Leading Off
I hope everyone stays warm this weekend. We’ll have men’s basketball coverage over the weekend as the Red Raiders take on Baylor at 3:00 5:00 p.m. in Waco. EDIT: I thought I read it was at 3, but the game is actually at 5. Thank you commenters for the correction.
Texas Tech Track and Field
Week ✌️ gets underway tomorrow with 2️⃣4️⃣ schools making their way to Lubbock!#WreckEm https://t.co/K3C37vAhfi
— Texas Tech T&F/XC (@TexasTechTF) January 17, 2019
Texas Tech Tennis
RECAP | Women’s Tennis Wins Season Opener at SMUhttps://t.co/8drm2roE6I
— Texas Tech Women’s Tennis (@TexasTechWTEN) January 18, 2019
Texas Tech Basketball
Nice story about the bus driver for the team.
An important part of our journey’s story is who gets us there. #4To1 https://t.co/SizMo8TXGD📰https://t.co/L19CGiiBTH pic.twitter.com/tasZ4RBhxo
— Texas Tech Basketball (@TexasTechMBB) January 18, 2019
Texas Tech Football
That’s your quarterback. Bowman responded to this tweet by stating:
I cannot thank this community and University enough for all of the love and support you guys have given me. It feels good to be able to give back. God bless🙏🏻 #wreckem
Alan Bowman took the time to talk to these kids at the Tech game. They walked past me after and had the biggest smile on their faces. #WeUsOurProgram #WreckEm @fox34 pic.twitter.com/Rc03Pnr8ML
— Cassie Carlson (@cassiecarlsonTV) January 17, 2019
There’s really not any news that I’m posting here, but the staff did make a ton of offers yesterday. I’m hoping that your guy LaBarre is keeping track of it if you’re into recruiting.
Former Texas Tech defensive coordinator David Gibbs caught on at Missouri with Barry Odom, via St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Dave Matter. This is a bit of a surprise as it had been reported that Gibbs would be joining Dana Holgorsen at Houston, but Holgorsen hired Joe Cauthen from Arkansas State.
The Ringer’s Robert Mays looks at your favorite NFL team, the Kansas City Chiefs, and head coach Andy Reid’s vision for an NFL and the quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, who put it all together:
When Mahomes took over as the Chiefs’ starter at the beginning of this season after Smith was traded to Washington, he displayed an even greater comfort within Reid’s system. He combined a steady, reliable presence with an uncommon willingness and ability to throw the ball to any spot on the field, at any time. “The smoothness, that was the biggest takeaway from the first few weeks of the season,” Schwartz says. “Yeah, he’s doing crazy stuff with his arm and outside the pocket, but he’s playing within the system of the offense. I’d imagine that, as a defense, made things a little scarier.” In Nagy’s mind, Mahomes’s mastery of the Chiefs’ system was accelerated by his year spent working with Smith. “There aren’t many guys smarter [than Smith],” Nagy says. “And when I say that, I’m not just talking about common-sense smart. I’m talking about Xs-and-Os smart.” When Nagy discusses Smith’s former role in the Chiefs’ offensive braintrust, it sounds like he’s talking about a peer, not a player. Smith provided Mahomes with the blueprint for how this franchise’s QB job should work.
ESPN’s Steve Fainaru and Mark Fainaru-Wada write about the biggest issue facing football is . . . obtaining insurance:
With youth participation rates continuing to fall, the insurance crisis adds another layer of uncertainty to the future of America’s No. 1 sport. Insurance companies, which earn billions of dollars each year by taking on risk, are increasingly reluctant to bet on football and other sports associated with traumatic brain injuries. Some insurance industry executives compare the issue to asbestos, an occupational hazard that has cost insurers at least $100 billion. Traumatic brain injury “is an emerging latent exposure the likes of which the insurance industry has not seen in decades,” Joe Cellura, president of North American casualty at Allied World, wrote in a blog post last year for the website Risk & Insurance. Cellura declined to comment for this story.
“Basically, the world has left the marketplace,” Alex Fairly, CEO of the Fairly Group, an Amarillo, Texas-based risk management firm whose clients include the NFL and Major League Baseball, told Outside the Lines. “If you’re football, hockey or soccer, the insurance business doesn’t want you.”
Notice that this doesn’t just apply for football, but soccer and hockey as well.