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OMG, this is actually the offseason and there are no stories out there. Well, there will be more stories later today because at VTM we try to write stories no matter what's happening.
Gotcher to Play in the Philippines. Hey, this is pretty cool, SG Toddrick Gotcher is going to be playing in the Philippines with Athletes for Action, which is a religious based organization that will play university and national teams in the Philippines for 13 days and 8 games. The article isn't about Gotcher, but about a guy from Butler that is also going and Gotcher was mentioned as one of the participants. Good luck!
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Patterson Has Things to Say. Well, Texas AD Steve Patterson had some hot sports opinions regarding O'Bannon vs. the NCAA and paying athletes and all sorts of things. I could, quote 10 different things, but I'll just quote this and tell you to go check it out. I'm guessing that some of you really might agree with him.
"We're spending all of this time talking about one-half of 1 percent of our student athletes [who have the power to market their likeness]. Not the 99.5 percent of student athletes who are supported by these programs. What we're giving our student athletes, in terms of academic, athletic, financial aid, support for room and board, training, mentoring, student services, tutoring, is more than the average household income. And for some of our teams, it's pushing into $70,000 a year per student athlete, and pushes into the top third of household incomes. Tell me one guy whose likeness is worth more than the average household income. ... There was one guy last year. [Patterson holds his hands up and rubs his fingers together like Johnny Manziel.]
"It's absolutely agents and trial lawyers that are the whole reason we're talking about this. You've got guys like Jay Bilas out there making the claim that scholarships aren't worth anything, and nobody says anything to discredit that. ... So who is saying with any rationality or any fact that student athletes on a full ride aren't getting something? They're just flat-out wrong and they're liars. And they're doing the bidding of agents and trial lawyers. The longer everybody waddles around acting like it's not about agents and trial lawyers, the more silliness we're going to have out there."
Big 12 Bad Things. I promise I'm not throwing stones here, as I tend to prefer to ignore bad things that happen to other programs, but these are some pretty big items. The first is that Baylor receiver Robbie Rhodes has been dismissed from the team. Rhodes was arrested in May for possession of drug paraphernalia and the charges were dropped. And now, somewhat out of the blue, he's been dismissed from Baylor's team. Rhodes was highly rated player, very much courted by Texas Tech and everyone else. He'll catch on somewhere, but that's a pretty big loss for Baylor. And in other news, Oklahoma St. running back Devon Thomas appears to be doing bad things. I'm just going to quote these two stories.
Story 1: Armed robbery. Shooting with intent to kill. Kidnapping. First-degree burglary. Conspiracy to commit a felony in what has been described as "an armed heist."
Story 2: Showed friends prior to his junior year at Broken Arrow High School videos he had recorded on his cell phone of himself having sex with a "girl under the age of 18."
Right now, Thomas remains on the team. Of course, I recall the time that Mike Leach kept that kid on the team that was arrested with some sort of federal drug charge and he didn't give a flip what anyone else thought.
Ranking the Big 12 Stadiums. Athlon Sports gathered a bunch of people to rank the Big 12 stadiums and collectively, they ranked Texas Tech's Jones AT&T Stadium 4th, behind Oklahoma, Texas and Oklahoma St. I don't think there's much of a difference between Oklahoma St.'s stadium and Texas Tech's. I've been to both and Boone Pickens Stadium didn't feel as expansive to me, but that was back when I was in law school, but it's been over a decade since I've been there.
Chillin 4 Charity. Candy Whitaker and the basketball staff are helping raise money for the Kay Yow Cancer Fund by doing a cold water challenge, but calling out people to do the challenge. You can read more about the Chillin 4 Charity viral video.
