The Morning Stake: January 16th

Track and Field

Tennis

Lady Raider Basketball

Staking the Plains Store

Since the initial t-shirt campaign went so well, we sold 51 t-shirts, I thought it would be best to just open up a store. I spent a couple of weekends trying to find a place that didn’t require inventory, and ended up going with Spreadshirt to set up the Staking The Plains Store. There are a couple of options in terms of design. Your standard Staking The Plains t-shirt plus a new hashtag, #COYRR which stands for “Come On You Red Raiders.” It’s an English Premiere League sort of chant. For Arsenal, it’s #COYG which stands for “Come On You Gunners.”

The t-shirts are $20 for just your normal t-shirt and $25 for tri-blend t-shirts. Just as an FYI, tri-blend are those t-shirts that are ridiculously soft and are made with 50% polyester, 25% cotton and 25% rayon. This obviously terrible news for the cotton farmers, but I’m giving you options.

Plus, you can get a zip pouch (in two different sizes) or a tote (including a weekend bag).

One other note.

I donated $200.00 to the Red Raider Club this weekend. There was approximately $600 in t-shirt sales from the t-shirt campaign we ran in December and I promised to give 20% of the proceeds to the Red Raider Club. I kicked in an additional $80.00 of my own money to make it an even $200.00. I also divided up the rest among the writers so we’re good to go on that end. We’ll continue to donate 20% to some charity or Texas Tech as long as I can.

Football

ESPN’s Mitch Sherman has ten Big 12 bold predictions and one of them is that Texas Tech will hire Art Briles:

9. Texas Tech will hire Art Briles. It’ll be a tough sell to the college football public, but not so difficult in West Texas, where Tech athletic director Kirby Hocutt will be forced into action after the Red Raiders flounder in the absence of quarterback Patrick Mahomes.

I posted this on Twitter on Friday and most of the response was what my response was, which is “vomit”. But there were also people that were taking the side that there are still people who matter who really do like Briles and think he got a raw deal at Baylor.

I can say that I would never cheer for a team that had Art Briles as the head coach. STP would become a Texas Tech basketball and baseball blog and I would imagine that donations would decrease significantly.

But back to Sherman, this paints Texas Tech in an awful light and I’m wishing the ESPN Big 12 blog would have never have gotten rid of Brandon Chatmon because this is just crap and intended to drive hits. Sherman’s quote makes it sound like the offense will flounder and I don’t think that will happen. If Texas Tech flounders, it will be because of the defense. Not only that, but I could imagine a scenario where Kirby Hocutt would rather resign than hire Briles. Sherman also thinks that OU beats Ohio State in Columbus, so good luck with that. Congratulations Mitch, you have officially made my shit-list.

ESPN’s Max Olson has what Texas Tech’s biggest needs are for 2017 and he chose defensive back, offensive line and running back. It’s tough to argue with any of those position groups, they are all positions of need heading into the 2017 recruiting class and other than running back, have invested heavily with player numbers in the 2017 class.

I’ll have more on the running backs, but I agree that as nice of a surprise that Ward was, this group needs some numbers:

Not trying to omit backup quarterback, which is an important hole to fill after Patrick Mahomes II went pro and Jett Duffey was suspended. But the development of the Red Raiders’ run game has to be a priority this offseason. Texas Tech’s running backs combined to average 19 carries and 82 rushing yards per game last season. Da’Leon Ward did have a few moments as a true freshman that were encouraging, but more help is needed. A run game that’s actually worth defending should be a must for this post-Mahomes offense.

LAJ’s Don Williams writes about the four proposals at the American Football Coaches Association, which includes an early signing day in early December, which makes sense as this is when a lot of JUCO kids sign; an increase in the number of assistant coaches, from 9 to 10; eliminate the cap of the roster size at 105; and to relax the redshirt rule and the proposal is to allow a player to play 4 games without losing his redshirt. The last rule is the one that received the most traction last week and it makes a ton of sense and would also mean that the NCAA isn’t getting into the business of reviewing each and every case to determine if that player can have their redshirt.

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