Leading Off

This may be the first Morning Stake without any real Texas Tech news in quite some time. There’s just not a lot of Texas Tech news out there, which can be both good and bad (no one is in trouble). This gives me some time to stretch my legs.

1. I have been thinking about changing the theme of the site. If anyone would like to assist, please contact me. I’ve done this before, but I’ve had help and I really don’t know what I’m doing if we’re being perfectly honest. Feel free to shoot me an email at stakingtheplains@gmail.com.

2. I’ve had this thing at working taking up a ton of time. We used a gmail address for my work email. It was the catch-all email for the secretaries and it worked out well. We needed the extra storage because we got so many emails and so we paid for Google Drive. Everything was great until we noticed a charge on our credit card for something called Google Cloud. I didn’t know what that was and I’m still not sure, but I think it has to do with building apps. Someone had figured out our email and was using our account to do things on Google Cloud. It’s been a helluva ordeal getting this dealt with and I’m still not out of the woods just yet. Be on the lookout if you have given your credit card to Google because trying to talk to a human to help correct the situation is very difficult. That’s all I did and I regret it.

3. This letter of gratitude to Stuart Scott from the Undefeated’s Justin Tinsley is a pretty great thing from yesterday on what would have been Stuart’s 52nd birthday. Shoutout to Travis.

4. Jim Kellys acceptance of the Jimmy V Award is simply inspiring: “Make a difference today for someone who is fighting for their tomorrow.” Be nice to people because you never know what they’re dealing with. Pretty simple.

Jim Kelly focused on one message when he accepted his Jimmy V Award. pic.twitter.com/HGYgIN4iln

— ESPN (@espn) July 19, 2018

I don’t really have a method to my madness here. I desperately try to treat all of you with a smile on my face and create a space that is welcoming and without conflict for the important things in life. Sports is pretty silly in the grand scheme of things and I hope we can all appreciate that.

5. I had no idea the level of dislike some of the Longhorn players have for Tom Herman. This is only one example, but LandGrant Gauntlet’s Chris Ross has so much more on Derrick Foreman, the father of D’Onta and Armanti, who you could say is not a fan of Herman.

6. A-J Media’s Don Williams has an article this morning, “In a tight spot: Kingsbury looks for magic, not magic number, in 2018,” and it asks the magic question of how many games that Kliff Kingsbury needs to win and Kingsbury’s answer is pretty simple:

“We don’t put (a number of) games out there,” Kingsbury said, “but we know we need to be better and find a way to finish games and show marked improvement.”

Kingsbury can’t put a number on it because it’s not him who is making the decision and I think that’s right. However, I think the season will play itself out and the answer will be obvious. Either it is a significant improvement or it isn’t. Also in the article, Kingsbury talks about linebacker Brayden Stringer and running back DeMarcus Felton returning as well as Ja’Deion High commenting on how fast freshman receiver KeSean Carter is.

7. Star-Telegram’s Mac Engel has an article about how former Baylor head coach Art Briles has talked to Waco High School about returning to coaching. This is relevant for obvious reasons, but there’s also a sentence in the post about how representatives from Texas Tech reached out to Briles and I would say that this is probably true, but it wasn’t Kirby Hocutt. And I think the situation was one where some of the old money as pining for Briles and then something else bad came out (this was when it was seemingly every day) and these old folks just dropped it.