Red Raider Gridiron: Thinking About UT & OU on the Schedule; Eguavoen Healthy

Changing a Scheduling Request is Unlikely. LAJ's Don Williams writes about how current athletic director Kirby Hocutt wishes he could have a do-over in regards to how Texas Tech plays Oklahoma and Texas at home in the same year, a request that was initially made by then AD Gerald Myers.  Here's Hocutt:

"In a perfect world, you would have (Texas and Oklahoma at home) in opposite years," Hocutt said. "But where I believe this program is going and from the excitement around our fan base, I believe our season-ticket base and attendance at Texas Tech home football games is going to be exceptional regardless of the opponents we're playing."

One other note, Williams writes that because Texas Tech has both Oklahoma and Texas at home, the same thing happened to Baylor (i.e. they have them both on the road this year). I never noticed that quirk before.

Notebooky. The LAJ has a notebook with some quotes from LB Sam Eguavoen, who had "compartment syndrome" which is some sort of tightening of the muscle to the point that it's dangerous and has to be cut open. I have never heard of this before and now I'm grateful I've already learned something new at 4:23 in the morning.  Also, there are 18 seniors that are going to be honored at Saturday's game and two juniors, IR Brad Pearson and CB Brandon Bagley, who will be leaving the program early.

Defense Ready.  The DT's Jeremy Krakosky writes that the defense is confident heading into the Oklahoma game:

"Same thing we say every week, they are going to come here and try to run it on us. We are just building a package to stop the run first. Right now it's what we try to do," Smith said. "We got to be sound at what we do and disciplined up front."

After losing to Oklahoma the last two meetings, Robertson said this is a game he has been looking forward to and he is going to do everything he can to help his team come away with a win.

"It's going to be very important to help my team out and put us in a better situation and better field position for the offense to score a touchdown," he said. "So the defense is going to come out and just try to take off on OU."

This Week's Final Four. The College Football Playoff released their top 25 and top 4 teams, more importantly, and right now it is Mississippi State, Oregon, Florida State and TCU in the top four.  Travis and I are getting to this later this week, but I'm also in favor of adding TCU over Baylor as I reckoned that TCU's loss to a ranked Baylor team is better than Baylor's loss to an unranked West Virginia. Of course, alternately, one can argue that TCU lost the head-to-head, but I guess I look at the totality of the schedules because they both have losses (Good thing my opinion doesn't matter.).  Also, Mississippi State and Alabama play this weekend. That should be fun.  Also, if you ever wanted to try to argue with a Baylor fan about how head-to-head is the most important thing ever, here's this tidbit from SI, where they looked back at how the coaches voted in 2008, here's a bit from Andy Staples on how Briles voted in 2008:

It would make things easier if one of those teams would lose, but I'm not sure that's happening. Baylor gets Kansas State at home on Dec. 6, and Bill Snyder should never be counted out. TCU's trickiest game is that Thanksgiving visit to Texas. The Longhorns look like a different team of late, so maybe they give the Horned Frogs a game. Here's a fun fact should it come down to 11-1 TCU and 11-1 Baylor. In 2008, Art Briles ranked 11-1 Oklahoma No. 1 on his final coaches poll ballot. Briles ranked 11-1 Texas, which beat Oklahoma by 10 on a neutral field, at No. 5. Of course, there was an 11-1 Texas Tech team -- which Briles ranked No. 6 -- complicating matters in the Big 12 South, but that makes it tough for Briles to argue the sacredness of the head-to-head result should it come to that. I probably still will argue it, because I'm pretty sure I stayed consistent on head-to-head through five years of Power Rankings. Although if I wasn't at any point, it'll get dug up.

Miscellaneous. Grantland's Matt Hinton with his weekly look at quarterbacks . . . the DMN has their Big 12 power rankings . . . FoxSports' David Ubben has his pregame huddle . . .