On the Pitch
Texas Tech soccer is at San Diego State to take on the Aztecs tonight for the first game of the season:
MATCHUP: No. 25/19 Texas Tech (0-0-0) at San Diego State (0-0-0)
DATE: Thursday, Aug. 14, 2025
TIME: 9 p.m. (CT)/7 p.m. (PT)
TV: Mountain West Digital Network
LOCATION: San Diego, Calif. (SDSU Sports Deck)
Defender Macy Blackburn has been named First Team Preseason All-American and also listed as the No. 3 player in the nation by Top Drawer Soccer.
On the Gridiron
Mic’d Up with QB Behren Morton and DT Lee Hunter.
Lubbock Avalanche-Journal’s Don Williams writes that the “Guns Up” during the Matador Song should remain still and should only go with the notes only during the words of “Long live the Matadors.”
Via ESPN, the Big 12 will issue player availability reports during conference games for football and men’s and women’s basketball.
Beginning this season, Big 12 football teams will submit daily injury and player availability reports starting three days before each conference game. Players will be designated as available, probable, questionable, doubtful or out.
The CBS Sports’ Mike Renner ranks the best tight ends for 2026, including Terrance Carter, Jr. being a possible day 3 pick:
Terrance Carter Jr. is one of the most productive returning tight ends in college football with 691 yards on 48 catches last year for Louisiana-Lafayette. Carter is like a jumbo running back at the tight end position, as he trailed only Harold Fannin Jr. and Tyler Warren with 18 broken tackles in 2024.
With Carter, it’s going to be about how he develops physically. It remains to be seen if the 245 pounds he’s listed at for Texas Tech this season is real and good weight compared to the 232 pounds we saw him listed at for Louisiana-Lafayette. The crazy thing is, Carter has more inline blocking experience than most on this list with over two-thirds of his snaps coming there the past two seasons. That just seems unlikely to be his future in the league.
CBS Sports’ Brad Crawford predicts the first loss for the entire Big 12 Conference:
First loss: at Arizona State, Oct. 18
No team in college football allocated more resources to talent acquisition this offseason than the Red Raiders. That means Texas Tech is in College Football Playoff-or-bust mode under Joey McGuire, lofty expectations considering the program’s last 11-win season came in 2008 under the late Mike Leach. A 6-0 start to the 2025 campaign would mean the Red Raiders are in the thick of the discussion with the first playoff rankings set to debut a few weeks later.