ODDS AND ENDS | Via The Atlantic, some photographs of the various space shuttles going to their new homes. Pretty neat to see a space shuttle floating past the Statue of Liberty.
Black Heart Gold Pants gets their pro-combat on with Penn St. It's the big elephant in the room!
TRACK | I have to admit, I have a hard time following all of the goings on with track, but per the official site, the team earned a top 20 finish overall, some student-athletes broke some school records and LAJ's Don Williams reports on things as well.
TENNIS | Congrats to Raony Carvalho and Gonzalo Escobar who were named ITA All-Americans!
BASEBALL | LAJ's George Watson has a terrific editorial on the hiring of Tim Tadlock. The official press conference was on Friday and Watson also wrote that Tadlock has a clear vision of the future. You can also listen to Tadlock on The Williams and Hyatt Show. I'm excited about Tadlock and hope that he turns this thing around. You can read the transcript of the entire press conference (PDF) and be forewarned, AD Kirby Hocutt and Tadlock are talking about championships.
I also wanted to mention two more things. Tadlock thanked head football coach Tommy Tuberville and head men's basketball coach Billy Gillispie for attending the press conference. I don't necessarily know what this means, but I do appreciate the fact that both Tuberville and Gillispie were there to support Tadlock. The second thing is that graduating senior Nick Hanslik tweeted the following:
Congrats to Coach Tadlock. This program is on the rise and good things are ahead for Red Raider baseball
Hanslik didn't have to say this, but it's interesting that a graduating senior has so much praise for Tadlock.
MEN'S BASKETBALL | Per the LAJ's Nick Kosmider, congrats to former Red Raider Andy Ellis who is taking an assistant coaching job at Trinity Christian.
FOOTBALL | I was going to do a single post on this, but decided that this post would only be mocking a young person, which I felt bad about. Instead, it's just part of DTN DD. As you may recall, Manvel CB Tavares Garner had talked with the Rivals LSU site and told them that he couldn't wait to de-commit from Texas Tech and that he was expecting a LSU offer soon. There's also the story out there that Chad Scott called Garner and told him that if he was going to de- commit, that the first call should have been to Scott and to be a man about it. I would agree and although I have never had to recruit a 17 or 18 year old kid, I would hope that one of the things that the staff preaches is honesty in this recruiting process. Garner also said this:
"If Texas offered me, I would commit to Texas and shut my recruiting down," Garner said.
So Garner has essentially given himself one option, Texas, and if he doesn't get an offer from them, he might be out of luck. It's also interesting that he thought the LSU offer was imminent, but I'm guessing that this isn't going to happen right now.
The Rockwall camp was yesterday in the DFW area. I was going to go, but I had to mow the yard before it got too hot and be stung by three yellow jackets instead. DMN's Mike Graham was there and writes that Texas Tech QB commit Davis Webb wants to recruit for the staff:
"Coaches can only talk to someone for a certain period of time so a quarterback has to do some extra work," Webb said. "As a quarterback you've got to make consistently good decisions all the time on and off the field. You want to win some games in the Big 12 against tough opponents and you want some hard working players. That's what I'm trying to get."
And DMN's Mike Graham also wrote that Skyline QB Devante Kincade was also in attendance and Webb was even encouraging Kincade to commit and that it would be good competition. How about that.
I guess I missed this last week, but I always enjoy reading RP.com's Joe Yeager and he's starting a new series, the Critical 20, and #20 is RT LeRaven Clark and #19 is IR Tyson Williams.