Hey guys, my first post. Tired of the disrespect by the media leading up to last night's game (as I'm sure we all were), I wrote the following message and am thinking of sending it off to ESPN.com. Let me know what you think.

Saturday night’s bedlam in Lubbock was the stuff of dreams. A game, and a night, that will be talked about for decades to come. So much riding on one contest – championships, Heismans, and the like. Michael Crabtree’s risky last-second push for the end zone will forever be seared into the memories of college football fans in Texas and around the country. College football might even have a new “The Play.”

As a Texas Tech alumnus and expatriate living in New York, I followed every second of that game online from a hotel room in London. Yet so much of what I’ve heard, watched, and read in the media both leading up to the UT-Tech game and afterwards has referred to a “sleepy university,” this “remote outpost of a town,” and a team who is “overshadowed,” “second-fiddle,” “incapable of winning the big ones,” “gimmicky,” and “untested.” After the game, nearly every article covering the game announced that Texas Tech had finally “arrived.”

Perhaps for the same reason the media lashes out at a person like Sarah Palin - because most people in the media have never even met a person like Sarah Palin – Texas Tech, and Lubbock, for that matter, has long been a black sheep. The red-headed stepchild of Texas. So I invite the media to step out of their New York brownstones, out of their Manhattan high-rises, and take a stroll with me around a history most of them have conveniently overlooked for decades.

Welcome to Lubbock, Texas, population around 200,000. Roughly the same size as Ann Arbor, South Bend, Lincoln, Norman, and Tallahassee. The oil, cotton, and banking industries are notable here, but, much like the aforementioned cities, the town owes much of its existence to its flagship university, Texas Tech. In fact, without the university, Lubbock would be little more than another Amarillo, Midland, Odessa, or Abilene. Nope, not even as glamorous or cosmopolitan as El Paso or Fort Worth. All that would be left of Lubbock is a statue of Buddy Holly….

The school itself is one of the only universities in the U.S. with a law school and a medical school on the main campus. And speaking of the campus, it’s the second-largest in the country. SI’s Stewart Mandel just called it “one of the ten most beautiful I’ve ever seen.” But back to that law school – it was recently ranked the number one law school in the entire state of Texas. At Texas Tech. The medical school literally invented distance medicine and is the government’s leading researcher into bioterrorism countermeasures. The university has respectable business and management programs, and one of the top ten public art collections in the country. They even do crazy smart-person stuff like pulsed power and nanophotonics. Tech has produced astronauts, scientists, Olympians, actors, famous musicians, and that hot guy from CSI, but mainly it’s a technology school. Oh yeah, they are hands down the best in the world at wind engineering and storm research.

But enough about all that. Since the school doesn’t have 50,000 students like Texas and Texas A&M, or nearly the same endowment funds, it is often “overshadowed” by its bigger brothers in the state of Texas, especially in sports. Let’s face it – the only national championships Texas Tech has ever won (that I’m aware of) were in women’s basketball, polo, debate, and meat judging, whatever that is. The closest big city is four hours away in Dallas, so Lubbock can’t be that great. Even the smell of one of the world’s largest stockyards nearby can be annoying. But that pesky school there has a history of being annoying, too. Consider the following:

1920’s – Texas Tech’s Goin’ Band from Raiderland earns its name by becoming the first band ever to show up at an away game. How rude.

1954 – Texas Tech defeats Auburn in the Gator Bowl, then the equivalent of a modern-day BCS bowl.

Mid-1970’s – Texas Tech posts several consecutive top-ten rankings in football. Who do these guys think they are?

1993 – Texas Tech Lady Raiders win the national championship in basketball.

1995 – Number 1-ranked Penn State football wins a nail-biter in Happy Valley over unranked Texas Tech, 24-23. Tough loss for a bad team.

1996 – Texas Tech stuns North Carolina in the NCAA tournament to advance to the elite eight. Darvin Ham makes a statement about “arriving” by shattering a glass backboard onto North Carolina defenders.

2001 – Legendary basketball coach Bob Knight signs on with the Red Raiders, claiming Lubbock was the only other place he ever wanted to be.

2006 – The Red Raiders post the biggest comeback win ever in a college bowl against a Minnesota team with the best ground game in the nation. Dramatic, but obviously forgettable.

1990’s – 2000’s – Texas Tech knocks off Texas A&M, Texas, and Oklahoma teams all ranked in the top ten, as recently as #4 Oklahoma last season. Again, who do these guys think they are?

 The list goes on, but I’ll spare you.

Yet it took 2008 – Texas Tech knocks off Number 1 Texas – for the school to finally “arrive.”

If you’re a journalist looking for a good story about a town, a school, or a sports team, come sit down and have the fajitas at Abuelo’s or the crawfish at Jazz Café. Try a bottle of Llano Estacado, one of the most highly regarded wines in the U.S. Maybe you’ve heard of the local sports team, the Red Raiders. Actually, their football team is pretty good. They’re ranked among the best in America in current winning seasons (and there’s something about all-time bowl appearances, too). Take in a game at Jones AT&T stadium or the United Spirit Arena, if you can get tickets.

Welcome to Lubbock. It sits somewhere between New York and L.A., much like the rest of America. In case you wouldn’t recognize it, Lubbock is America.