Texas Tech Thursday Morning Notes - Catching the Ball Edition

by Seth C on Jan 10, 2008 6:26 AM CST in News Comment 4 comments

Double-T Nation News:

Around the blogosphere, we have a few items. KU blog Rock Chalk Talk takes a look at the teams that he thinks will finish 9 through 7 in men's Big 12 basketball while college basketball blog Rush the Court checks in on the Big 12 and thinks Texas Tech is a bubble team.

In football blogging, Flags Over Raiderland is trying to convince wide receiver recruits that you don't have to go to a big school to be a great wide receiver in the NFL. I seriously doubt that recruits read this, but think about what is the most important attribute of a receiver? Catching the ball. If you can catch the ball, which you will by the time you leave Texas Tech, then you are probably going to be successful. Click.

Texas Tech Football:

I'm a little bit late, but FWST's David Thomas looks back and the winners, losers, stars and goats of the bowl season and thought that the Gator Bowl was the 3rd best bowl. Also from the FWST, Wendell Barnhouse ranks Texas Tech as the 13th best team in the nation in 2008 and additionally muses that the plus-one is a certain shot at the BCS stronghold. A good read for sure.

Texas Tech Basketball:

The AP's Betsey Blaney writes about the potential of Coach Knight attaining #900 on Saturday. Don't forget that this game is at 12:30 p.m. on CBS.

Texas Tech Baseball:

Coach Hays has released the 2008 35-Man Roster and also had this note on 2 transfers who have joined the team mid-semester:

Texas Tech Head Coach Larry Hays also announced his 35-man roster for the 2008 season today that includes two mid-semester transfers. Joining the Red Raiders for the spring semester will be Owen Brolsma and Juan Rodriquez who are both expected to give the squad depth at two key positions. Brolsma, a RHP and native of Reno, Nev., transferred to Tech as a senior from the University of Nevada and will be enrolled in graduate school as he earned his degree from Nevada in Business Management. Rodriguez, a catcher and native of San Juan, Puerto Rico, comes to Texas Tech after spending last season at Lassen Community College in California.

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Baseball transfers

Those two baseball transfers are the last of a dying breed. This will be the last year the NCAA allows baseball players to transfer to a new school and play that same year. From here forward all baseball players must sit out a year, as is already true for football and basketball players.

This new rule made quite a few NCAA coaches unhappy. Not only did they think it hurt the kids the most, but the NCAA also expanded it to include non-scholarship players. So now even walk-ons must wait a year. Ritch Price at KU was fine with the one year wait for scholarship players but was very unhappy about not being able to allow walk ons to compete for a roster spot.

I think the main reason this new rule was put in place was to prevent more established programs from talent hunting, skimming the best players off the top of weaker programs. I think the effort to better distribute talent is a good one, but I do agree with the coaches. The ones most hurt will be the players. I assume more players will enter the draft early now rather than sit out the year or continue to play in a low profile conference after they have established themselves as legitimate pro prospects.

Rock Chalk Talk.com for pretty good KU baseball coverage.

by JQ on Jan 10, 2008 10:32 AM CST reply actions 0 recs

well, the next step to that

Is the same next step that the NFL and NBA have now taken (well, the NBA to a lesser extent): Require players to have finished a greater part of their college education before entering the draft.

But that's something that has to come from the MLB and they are the most conservative of all the professional sports leagues in the US.

by kayakyakr on Jan 10, 2008 1:20 PM CST reply actions 0 recs

Actually, the MLB does have some rules

in place to promote NCAA baseball stability. If a player attends class for one day at an NCAA school with the intention of playing baseball there he cannot be drafted until after his Junior year.

Players can get out of this by transferring to a Juco or an NAIA school. There are no restrictions in place for these schools and players can be drafted every year from them.

But if a player comes to Texas Tech he is not eligible for the draft for three years.

On a different but similar topic, I would love it if the NBA and NFL started up real minor league systems. I think that would benefit both sports. NFL Europe and the NBA Development leagues are such poor substitutes for baseballs system.

Rock Chalk Talk.com for pretty good KU baseball coverage.

by JQ on Jan 10, 2008 1:42 PM CST up reply actions 0 recs

AAFL

All-American Football League.

Look it up, seems to have about as much potential for success as any other minor league football to come out.

btw, AFL and Canadian are the only two that have been successful and they haven't been proper grounds for NFL recruitment. The NFL Europe is falling (has fallen?) apart.

by kayakyakr on Jan 10, 2008 3:36 PM CST up reply actions 0 recs