Double-T Nation News:
Don't forget to vote this week in the DTN College Football Pick'Em.
Wednesday morning I was on Ticket 760 in San Antonio and for those of you in the San Antonio area, you'll get to hear me talk Texas Tech football for a segment. BTW, a large portion of my family is from San Antonio (shout-out) and one of my uncles heard me. I'll try and give you a heads up when I know I'll be throwing out my hot sports opinions on Texas Tech football.
And for those of you who are not in Lubbock, Don Williams and Ryan Hyatt have a podcast of their radio broadcasts available. Check'em out.
DTN's Top Five:
- Animated BlogPoll.
- This is the DTN community. How to argue about college football (hat-tip Da Wiz).
- DMN's Brandon George on the Cotton Bowl improvements, who's going to throw out the lipstick on a pig joke here?
- Awesome video of spped skateboarding (hat-tip kottke).
- ESPN's Big 12 blogger Tim Griffin with his Big 12 picks of the week.
Texas Tech Football:
SAEN's Mike Finger says that Captain Leach isn't drinking the coolaid. Here's Finger on Leach:
Mike Leach's mood has been bordering on miserable lately.This is not pleasant news for his Texas Tech players right now. But it's a good sign about where they're heading.
Few things bother Leach more than hype, and as the Red Raiders continue to linger around the national top 10, they're swimming in the kind of attention and expectations their coach would rather avoid.
"He doesn't like it," Tech wide receiver Eric Morris said. "If he thinks at any time people are getting too high on themselves, he's quick to bring them back down to earth."
LAJ's Don Williams reports on the buckets of rain hitting Lubbock and how it affected yesterday's practice. Captain Leach made sure his players were acclimated to the rain early:
"How'd they like it?'' Leach said afterward. "I think initially they were somewhat apprehensive. I got tired of looking at that, so I had everybody (lie down and) roll three times one direction and three times the other, just so we got acclimated.''Snip
"It was hard for skill guys to handle the football,'' Leach acknowledged. "This wasn't just rain; this was kind of a different level. The linemen, I think, had a lot of fun. Anybody that hit somebody else had a lot of fun.''
There are also these videos, starting with a review of Nevada with Don Williams and a preview of SMU with Adam Zuvanich (I'm not sure who the other guy is, let me know in the comments). Also, a blog post from Williams where he says that Brent Nickerson will get the start again, but L.A. Reed will play.
DMN's Bobbi Roquemore previews the SMU-Texas Tech game, essentially explaining the differences between the Run and Shoot and the Air Raid offenses, although Captain Leach thinks that at their core, the offenses are similar:
"Our offense is like SMU's," Leach said this week. "It's a fun offense to play in and a lot of people are going to touch the ball. The ball's going to be in the air and a lot of people are going to be able to catch it. It's not going to be a deal where just two people touch the football. Every position is going to touch it."
DT's Alex Ybarra on the fact that Texas Tech is facing a different offense in as many games while June Jones is concerned about communicating in a hostile environment:
"I think communication becomes more difficult with crowd noise," Jones said. "Both defensively - knowing what the call is, hearing what the call is on defense - and (offensively) then of course, snap count and everything else. You've got to just mature and learn how to do it. If we want to be a bowl team, we have to be able to win on the road."