Red Raider Gridiron | Raih to Coach Receivers for Bowl; Madison AL All-State

Merry Christmas everyone!  Not sure if I'll post tomorrow.  I may take the morning off, but I'll be back on the 26th I think.  We do have one game tonight, so for those of you watching football tonight and not waiting on Santa, here's the quick details:

Boise St. vs. Oregon St. @ 7:00 pm on ESPN

I hope everyone has a great day and I hope you all have safe travels for the holiday.

Links:

Official Site Preview: The official site has their preview of the Holiday Bowl and the first thing I do is check out the depth chart.  Remember how we were told that there wouldn't be any revisions to the depth chart after the SMU game?  Well, Baker Mayfied is no longer listed as an "or" as far as the starting quarterback is concerned.  Everything else has pretty much stayed the same.

Raih to Coach Receivers: The LAJ reports that former Iowa QB David Raih, who was hired at part of Kliff Kingsbury's initial staff back in January as the director of high school relations, is going to coach receivers for the bowl game.  Raih worked at UCLA for a bit with Rick Neuheisel and Norm Chow before arriving in Lubbock.

Set to Leave for San Diego: The LAJ also has a bit about how the team is set to leave for San Diego and talks with some of the players about going out there, especially since there are a handful of players from California.  At the end of the story, we find out that Texas Tech has only sold 3,000 of their allotted 11,000 tickets.

Madison Named All-State: Congrats to CB Tevin Madison for being named to the Alabama Sports Writers Association 3A All-State team.  Madison is listed as "JaTevin and as a receiver, but Madison played both cornerback and receiver and is expected to play cornerback for Texas Tech.

Kingsbury #19: Sports on Earth a ranking of the best coaches to build a college football team and Texas Tech head coach Kliff Kingsbury checks in at #19:

19. Kliff Kingsbury, Texas Tech. It is extremely early, of course, and after a hot start, Texas Tech fell apart against a tougher schedule down the stretch, finishing 7-5 with lousy defense. But there were signs of things to come: Despite juggling young quarterbacks, Texas Tech was often one of the most prolific passing teams in the country. Kingsbury played under Mike Leach and coached Johnny Manziel to a Heisman, and at 34 years old, he has seemingly unlimited potential as a head coach with the status of perhaps the brightest, most creative young offensive mind in college football.

College Football Broadcasting Roundtable: SI's Richard Dietsch has an interesting panel of guys to discuss college football broadcasting.  It's a good read.

Which Story Is It? There are two different stories out about the ouster of Mack Brown as UT's head coach:  Yahoo! Sports Pat Forde and Orangeblood's Chip Brown.  Forde's story makes it sound like President Bill Powers and new AD Steve Patterson cleaned house, the Chip Brown story sounds like Mack is an egomaniac that controlled the situation to the end.  Of course with the Chip Brown story, Mack essentially called Chip a liar by denying Chip's early report and Chip sounds like a scorned lover in his story more than anything else.  Not really reporting like a beat reporter as there are plenty of personal digs at Mack saying that Mack's ego cost UT Nick Saban.  Umm hmm.