Baseball

Congrats to Jace Jung for being selected 12th overall in the first round of the Major League Baseball Draft by the Detroit Tigers. Jace is one of three Red Raiders to be drafted in the first round, brother Josh Jung (8th by the Rangers) and Donald Harris (5th by the Rangers).

Jung entered 2022 with much hype and backed it up by being the only position player to be named a preseason and postseason D1Baseball First Team All-American. The left-handed hitter owned a .335 batting average to go with 14 home runs and 57 RBI. The sophomore had a .481 on-base percentage behind 59 walks, tied fifth-most in the NCAA.

Jung was named a first-team All-American by three organizations in 2022 as well as a second and third-teamer. He was named to the All-Big 12 first team for the second consecutive season and an Academic All-American for the second-straight year by CoSIDA.

Conference Realignment

CBS Sports’ Dennis Dodd has the latest on conference realignment and considers that the Big 12 and Pac-12 may be worth more together than apart, which I’ve sort of thought, but have nothing to back that up with.

Do the math. There seems to be a consensus forming among key parties that the Big 12 and Pac-12 would be worth more together, in some form, than they are separately.

“Let’s say the blood-letting stops at SC and UCLA. Right there, you can’t get an increase in rights fees because you lose the [L.A.] market,” said Bobby Hacker a West Coast attorney and sports media consultant who spent 18 years as vice president of business and legal affairs for Fox Sports.

Hacker continued: “Now you have the Pac-12, which had less of valued rights deal than any Power Five group. They’ve now lost the L.A. market. There are no teams here with which to replace it. And if you say, ‘We’re going to get San Diego State,’ there is push back in the conference because a San Diego State or Fresno State don’t have the academic cache that the schools had.

“If Oregon and Washington go, Katy bar the door. The option to my mind’s eye is Big 12 merger.”

I did not appreciate Dodd’s final comment, about the idea of the Big 12 wanting to be hipper and cooler and , “there’s not much that’s hip, young and cool about an Iowa State-Cincinnati game.” Well, you could say that about Maryland vs. Rutgers or Purdue vs. Northwestern. Those are regional, but apparently television doesn’t care a ton about regional rivalries. People do care about good teams and if you put them on the TV during prime hours, people will watch.

Football

I ran across this over the weekend, but definitely think that this is worth your time. Head coach Joey McGuire sits down with Sic’Em 365 Sports during Big 12 Media Day and I haven’t seen a longer interview other than his press conference open to the press. Covers a ton of stuff, including uniform talk and that he wants to stay very traditional and that the first game I think he said that Texas Tech will wear black helmets and pants with red jerseys.