Media Availability: David Gibbs As always, these are my hurriedly typed thoughts in listening to these videos. These are not actual quotes.

• Really good. Obviously, they recruit the top players in the country and they started strong and had a 3 game losing streak, so they get mad at them for winning 8. Great running back, offensive line and receivers. Sure they are licking their chops. We’ve got 18 days left and get better each day.
• The problem is that they have so many highly recruited skill kids, they have to get them all the ball, but they have a little bit of that on their team. Fourette is great #5 is a freak. We’ve got our hands full, have to improve.
• I think they are better than most of the teams they’ve played last year. They protect their defenses, we’re worried about Texas Tech.
• Kids are excited, you forget that you have 18 to 22 year old kids and played 12 games in a row and they are rejuvenated, they are excited to play and practice football. It will be good for us and you’ll see some improvement.
• I hope they hold us, we’re not close without getting held. We’ve got to give Kliff and the offense a chance at the end.
• We still haven’t stopped a team from running the ball, we show spurts where we can do it and then we go back to our own ways. We’re not going to stop them, we have to slow them down.
• Our main focus is the bowl practices as well as recruiting, it’s just hard to do everything at once, we’re talking to people, but our main goal is that these kids have a good bowl experience.
• Not all of the coaches are going through bowl practices, we made changes, those changes came from the head football coach. All three of the guys are great men, great recruiters, we did everything we could to get this turned around and when you don’t get something corrected, change happens.
• You have to make sure he doesn’t hurt you, I don’t think those kids will have that problem, I don’t know why you just don’t hand them the ball every play. Their offensive line is good.

Media Availability: The Players

Jakeem Grant:

• It was fun, just sitting there, taking finals, I’m glad I’m graduating, just love the game of football.
• Most definitely pulling for Christian McCaffrey, I really hope he does win the Heisman and great all-around player. He motivated me to be like him. I got to beat him, he’s a great player, he has my vote.

Dakota Allen:

• They are obviously going to try to beat us on the ground. Focus on stopping the run.
• Of course, the front seven, we’re all taking it personal, it is up to us to stop the offense.

Jah’Shawn Johnson:

• Just rally to the ball, get more than one guy to the strip the ball.
• The two Oklahoma running backs, great preparation for this game.
• Just bottling it all up and taking it to practice and preparing and prove them wrong when we can.

Gibbs Talks About Fired Coaches. LAJ’s Don Williams writes about teh media availability for David Gibbs (you can watch the video above for most of this) and that they were easier to fire rather than him because of the money he’s owed, but totally acknowledges that he has to get the job done next year as well:

“It is what it is. When they pay me all this money, what’s going to happen? Can’t fire me. You can, but you’re going to look like a fool, right? (If) it happens bad again next year, y’all will be sitting here interviewing somebody else before the bowl game.”

Last week, athletic director Kirby Hocutt said that these changes were on head coach Kliff Kingsbury, which is what Gibbs says, and that Kingsbury is accountable for those results:

“I’ve got great trust and confidence in coach Kingsbury,” Hocutt said. “He makes the decisions on who he surrounds himself with and who his assistants are, because at the end of the day and the end of every season, I hold him accountable for the results. So it has been a difficult week in that regard, but coach Kingsbury makes the decisions as to who he surrounds himself with.”

Progress over perfection:

“Progress over perfection is something we talk about,” Hocutt said. “We’ve got to see progress. I believe staff continuity and stability is so important, but you’ve got to trust those you put in position to make the decisions that they believe are appropriate and need to be made.”

On The Move. There are a handful of graduate assistants that are moving on to Bowling Green with Mike Jinks, summarized at FootballScoop:

• Offensive quality control coach Kevin Kilmer is going to be the new co-offensive coordinator at Bowling Green.
• Stephen Hamby will be the offensive line coach.
• Seth Doege will be a graduate assistant

I think that SI broke the Kilmer story and they had this quote from Mike Leach on Kilmer, who was nicknamed by Leach based on the show Brotherhood:

“He was such a totally blue-collar guy who was sort of unconsciously tough,” Leach says of Kilmer. “With him going to Bowling Green, Ohio, the name is more appropriate than ever. Ohio, if you think about it, it’s kind of a “Moe” state. There’s some Moes in Ohio. Blue collar, tough, perhaps a leather jacket. That kind of thing. I’m very happy he got a job. He’s worked hard. He was always a very loyal guy. I can’t say that 100 percent of the people I dealt with at Tech were loyal. After all, they owe me for 2009 and still haven’t paid me.”

I think these are all great moves for these guys, who have to take a shot to move up, so congrats to all of them. Kingsbury is going to have to fill some spots coming soon, but these are all great moves for these guys.

Stockton Student Athlete Story.

Underclassman Big 12 Team. ESPN’s Jake Trotter has their underclassman team in the Big 12, and that includes QB Patrick Mahomes and K Clayton Hatfield. That’s it.

Duffey Leads Lake Ridge to State Title Game. Via the DMN, Texas Tech QB commit Jett Duffey helped lead Mansfield Lake Ridge to the state title game, beating Aledo, 42-21 (box score). Duffey tweaked his hamstring in the game and had to leave early, but it was really a heck of a game and effort from Duffey. He was 4 of 9 passing for 114 yards and 2 touchdowns, but it was running where he was so dangerous, carrying the ball 21 times for 162 yards. The one thing that I was surprised to see was how big of a running threat he was. He’s a running quarterback for Lake Ridge and that was a bit of a surprise.