Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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Texas Tech is not yet, and may never be, a football program where style points in a win are required. Red Raider fans should never be tempted to dismiss a Big 12 victory no matter if at times it seems disjointed. If it were style that fans were looking for, they should have gone to Raider Alley a few hours before Saturday afternoon’s game as Shaquille O’Neal, with the stage name of the Big Diesel, was spinning music for a mosh pit of revelers. As for the actual game, when Ari...
Sports, especially now with less than 50 days before the election, is supposed to be a welcome respite from the nonstop name-calling, negativity and outrage by which this presidential election, as usual, is defined. We’ve grown weary or at least numb to the back and forth, though that doesn’t include the confused dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio. Let me throw in a couple of political buzzwords into college football – “socialism” and “democracy.” Hang on for a minute, and I...
Buttons on remote controls across West Texas, eastern New Mexico and beyond were being punched late Saturday night. Time for bed or maybe Saturday Night Live. Some of it had to do with the central time zone kickoff of 9 p.m., but most of it had to do with the showing of Texas Tech, which for the second time in two games looked … … What’s the word? Bad? Does that fit? That’s a simple basic word, but in this case works just fine. Bad. These are sobering humbling times for Tec...
There’s an uncomfortable truth starting to emerge from Lubbock. It’s an idea that would have seemed absurd just 13 months ago, but one that might be picking up steam as the calendar turns to September, October and November. It is this: Texas Tech head football coach Joey McGuire just may not be the guy, that he may not be the one to revive a long dormant Red Raider football program. The great escape of Saturday night, a 52-51 overtime win over Abilene Christian in the 202...
The tectonic plates of college football have shifted and an earthquake of change will begin to shake up the game when the 2024 season begins in earnest Thursday with 21 major college games followed by 74 more over the following four days. A 12-team playoff will determine the national champion. It sounds like fun. The champions of the major Power 4 conferences, plus seven at-large teams and the top Group of 5 team (non-Power 4) will make up the postseason party. The first four...
Considering just a few years ago Texas Tech was in the middle of one bowl berth over five seasons, that these Red Raiders are going to their third bowl in a row could be viewed as a significant achievement. Could be. TCU went from the national championship game to not being bowl eligible in one year. Nebraska, once one of the traditional powers in college football, a program that owned an NCAA-record 35 straight bowl appearances, missed a bowl for the unfathomable seventh...
There have been times in the years of following Texas Tech football that I have left a stadium near you trying to comprehend exactly what I just lived through. There was the 2014 abomination against TCU in Fort Worth. Frog quarterback Trevonne Boykin threw seven touchdowns passes that unseasonably warm afternoon in an 82-27 bludgeoning. I staggered out of Amon Carter Stadium like one of the survivors at the end of “The Poseidon Adventure.” Only thing missing was Maureen McGove...
Texas Tech isn’t throwing this fish back in the Big 12 pond. Not hardly. The Red Raiders don’t want to hear about any cheap wins against a third-team true freshman quarterback, not after they experienced such frustration themselves for 1 ½ games earlier in the year. Tech went on the road last Saturday to No. 16 Kansas, a place where Oklahoma, BYU and Central Florida have lost. The Raiders were ahead 10-0 when Kansas quarterback Jason Bean was hammered on a designed run and...
When a football season isn’t fulfilling expectations, there is a certain amount of rationalization and wondering that plays out as the season winds down. To put it another way, it’s the “what if” game. For Texas Tech, there may not be a bigger “what if” than what if quarterback Behren Morton never had to deal with nagging injuries? Where would the Raiders be with a healthy Morton? There was a glimpse of that last Thursday in a 35-28 win over TCU. Morton had not played sinc...
There was a time – that being most of the spring and summer – when this Thursday Night Special between Texas Tech and TCU looked like it might carry some serious weight. It was a game that likely would have serious implications at the top of the Big 12 standings. The national finalist with a 12-2 record of a year ago against a team that won the Texas Bowl and finished 8-5. Then something wild happened. The season started. In an early game on the first Saturday of the season, T...
Good news for any of the future opponents on the Texas Tech football schedule who may be struggling or have self-doubt creeping in. The Red Raiders are the perfect tonic for what ails almost any team. Wyoming, you a little concerned about all that offensive inexperience in the season opener against a trendy pick to win the Big 12? Don’t worry. Texas Tech is here. West Virginia, you a little nervous about being picked dead last in the Big 12 in this conference opener? D...
The reasons are many and varied over the years why Texas Tech is where it is in the Big 12 football pecking order and why Kansas State is at the elevated plane it is. To fully delve into every reason the Wildcats have won eight in a row and 12 out of 13 over the Red Raiders would consume more pages than a James Michener novel. Let’s boil it down to two plays from Saturday’s 38-21 defeat of Tech that was textbook in how the games go in this lopsided series. Two plays, on the...
The question is not, what if this offensive game plan had been in place at the start of the season? Those are losses under the bridge. The question is, can this balanced Texas Tech offense and solid defense lead to a turnaround season? The plan that was on display the week before – a 21-point win over Houston – was front and center again on Saturday in a 39-14 win at Baylor. Pound the football with Tahj Brooks, and use the threat of a new-found run game to pass less fre...
If Texas Tech’s slow football start is to be salvaged, it just might come from the unlikeliest of players. Nothing against Tahj Brooks, but he’s a running back. Those who carry the football at Tech have been supporting actors at best for the last few seasons. And by “last few seasons,” I mean the entire 21st century. Tech is the home of Mike Leach and the explosion of the Air Raid, of Patrick Mahomes, of Kliff Kingsbury as a coach and first as a quarterback with his 17 NCAA...
When Behren Morton’s pass fell harmlessly to the turf at the goal line with 19 seconds left and not a Red Raider in sight, the failed fourth-down pass on a failed Saturday afternoon in overcast West Virginia brought two issues into focus: • The 8-5 season of 2022 was a mirage. • The Texas Tech offense has some real problems. Just when Tech fans thought September couldn’t get any worse, it did in a hideous way with a 20-13 loss to the Mountaineers to drop the Raiders to 1-3. Just four weeks ago, a popular preseason questio...
The three-game non-conference dance card is complete for Texas Tech. The results are this: The Red Raiders are likely not as good as offseason storylines indicated. Neither is the Big 12. If a 1-2 start has been underwhelming for Tech, the same could be said of the new-look conference the Raiders are in. Only five of 14 Big 12 teams went through non-conference unbeaten – outgoing members Texas and Oklahoma as well as Kansas and newcomers Central Florida and Brigham Young. A...
With the college football season only eight quarters old, Texas Tech finds itself where the Red Raiders haven’t been in 33 years – a big fat 0-2. When a team is 0-2, when a team didn’t expect to be 0-2, when a team has squandered 17- and 9-point leads, when many speculated in a summer of hype if Tech could get to double digits in victories, this start is like a 2x4 to the side of the head. When that happens, there’s only one thing to do, and it’s one Tech fans are more than re...
Joey McGuire was right. His Texas Tech football team did put the country on notice last Saturday night, that is after a long rain delay if much of the country bothered to notice. And it is this – that after a face plant against Wyoming on CBS and the home opener this weekend against Oregon on FOX, these Red Raiders are not ready for prime time despite their national exposure. After a summer of strutting and flexing, and getting many buy-ins from media and fans that this c...
Nothing like August for college football fans. Except for a few early starters, every team is undefeated. The traditional good teams are going to reload. Those believed to be so-so just need a few kind bounces of the ball to win eight games. The also-rans, well, some teams are going to surprise this year – why not us? Then there are the ones who had a breakthrough season in 2022, return almost a fully loaded roster to build on that, and just know they have left those losing w...
As a boy in the 1970s whose dad would put him on a tractor around 8 a.m. on a long summer day and often not get him off until a 9 p.m. sunset, a tractor radio broke up the monotony. It was a godsend. Even then, the Starland Vocal Band and Seals and Crofts began to wane as the day wore on in the Texas Panhandle. Just get me to 7:15. Not only did it start to cool by then and the end of the day was in sight, but the Texas Rangers pregame show would come on KGNC in Amarillo. At...
Texas Tech Athletic Director Kirby Hocutt never did get around to calling me to see who he should hire as Tech’s next basketball coach. Come to think of it, he also never did two years ago the last time Hocutt and a committee went searching for a basketball coach. Had he either time, I would have told him to get Grant McCasland. He would not only be able and willing, but ready. He paid his dues and is ready for the big stage. Two years ago, Tech was reeling from the gut punch...
A year ago, Mark Adams was the toast of West Texas, a symbol of patience and level-headedness, an example of old-fashioned defensive toughness with a bit of the everyman modesty. He was almost revered in Lubbock and Texas Tech “for not getting on that plane,” a reference to when head coach Chris Beard stunned Red Raider basketball fans in leaving for rival Texas in early April 2021. As legend goes, Beard told Adams, his top assistant and defensive mastermind, that if he wan...
There’s a funny GIF out there on the information superhighway of then-Texas Tech coach Kliff Kingsbury surrounded by three or four players. They are on the sidelines watching a play unfold against Oklahoma State. Then, almost in unison, their chins all fall to their chests. Whatever happened was not good. What happened was Patrick Mahomes’ first pass as a Tech quarterback in 2014. The untamed freshman entered the game in the second half for an injured Davis Webb and his fir...
So, did you like New Year’s Eve? No, not any late-night parties, but college football that afternoon and night. Did it get any better than the two College Football Playoff semifinals – TCU 51, Michigan 45, and then after catching your breath, a missed field goal with three seconds left the difference in Georgia 42, Ohio State 41? Changes in college football have often moved at a glacial pace. It took 133 years from the first game to the first playoff game. But lately it...
Leach, Tech got best of each other To call Mike Leach an original is not too original. Of course, he was. This is like describing the sky as blue and water as wet. Whatever the beat of Leach’s drum, he’s about the only one who heard that particular pounding. You never knew what you were going to get with Leach – you just knew you were going to get something. He zoomed to prominence as Texas Tech football coach 20 years ago and controversy and fascination followed him to succe...
