Friday Morning Links on VTM | Kaufman & Kithuka Nominees for Big 12 AOTY; Who is Tanner Jacobson?

1. Texas Tech Nominees for Athletes of the Year | Congrats to women's golfer Kim Kaufman and men's track and fielder Kennedy Kithuka! The Big 12 has a really nice feature on both of them. Each college provides their men and women's nominations and then the Big 12 athletes of the year are chosen.

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2. Media Supplement | Last night the 2013 Media Supplement was released along with a new depth chart, but it is really the same as the post-spring depth chart that was released months ago, the only difference is that Delvon Simmons and Chris Payne have been removed from the roster. You can view this media supplement on some sort of online thing or you can also look at the PDF version, which took 5 minutes to download on my computer this morning, so be forewarned. The online thing didn't take hardly any time. I've also taken a screen capture of just the depth chart if you want to look at that.

3. Jacobson to Start? Who the heck is Tanner Jacobson and why is he going to start? The LAJ is doing their under the microscope series and (Quinton White is the other one that we'll get to in a second) and they feature S Tanner Jacobson a 2013 walk-on from Southlake Carroll. Here's Co-DC and linebacker coach Mike Smith:

"That kid’s going to be a stud. That kid will start on defense for us," co-defensive coordinator Mike Smith said last week, presumably referring to sometime later than 2013. "He reminds me of Jimmy Leonhard, a safety we had in New York. He’s undersized, but the kid is extremely athletic and extremely smart. When I watched him play, he was the spitting image of Jimmy Leonhard for me."

And here's safety coach Trey Haverty:

"Tanner Jacobson was a good player at Southlake, just undersized," safeties coach Trey Haverty said. "But we like undersized guys in Lubbock. If they’re good football players, we don’t care."

Naturally, I need to know more and I'm sure you are curious too, so here is Jacobson's Rivals, 24/7 Sports and ESPN profiles where he was not rated by any service. Jacobson also didn't have a single offer according to those sites. Jacobson is listed at 5-10/180, so he's not terribly undersized, maybe for safety, but not too bad. Especially when you consider that J.J. Gaines and Keenon Ward are both listed in the 5-10/190 range. You can check out his highlight video:

4. White Under the Microscope | The LAJ's second installment of under the microscope is RB Quinton White and here is his running back coach Mike Jinks:

"Q will play on a lot of the special teams," Jinks said. "He’ll get some reps (on offense), and a lot of it depends on what happens with Sadale. If Sadale ends up playing in the slot quite a bit, then I think (White) will be in that rotation a little bit more.

"But we’ve got a long way to go. If we come back and he’s the best back, he’ll play a whole bunch. All four of those guys are good players. I’d feel very comfortable going with any one of them."

This sounds about right.

4. Big 12 Media Preseason Football Poll | The Big 12 Media Preseason Poll was released and here are the results (first place results are in parentheses):

None of this is really a surprise and seems to match up with the preseason magazines, which makes sense because the magazines are also voting.

5. More Stadium Renovation Photos | Totally Texas Tech is on a roll, with more photos of the progress of the stadium seating and video board.

6. Texas Tech Year in Review | Per the official site:

7. McNeill Discusses Kingsbury, ECU and TTU in 2008 | RRS transcribes some of the interview with East Carolina head coach Ruffin McNeill. It's good and I've always liked Ruffin (how can you not?) so go read the whole thing.

8. Season Slogan | I ran across this quote from Hunter S. Thompson in a letter to his grandson and I wonder if the coaching staff would consider this to be the slogan for the season:

Walk tall. Kick ass. Learn to speak Arabic. Love music and never forget you come from a long line of truth-seekers, lovers and warriors.

9. #longreads | SB Nation on the sport of Ultimate Frisbee, which is more like football with a Frisbee than anything else.

10. LoneStarRaider on Twitter | New front page contributor LoneStarRedRaider is on the Twitter. Go give him a follow.