Practice Schedule Revised . . . Greatly: If you're going to watch practice, then you have to go either Saturday or Sunday's practice as these two practices are the only two that will be made open to the public. And today is the last day for you to rec the tagline that you want to appear on DTN that will replace, "You've got to find your inner pirate." The comment with the most rec's (click the "actions" link and then click "rec" for your favorite).
Brown Talks Offense: FSSW's Brian Smith has a Q & A with offensive coordinator Neal Brown. Go read the whole thing and there are more than a handful of things that could be highlighted, including Brown talking about Wanda James being looked at at tight end. Since it seems as if DTN only gets comments if we discuss Potts vs. Sheffield or religion-talk, how about this blockquote as we find out from from that both Taylor Potts and Steven Sheffield have both positive and negative attributes:
Obviously the big question is quarterback, where you have two seniors competing for the job. Even though you didn’t get to see much of them from the spring, can you compare and contrast Steven Sheffield and Taylor Potts? What does each do well?
I think they’re both really good guys. They’re both very competitive. We feel pretty good about our chances of winning with either of them, and to be very competitive in the Big 12. As far as their games go, Potts has more arm strength. He’s bigger physically. Sheffield moves around better. Off the field, their personalities are not similar at all. Potts is kind of cerebral. He’s a thinker; he’s kind of low-key, where "Sticks" [Sheffield’s nickname] is very anxious. He never sits still. He’s hyper. Big personality.
And in their games on the field, you can kind of see their personality differences. Sheffield has a tendency to make some big plays, and he may go through the wrong read progression to make a big play. Potts is a little bit more hesitant, but may make better decisions sometimes. Everyone always asks, "Who’s ahead?" but we’re really starting from ground zero with this deal. We’re going to start on Saturday and they’re both going to be equal. Then before we get into SMU preparations, we’ll name a starter and go with it.
Home Run Hire: I subscribe to Coaches Hot Seat Blog in my RSS reader and had seen this yesterday morning, but jhud also found this as well. In any event, they've been listing who they think are poor hires, mediocre hires, good hires and home run hires. Coaches Hot Seat Blog believes that Texas Tech's hire of Tommy Tuberville is a home run hire:
The question on the table now for Tuberville is can he take Texas Tech to another level in the Big 12 conference where there are strong teams at the top and pretty decent teams at the bottom? For us here at Coaches Hot Seat, the idea that a former successful head coach in the SEC is now at a school in the Big 12 that has for the most part been playing second fiddle to the big boys in the conference it is going to be great fun to see if Tubs [sic] can turn Tech football into a team that can knock Texas and Oklahoma off and if we had to put a bet on it we don’t think that Stoops, Brown and company are real thrilled to see Tommy over in Lubbock. Yes, Tommy Tuberville was a home run hire for Texas Tech.
Texas HS Football Top 200 Players: I found TexasHSFootball.com a couple of days ago and noticed that they were going to be coming out with their top 200 players in the state of Texas and so I figured I'd keep quiet until the list was released. Yesterday, they released Texas HS Football Top 200 Players and I wish I could compare this list to prior years, but as you would imagine, Texas figures prominently (20 players in the top 200) in the list, but Texas Tech (11 in the top 200), Oklahoma St. (10 in the top 200) and Oklahoma (11 in the top 200) all figure prominently in the top 200 (TAMU has 7 in the top 200, which is surprising). Here's Texas Tech's list:
#31 OL LeRaven Clark
#37 DE James Castleman
#38 QB Michael Brewer
#45 OG Tony Morales
#50 TE Jace Amaro
#53 WR Derek Edwards
#55 RB Kenny Williams
#65 RB Bradley Marquez
#95 LB/DT Brandon Hocutt
#132 ATH LaDarrin Robertson
#150 RB DeAndre Washington
Who wants to do some fancy math to figure out where these five schools rank in this early part of the recruiting season?
Miscellaneous: FSSW's Eddie Middlebrook ranks the secondaries, and Texas Tech is ranked #5 . . . ESPN's David Ubben is listing every Big 12 team's most painful loss and picks the 2008 ass-whipping loss to the Sooners . . .