tech! (Post: salary, budget, money)

[Trainwreck20]

Actually, I think OSU will be a very big challenge for TT. OSU has a punishing rushing attack and a couple of great receivers. I think UT really lost the game when Cosby got hurt in the first quarter, since he is the defacto TE these days. I am guessing that TT may have an emotional drain for a couple of days, they were fired up for that game .

[txstate]

Texas will be back #1 at the end of the season watch

[teatime]

Originally Posted by autotech4dallas

That is going to be the game to watch and I want OSU to win.

Gee, thanks. Supporting an out-of-state team over a Texas team? What, Longhorns' fans can't stand another Texas team getting some attention???

[Trainwreck20]

Ahh, but we need TT to lose twice to make it to the conf. championship . Actually, although I like the idea of TT becoming a powerful football school, I can't really make myself like Leach .

[Texan in Virginia]

Originally Posted by teatime

Gee, thanks. Supporting an out-of-state team over a Texas team? What, Longhorns' fans can't stand another Texas team getting some attention???

I don't think that is the case, TT. I believe AutoTech is an OSU student. I do remember that he currently lives in Oklahoma.

Lori

[teatime]

Originally Posted by Trainwreck20

Ahh, but we need TT to lose twice to make it to the conf. championship . Actually, although I like the idea of TT becoming a powerful football school, I can't really make myself like Leach .

Why is that? Mike Leach is refreshingly NOT an assaholic jock. He's intelligent, quirky, and his team and the fans love him. Leach is FUN and a character.

Texas and Oklahoma have dominated the Big 12 for many years. It's kinda sad when their fans can't ever want another team succeed. I've held back on what I really thought of Texas in that game out of respect for Longhorns' fans but why bother now. There is NO WAY that a team held to just 9 yards in a quarter deserves to be ranked No. 1. I would say that about Tech, too, but it seems to me that Texas relies on its laurels and escapes a lot of honest criticism. They barely survived the week before and their luck ran out in Lubbock. A No. 1 team comes to play hard for four quarters and doesn't deserve to be praised for scrambling to hold on in the final quarter. Tech would be panned -- DESERVEDLY SO -- if it stunk up the stadium until late in the game.

[teatime]

Originally Posted by Texan in Virginia

I don't think that is the case, TT. I believe AutoTech is an OSU student. I do remember that he currently lives in Oklahoma.

Lori

Ah, that's worth noting. Thanks, Lori! Don't know why the guy has "Dallas" in his nickname, then!

[Texan in Virginia]

Originally Posted by teatime

Ah, that's worth noting. Thanks, Lori! Don't know why the guy has "Dallas" in his nickname, then!

I believe he plans to move to Dallas when he graduates.

Lori

[Trainwreck20]

No, my issues are not with Leach not being a jock, and sometimes I find him quite fun and entertaining; however, there are times that he only loses the 'jock' part of your description, and there is no need. He is obvously a talented coach and has a very talented team, and I respect him from that angle.

As for escaping a lot of honest criticism...try being a Texas fan for a year..ugh! They get raked over the coals for every possible reason you can imagine (winning ugly, wining pretty, or losing) and the press picks apart every little detail. Some of the time it is deserved, other times it is not. TT (at least in the national media) gets off on an 'oh, well, they weren't expected to win' with little scrutiny. There is an up-side and a down-side to that, and I am not blaming that on Tech, that is just a product of being a 'new' program to the national scene and media perception.

I guarantee that any realistic longhorn fan worries about two games each year more than any other (at least for the past decade): OU and TT when the game is in Lubbock. Of course, all the games can be tough, but history has shown that those are the swing games most years lately.

To get back on the topic of this game, I will give my thoughts:

• The game got really difficult the moment Q. Cosby got hurt. UT doesn't have a receiving TE (two have gone out to injuries this year), so QC (and Shipley) have filled this role well; however, it is extremely demaning from an experience standpoint, because the routes vary depending on the defense. With QC out, there was no one but young players to fill that role (and that resulted in wrong decisions and dropped passes). Tech was playing great defense, but their requirements dropped enormously with QCs loss.
• I though UT defense did as well as can be expected against TT. TT offense scored 30 points (the other 9 were defense), which, from most teams standpoints, is a win ! Especially with UTs inability to make any offense early in the game.
• Crabtree is all that he is made out to be, but I am not sure about the rest of the receivers. They have good hands, generally, but if there was another star like Crabtree, this team would be unstopable. Several times UT blitzed but failed to get to the QB, but Harrell could not find someone open. This is a change from past years, where 4 or 5 eseconds usually meant a huge gain for TT. I don't know if our secondary is getting better, or what the difference is (I love to see TT in real life instead of TV, so I can see the whole field).
• TT offensive line is huge (as usual), but I noticed that they moved their splits back into something more reasonable. Missouri has used wide splits, too, in the past, and is getting exploited now. I am not a football guru, but it appears that defenses are finding an answer to the wide splits, and TT has pulled them back in a bit to compensate.
• Harrell is a very good QB, but he is not a roll-out kind of guy (doesn't need to, though). If he could roll out and throw as accurately as he drops back to throw, write in the NC here, too.

Kudos to Tech, they played an excellent game, I am not trying to deny that at all. I agree that their defense is much improved, but I am not sure this is their best offense ever. Probably a fair trade-off, though, since their D was what has killed them in the past.

[teatime]

Originally Posted by Trainwreck20

No, my issues are not with Leach not being a jock, and sometimes I find him quite fun and entertaining; however, there are times that he only loses the 'jock' part of your description, and there is no need. He is obvously a talented coach and has a very talented team, and I respect him from that angle.

As for escaping a lot of honest criticism...try being a Texas fan for a year..ugh! They get raked over the coals for every possible reason you can imagine (winning ugly, wining pretty, or losing) and the press picks apart every little detail. Some of the time it is deserved, other times it is not. TT (at least in the national media) gets off on an 'oh, well, they weren't expected to win' with little scrutiny. There is an up-side and a down-side to that, and I am not blaming that on Tech, that is just a product of being a 'new' program to the national scene and media perception.

I guarantee that any realistic longhorn fan worries about two games each year more than any other (at least for the past decade): OU and TT when the game is in Lubbock. Of course, all the games can be tough, but history has shown that those are the swing games most years lately.

To get back on the topic of this game, I will give my thoughts:

• The game got really difficult the moment Q. Cosby got hurt. UT doesn't have a receiving TE (two have gone out to injuries this year), so QC (and Shipley) have filled this role well; however, it is extremely demaning from an experience standpoint, because the routes vary depending on the defense. With QC out, there was no one but young players to fill that role (and that resulted in wrong decisions and dropped passes). Tech was playing great defense, but their requirements dropped enormously with QCs loss.
• I though UT defense did as well as can be expected against TT. TT offense scored 30 points (the other 9 were defense), which, from most teams standpoints, is a win ! Especially with UTs inability to make any offense early in the game.
• Crabtree is all that he is made out to be, but I am not sure about the rest of the receivers. They have good hands, generally, but if there was another star like Crabtree, this team would be unstopable. Several times UT blitzed but failed to get to the QB, but Harrell could not find someone open. This is a change from past years, where 4 or 5 eseconds usually meant a huge gain for TT. I don't know if our secondary is getting better, or what the difference is (I love to see TT in real life instead of TV, so I can see the whole field).
• TT offensive line is huge (as usual), but I noticed that they moved their splits back into something more reasonable. Missouri has used wide splits, too, in the past, and is getting exploited now. I am not a football guru, but it appears that defenses are finding an answer to the wide splits, and TT has pulled them back in a bit to compensate.
• Harrell is a very good QB, but he is not a roll-out kind of guy (doesn't need to, though). If he could roll out and throw as accurately as he drops back to throw, write in the NC here, too.

Kudos to Tech, they played an excellent game, I am not trying to deny that at all. I agree that their defense is much improved, but I am not sure this is their best offense ever. Probably a fair trade-off, though, since their D was what has killed them in the past.

Well, if Texas is scrutinized overmuch as you say, it's because they have a virtually unlimited football budget and incredible facilities. Moreover, UT and OU have had a big recruiting advantage in the Big 12. All of the other teams have to take what they can get and make do.

Speaking of Crabtree, my son (a student at TTU) says this is Crabtree's last year at Tech and I can't remember why. I don't think he'd transfer to another univ. -- maybe he's going to go pro? I hate to see kids suspend their university education. Rarely do they go back and it just takes one blown knee to end a career.

Notice, though, that Tech's offense isn't centered on Crabtree -- they use nearly a dozen players and spread the wealth.