Leading Off
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Shaquille O’Neal, Dirk Nowitzki, and the Singular Joy of Sports Hate. Via The Ringer:
Sports Hate is the highest level of recreational dislike you can have for a player on an opposing team. It seeps into everything about them. You suddenly realize that you hate their commercials, for example, or you hate their face, or the way that they pronounce a word, or their haircut, even if their haircut is the exact same as yours. Things you maybe once found charming about the person suddenly become intolerable. (I thought Shaq was absolutely captivating when he was in Orlando and not causing any real trouble for my Spurs. Once he started clobbering us over the head again and again in Los Angeles, that was no longer the case.)
If you unpack the Sports Hate, though, you find that, beyond it being the highest level of recreational dislike you can have for a player on an opposing team, it’s also the highest compliment you can give them. Because Sports Hate is, ultimately and forever, rooted in respect. And fear. And admiration. Or some combination of the three.
I don’t know that we as college athletic fans really get to have that sports-hate simmer like they do in the pros where players become institutions. I think for college people sports-hate is reserved for institutions more than actual players, but don’t know that this fits the other qualities of sports-hate as described.
Texas Tech Soccer
Both of our All-Americans have been honored as 2️⃣ of TDS’ top-💯 overall players in the country.
🔴#WreckEm⚫️ pic.twitter.com/my8ajgqnGC
— Texas Tech Soccer (@TexasTechSoccer) January 6, 2020
Texas Tech Golf
Sofia Garcia will begin the first round of the South American Amateur tomorrow in Chile! She’s previously won the event in both 2015 and 2016.
🔴#WreckEm⚫️ pic.twitter.com/8QaD8jm0oZ
— Texas Tech Women’s Golf (@TexasTechWGolf) January 7, 2020
Texas Tech Tennis
The 2⃣0⃣2⃣0⃣ Women’s #Big12Tennis Preseason Poll… pic.twitter.com/gZoTeAVgfH
— Big 12 Conference (@Big12Conference) January 7, 2020
Texas Tech Softball
𝐅𝐈𝐑𝐒𝐓 𝐃𝐀𝐘 𝐎𝐅 𝐏𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐄
🔴#WreckEm | #GOTB⚫️ pic.twitter.com/zCPa505DYE
— Texas Tech Softball (@TexasTechSB) January 7, 2020
Lady Raider Basketball
The Lady Raiders hit the road for a Big 12 test against TCU in Fort Worth on Wednesday night!
🔴#M2M | #WreckEm⚫️ pic.twitter.com/iyBO6jUsxg
— Lady Raider WBB (@LadyRaiderWBB) January 7, 2020
Texas Tech Football
Football Salaries. Avalanche=Journal’s Don Williams, he delves into the coaching salaries with the football program, including payemnts to coaches who were fired with the hiring of Matt Wells. There’s a lot to digest here and summarizing it could prove difficult, but I will say that just the turnover of coaches is a total cost of $6.6 million, which includes salaries for Kliff Kingsbury, David Gibbs, Kevin Johns, and Clay McGuire:
Texas Tech’s football coaching staff turnover between the 2018 and 2019 seasons will wind up costing its athletics department nearly $6.6 million.
Almost two-thirds of that amount are payments to cover the contract buyout of Kliff Kingsbury, fired after the 2018 season, but Tech also made payments to 16 other former staff members after the coaching change.
Defensive coordinator David Gibbs, offensive coordinator Kevin Johns and co-offensive coordinator Clay McGuire, all of whom lost their jobs with Kingsbury’s dismissals, continued to receive monthly payments from Tech throughout 2019 while they coached elsewhere.
“It’s something that was budgeted for, so prepared for,” Tech senior associate athletics director Robert Giovannetti said. “It’s part of the business, right? You understand it’s a part of the business and you chalk that up to cost of doing business and don’t let it affect the way you run your operation.”
I don’t know how much I have to add to this, I suppose it’s interesting and we all knew that Kingsbury was going to have to get paid and the coordinators had multi-year deals, that’s how you get them to hang around (as previously stated before, David Yost and Keith Patterson had 3 year deals upon arriving at Texas Tech). It is what it is.