Mayfield Tired-Head. Baker Mayfield is talking again and he’s giving me tired-head. I really didn’t follow everything yesterday, but he said that it was unbelievable that Texas Tech didn’t release Mayfield for his 4th year. Just having to write about this makes my shoulders slump and part of this is that I’ve refused to give up any additional brain cells on the topic in order to really figure out what’s going on. I suppose that I’m not supposed to do that as a blogging expert, but I’m so tired of this. Essentially, Mayfield is wanting 5 years to play 4 seasons and because he transferred in conference, he’s not going to get that. Via NewsOK.
The Big 12 Faculty Athletics Representatives voted last May to deny OU’s waiver request to give Mayfield his fourth year back, Burda said, declining to disclose the margin of the vote.
Each Big 12 school has an FAR, and those 10 people — all academic faculty members — are given final authority on Big 12 waiver requests.
Contacted via email by The Oklahoman, six Big 12 faculty athletics representatives — including Texas Tech’s representative, law professor Brian Shannon — declined to comment on the Mayfield decision and referred all questions to the Big 12 office.
Burda said even if Texas Tech were to retroactively grant Mayfield’s release, it wouldn’t allow him to regain his fourth year of eligibility.
“This penalty is already set and cannot be retroactively ‘dismissed’ by Texas Tech since Baker already completed the academic year in residence,” Burda said. “So at this point, Texas Tech retroactively granting the use of the one-time exception does no good since the academic year in residence requirement was already applied.”
Remember, Mayfield is saying that Texas Tech has refused to release Mayfield (see ESPN), but according to the Big 12, that’s really irrelevant. Mayfield’s problems, again, seem to be with the rules that were in place when he decided to transfer.
Also notice here now Mayfield isn’t exactly telling the whole truth, but telling a story to be more empathetic. Odds are that Mayfield will continue to maybe not tell the whole truth when it comes to how this all went down and he will continue to complain about the situation.
And if you ever wanted to know the Texas Tech version of events, then this Q&A with Don Williams and Ryan Autullo before the Texas game this year, explains things from the Texas Tech perspective:
1) Believing he had done enough to win the quarterback job before the 2013 Holiday Bowl when he’d had a couple of dud games in November that year.
2) Going scorched-earth on Kliff Kingsbury when he transferred.
3) The assertion that he wasn’t going to be placed on scholarship in a timely fashion. That’s always been a he-said, she-said (he-said, he-said?). Scholarship numbers vary from year to year and semester to semester, but considering Kingsbury placed four fringe players on scholarship in August this year, I suspect he’d have found one for the 2013 Big 12 offensive freshman of the year.
4) The thing his father’s said since about Kingsbury.
I wonder if Mayfield actually told the whole truth, not just a version to make himself feel better and look better towards the general public, then maybe Texas Tech would be more willing to be of assistance. But I’d bet a lot of money that Mayfield would never retract his story, even if it’s not totally accurate, because that’s not the narrative that he’s wanted to create.
Grading the Season. Sports On Earth’s Matt Brown grades the Big 12 season including grading each team in the Big 12:
What makes this season hard to stomach is that those four understandable losses to the Big 12’s best teams all came with horrendous defense. Texas Tech allowed 55 points in the dramatic loss to TCU, which was the best its defense played in those four big games. Baylor scored 63, Oklahoma scored 63 and Oklahoma State hit 70. In David Gibbs’ first season as defensive coordinator, the Red Raiders ranked 125th in points allowed, 118th in yards per play allowed and 126th against the run. The latter is what makes the Texas Bowl matchup against Leonard Fournette and LSU so terrifying. The good news? The offense hit its stride again, jumping from 55th to second in scoring. The bad news? Everyone else in the top 15 nationally in scoring has at least nine wins.
The only thing I might add is that compared to the expectations versus results, how did Texas Tech finish? I know that Brown isn’t taking that into consideration, but remember, Texas Tech was picked to finish 8th.
Wishing Chiaverini the Best. LAJ’s Don Williams has a short statement from Texas Tech head coach Kliff Kingsbury about Darrin Chiaverini taking the co-offensive coordinator job at Colorado:
“We wish Darrin the very best in his new position at Colorado,” Kingsbury said in a statement Tech released late Tuesday. “It’s a tremendous opportunity for him to return to his alma mater. We appreciate all that Darrin has done here at Texas Tech over the last two seasons.”
Sold Out. The official site says that Texas Tech has sold out of their 10,500 allotted tickets for the AdvoCare V100 Texas Bowl. Texas Tech was allotted 2,000 more than LSU, who sold out a couple of weeks ago.
Formula to Beat LSU. ESPN’s Brandon Chatmon wonders if Texas Tech has what it takes to beat LSU:
Against the Razorbacks, Tech’s offense ran a season-low 58 plays while significantly ramping down the tempo that is a trademark of its offensive attack. The offense was still productive and explosive — averaging 3.89 points per drive and 8.38 yards per play — but it was measured and deliberate during its lone meeting with an SEC foe during the regular season. Tech averaged 24.1 seconds between plays against Arkansas, a season high. Its season average was 19.9 seconds between plays. Against LSU, Kingsbury’s team could take a similar approach.