calkins's Blog

Shaking and stirring while again recommending Barbecue Inn for your greater summer time chicken-fried dining pleasure.

Share with a discerning friend.  Or an attractive stranger.

The Big 12 head honchos have come and gone from their big yack fest in St. Louis.  The usual drill of coaches and select players in the midst of a three-day session of mindless and harmless Q&A to launch the season.

The Bloggorrhea has one big question for Mike Leach, just weeks from the most-hyped fall in the history of Texas Tech football.  

Why, Mr. Leach, leave in Lubbock the Red Raiders’ resident record-setting quarterback and reigning first-team All-American all-dazzling wide receiver?  

What sort of sense does that make? 

With throngs of baited media throngs, from both near and far, at your service, waiting and willing to regurgitated and rejoice in all-things Red Raider, Leach elects to relegate the stars of the show invisible, secluded in student housing.  

Are you kidding me? 

Again, the most anticipated Tech season, ever.  Top-10 expectations, not in west Texas, but practically coast-to-coast.  10-and-oh anticipation with a home turf win over hated-UT, storming into Norman undefeated to shoot out for Big 12 South, perhaps leaving with a first-ever slot in the conference title game, maybe a first-ever Big 12 title, first-ever BCS appearance.  Maybe maybe.

And Leach lays out for that sort of potential groundbreaking by leaving borderline Heisman candidates Graham Harrell and Michael Crabtree alone in Lubbock, turning his back on two tons of invaluable hard-to-get national exposure for his hard-to-get to school, for his often hard-up for respect program, for Harrell, for Crabtree. 

Are you kidding me? 

Techsters are forever moaning groaning whining about step-child status within the great state behind Texas and Texas A&M.  Especially A&M, even after the Red Raiders routinely barbecue the Aggies’ backside yet somehow are still slapped with secondary status when the programs are weighed and measured side-by-side.  So what then is the Tech nation response to Leach’s lame tactics to self-promote?

Tech hasn’t enjoyed a senior-returning quarterback like Harrell since Rodney Allison, hasn’t salivated for a lights-out wide out like Crabtree – ever.  And the redshirt sophomore is leaping from Lubbock to the NFL the nanosecond this next season is complete.  How can Leach not wish to capitalize on their last Red Raider round-up, having them talk-up the genius of Tech’s star wars offense of mass destruction? 

How? 

The Bloggorrhea has long-enjoyed Leach for his fast-break full-frontal, seak and destroy, method to madness tactics, his unusual if oddball candor, his failure to worship at the alter of sacred cow conference commissioners and stuffed-suited poohbahs, his detached nonchalance when dealing with less informed and lightweight media types. 

But his failure here to seize an open and unadulterated forum to pump the program and his two super-sized headliners is mindnumbing.

Any upcoming slights this season from outside forces who neglect Tech's potential rise to never before seen tops, who fail to duly note Tech's due - not nearly the slap Leach applied to own program.