The Morning Stake | 2018.10.05

Leading Off

As soon as I mention yesterday that I can’t post to Facebook, I’m able to post to Facebook. That’s the way things always work. Enjoy your weekend off. I’ll still have a Morning Stake tomorrow and open thread for tomorrow and Saturday.

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Daily Toreador’s Matthew Setzekorn tweeted out the following:

The planned renovation of Jones AT&T Stadium south end zone has been approved. They hope to begin the renovation in May 2019. The budget has been raised by $350,197 for a total of $715,089, of which will be paid for by gifts and athletics revenue.

The STP site re-tweeted this and some people replied back thinking that this was the total cost for the renovation for the South End Zone and that the survey that was sent out last week was a dog and pony show by Kirby Hocutt as he already knew what was going to happen. On the STP Slack yesterday afternoon, Brian and Keith both thought that this was basically planning money, architecture, engineering, etc. and not the total cost. So, the questionnaire was most likely very legitimate because Texas Tech is about to head into the planning stages.

There was also this thing that I retweeted from SI’s Robert Klemko from Andy Reid about Patrick Mahomes, and interesting how Reid made it clear that a large portion of Mahomes’ success is probably attributable to Alex Smith, the quarterback last year who left the door open for Mahomes as a rookie. Not every quarterback who is looking to preserve his spot would be so unselfish:

Alex as being Alex. he left the door open for Patrick to Join him. He just said, I’m gonna be here at this time, lifting, eating dinner, watching tape, watching more tape, studying the pictures of the game plan vs all the coverages and doing your own little doodles to figure it out. He gave that freely to Patrick, and that doesn’t always happen. That’s a big ego position. The QB room can be a little snitty at times. But Patrick came into a great situation. Alex didn’t make any demands of him, but he didn’t close the doors on him anyway. Patrick can’t pay him enough for that opportunity.”

Learning how to be a professional can be one of the tougher transitions a player can make and having a guy help you with that is pretty invaluable. Just go look at the quarterbacks situation in Pittsburgh where Ben Roethlisberger said that he didn’t understand why the Steelers drafted Oklahoma State QB Mason Rudolph. Roethlisberger says now that he said those things in jest, but you can bet that he didn’t leave any doors open.

A-J Media’s Don Williams tried to rile up Aggies, Cornhuskers, and Tigers yesterday evening when he asked to those programs how does the Big 12 look now as they’ve all experienced little to marginal football success since they left the Big 12.

Come the 2020s, two or more could still correct course and ask back in. Bet they’d be welcome and bet fans in places such as Lincoln and Columbia, maybe a silent majority in College Station, would approve. Of course, those phone calls would need to be made by university presidents, influenced by their boosters and politicians, and their track record is one of egos trumping common sense.

In the meantime, Aggie folk can keep counting the millions, knocking out seven wins a year and telling themselves they’re in a better place.

Lots of Aggies tweeted back and Don and pointed to their #1 recruiting ranking and the money and lots of other things, but as Don correctly claps back with is that none of them can say they have more wins since they left the Big 12. I disagree with Don in that he thinks that he believes that a large number would like to be back and I think some of the older folks would like it, but the younger ones don’t care at all.

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