Texas Tech Football Coaching Thoughts | "Playing Minnesota is your very own Zihuatanejo."

I had some random thoughts leading up to today. Most of them dealing with the coaching search, some of them dealing with the players. Let's get to it.

I think that now we have to wait.

There’s no doubt that I think that AD Kirby Hocutt will move quickly, but I wonder about the 10 day window to hire a state employee. I’m guessing that Hocutt can’t bypass this, but he can certainly get his guy without making it official. It may make it a very long process, or at least the hand-wringing will be more than we want. If the head coaching position was posted on Saturday, then we’re looking at some time next week before a coach can be named.

That’s going to create a lot of additional visits and page views for VTM, but will give many of you heartburn.

And if anyone asks, the same rules apply to Tuberville as they do Leach. Tuberville is part of Texas Tech’s history and you can reference him from a coach at Texas Tech, but would implore you not to post any of Cincinnati’s box scores or what they are doing. I’m joking here as I seriously doubt this will happen, but it’s still good to get these sorts of things out of the way.

From a personal standpoint, I cannot tell you how glad I am that Tuberville took the job at Cincinnati. I was truly loathing having to write about next year. I wasn’t sure how I was going to be hopeful, other than the players and being excited about what they could do, but I wasn’t at all sure how I was going to get anyone excited about 2013. Last week I wrote four additional posts about how Tommy Tuberville had marginalized the Texas Tech program and I was set to publish them leading up to the bowl game. I don't know what I'm going to do with those posts now. I hate deleting things, but I'm tired of writing about Tuberville and there are infinitely less times that I'll have to write Tuberville's name from this point forward.

In the blink of an eye, my lack of excitement and having too many posts about a former coach all changed. I completely understand why Tuberville left. He left for security and money and those are reasons why we all take jobs. He’s got five more years and lots of millions of dollars. He seems like a guy that needs some security in his life and he was coaching for his job in 2013. I’m surprised that Hocutt gave him that long of a leash, but I understand Hocutt’s decision. As an aside, I do think that Tuberville was still coaching for his job this year and I think that Hocutt was prepared to make a decision after the bowl game. It would have been somewhat ironic had Texas Tech lost, Hocutt then firing Tuberville, considering Minnesota did the same thing with Glen Mason the last time these two teams met up.

I do feel bad for the players. They’ve endured the wrath of everything and they’ve pretty much been innocent bystanders. Just think what Seth Doege, Cody Davis, D.J. Johnson, LaAdrian Waddle, and Terry McDaniel to name a few, have been through over the past four or five years. I would imagine that when they hear about coaching changes at other schools, they shake their heads and mutter to themselves that they have no idea. If anything, they deserve to be lauded for sticking with this thing. They may be the most loyal group of football Red Raiders that have ever played. They are the Andy Dufresne of college football players.

Not long after the warden deprived us of his company, I got a postcard in the mail. It was blank, but the postmark said Fort Hancock, Texas. Fort Hancock... right on the border. That's where Andy crossed. When I picture him heading south in his own car with the top down, it always makes me laugh. Andy Dufresne... who crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side. Andy Dufresne... headed for the Pacific.

Gentlemen, you’ve crawled through a river of shit and I can pretty much guarantee that you’ll be better human beings as a result of what you’ve had to play through over the past four years. That's not really any consolation right now. You all want to win football games. That's why you play the game. I can tell you that I think that Texas Tech is about to hire an better football coach than Tuberville.

Playing Minnesota is your very own Zihuatanejo.

One other thought I had was if it is true that Baylor's Art Briles is a candidate and the money is available to pay the buyout, will this affect his ability to hire assistants. One of the things that happens in a coaching hiring process is that the head coach is also given a budget for assistants. Briles obviously comes with a higher price tag, but does that also mean that his pool of money for assistants is less? Alternately, if Kliff Kingsbury is hired, will he have a large pool of money for assistants? I'm really asking, but I think this is how things happen.

Here are your links for the morning. If something happens, I hope to be around, but it's an incredibly busy time of the year for me at work. I will try to get a new post up as soon as I can.

* AD Hocutt carries "sense of determination" into coaching search | Red Raiders

* Texas Tech needs to call Bobby Petrino or Butch Davis now - The Big Mac Blog | Mac Engel wrote this blog post and I'll tell you right now you don't need to click on it or give him any more hits. I don't think that Engel has any sort of clue as to what's going on in the sports' world and certainly doesn't have his pulse on Texas Tech or their fans. It's sorta embarrassing.

* Five things Tommy Tuberville left in better condition at Texas Tech than he found them in | College Sports Blog | I don't agree with all of these things, but I get where Graham is coming from. I do agree that the program is more accessible now than when Leach was here, but I don't know if you all care that much. I do like hearing from the players and one of my bigger PR gripes about Leach was that he never let Michael Crabtree speak, or maybe he did a couple of times, but not on a regular basis. And I also sorta agree with the last item on Graham's list, which is that maybe Tuberville did think to himself that him being in Lubbock wasn't healing the fanbase and his departure would help that healing process. I don't really want to give Tuberville that sort of credit for thinking about anyone other than himself, so I won't.

* Texas Tech's Tuberville out, but so what? | StarTribune.com | Oh hey y'all! Texas Tech has a game in a few weeks!

* Texas Tech OC Neal Brown will reportedly accept same position at Kentucky - SBNation.com | Also, RRS.com's Chris Level has tweeted that it wasn't Brown that called the running plays on 3rd downs and run the wildcat on 3rd downs. I do believe that and that's the reason why Brown was willing to take a position at a lesser football program to call the offense.

* Williams: Anyone about ready for a little calm around here? | Red Raiders

* Bohls: Tech should hire Kingsbury | www.statesman.com | No real information other than Bohls throwing his hat in for Kingsbury. I know that some of you may not like this, but I do think that Bohls has some inside information into Texas Tech. I think his son goes to Texas Tech and he did a sit-down with Hocutt during the summer when he took his son to college. I think that Bohls has some legitimate sources. Not saying that he is 100% correct, but he does have sources and should be taken in with everything else.