Enjoying Your Weekend: I hope everyone enjoyed their long weekend. As far as scheduling is concerned, I've got offensive coordinator Neal Brown's coaching profile scheduled for later today.
Big 12 Meetings = Excitement: Husker Extra's Steve Sipple has an interesting piece on Nebraska AD Tom Osborne and the Big 12 meetings scheduled this week in Kansas City, Missouri. Here's Sipple and Beebe:
"I suppose at some point someone will address the issue of conference realignment," Osborne said. "I don’t know how close to the vest people are going to keep their cards. I really don’t know how it’ll evolve. It could be fairly routine and insignificant. On the other hand, it could end up being a fairly dramatic discussion."
Yes, drama is a distinct possibility. Beebe set the tone with his recent statement: "We need to talk about where we’re going (as a conference) and who’s on the plane when it takes off." Without naming names, he obviously was referring to Nebraska and Missouri, because they’ve expressed a willingness to at least listen to the Big Ten if it calls with expansion plans.
Will Beebe hit Nebraska and Missouri with ultimatums? Colorado? Texas? It’s difficult to blame Beebe if he’s becoming a tad impatient. After all, he’s preparing for a round of TV negotiations next spring. There are bowl contracts to finalize. He wants to push the league forward. As it stands, the Big 12 is like a teenager in its awkward formative years, looking for greater stability in a period of anxiety.
"I want there to be a time — on our time schedule, not any other conference or entity’s schedule — where we say, ‘OK, here’s who’s committed to this conference, and we’re going forward and we’re going to prepare for our negotiations with television next spring, which looks like it’s going to be a highly profitable situation for us, whether we collaborate with the Pac-10 or do it on our own," Beebe told The Columbia (Mo.) Daily Tribune last week.
And as an aside, I agree with Sipple and just about any fan of any Big 12 North team, the championship game should not just be played at Cowboys Stadium. I think it should alternate between Kansas City's Arrowhead Stadium or some other place, but to just have the game in the DFW area hardly seems fair.
CFN Preview: CFN's Pete Fiutak previews the 2010 Texas Tech football team. It's a good read and I think that Fiutak has a pretty good handle on the team:
The team will be far better if … the offensive line is better. This could be a problem as it appears to be the team’s biggest X factor. On the down side, there was no cohesion last year with a slew of injuries and little consistency from one game to the next, but fortunately, the problems allowed several young players to get their feet wet. Now the big, strong, beefy line from the Leach era has to become sleek and athletic to do what Tuberville and Brown would like. The line could be a killer next year with only one senior starter going into 2010, but if everything can come together right away, the offense will continue to explode.
Interview with Jamar Wall: FWSW's Steve Hunt interviewed former Red Raider and current Dallas Cowboy, Jamar Wall:
How do you look back on your time at Tech?
Wall: Yeah, I had a pretty good run. I’m not sure what my end-of-career stats were, but I made the transition from running back to corner. Everyone always asks me if I regret it and I don’t. I don’t at all. I think it was a wise decision on my part. I did a good enough job to get here.
What’s the one thing you took away from playing for Coach Leach?
Wall: He had some wins. The whole four years I was there, we never had a losing season. At one point my junior year, we were No. 1 in the nation. It’s just the mentality he set and that he has. That rolls off on everyone else. We had a winning season every year. That’s one thing he knows how to do-win. He doesn’t want anything else.
Not Making the Cut: LAJ's George Watson writes that the Red Raiders were left out of the NCAA Tournament, despite an impressive conference run during the middle of the season. Head coach Dan Spencer talks about not receiving an invite and his feelings towards this team:
"The big picture is we put ourselves in a position where one or two more wins in our last nine ... I think that was huge," head coach Dan Spencer said. "Maybe it was a momentum shift having that time off. I think that if we'd been over .500 we would have gotten in. But I don't think (the selection committee) was ready to go with a club, even with our situation and the extenuating circumstances, they weren't ready to take that leap and let a team in that was a game under."
Snip.
"Obviously there's some pain there and there's some disappointment," Spencer said. "But I think the fact that we were in that position to feel disappointed makes us feel very good about where we came from and our body of work and what we did over the course of the year."
Barnes and Bettis Named to Big 12 All-Tournament Team: Per LAJ's George Watson, 1B/RF Barrett Barnes and P Chad Bettis were named to the Big 12 All-Tournament Team. Congrats for both on special seasons and a tremendous tournament.