In this morning’s stake, former Texas Tech baseball coach Kal Segrist passed away, the Elite 11 is set to start next weekend and a Big 12 expansion plan.
Photo via Charles Henry @ Flickr.
Baseball
RIP Kal Segrist. Former Texas Tech baseball coach, and the second-longest tenured baseball coach in program history, Kal Segrist, passed away at the age of 84 on Friday night. Segrist won 317 games from 1968 through 1983. Condolences to the family and friends of Coach Segrist.
Football
One Week Until Elite 11. Texas Tech commit QB Jett Duffey has one week until the Elite 11 finals.
#Elite11 Finalist Jett Duffey (@Jett8Duffey) Lake Ridge HS (Texas) Committed: Texas Tech #GunsUp pic.twitter.com/Lasf1DC5Kd
— Elite11 (@Elite11) June 26, 2015
Bird and Sheffield Start Inspection Business. Well, how about that, former Texas Tech footballers Bront Bird and Steven Sheffield bought an inspection business along with Bird’s brother, Luke. Bird could still return to the NFL, but it appears he’s all in, lives on the site where the business is along with the various workers that they’ve hired.
Right now, the SMOB yard lot off County Road 1287 in Midland County is home to several trailers, where most of the workers live most of the time, along with equipment and pickup trucks.
Sheffield and the Bird brothers live among them. They say that helps them keep an eye on the new business, but they also end up having cookouts and bonfires.
If everything goes as planned, they should have a new office, their first, at the yard later this year. The way Bront Bird sees it, it will put them one step closer toward building the bona fide company they wanted and him a step further from his NFL past.
“I don’t regret it at all,” Bront Bird said. “When you can build a business here that will make a lot more money than that for the rest of your life, financially this makes a lot more sense in the long-term. In the short term, sure, going to back to play one more year — cool. But I would have missed an entire year here.”
Big 12 Expansion
Big 12 is “Psychologically Disadvantaged”. Considering the discussions we’ve had on STP, Oklahoma president David Boren says that the Big 12 is pyschologically disadvantaged:
We should; however, be very selective. I do not favor adding two more members unless they meet very high criteria. When we look at football playoffs and our conference is bumping up against conferences with 12 or 14 members, I believe that we are psychologically disadvantaged because we are a smaller conference.
How to Expand. Blatant Homerism’s Allen Kenney has a five step plan to adding two members to the Big 12 and the only thing he forgot is step 6, which is profit. Kenney is suggesting what makes sense, which is just add two schools, he has chosen Cincinnati and Central Florida, start two divisions and get back to that conference championship game. I know that scheduling is an issue, but this is what makes the most sense. I do want the Big 12 to go big, but I’m probably alone.
And I know that we tend to discuss the actual options or discuss the pros and cons between School A and School B, but there’s pros and cons for just about any realistic option and we don’t have any much insight other than what we get to discuss. So if someone says, “Hey, what about Houston?” Yeah, sure, why the heck not.