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… Saturday was an emotional one for me with the Brian Burg news. I was all over the place with it, too. Selfishly, I hated seeing it because of how well I know him, what he’s about and how damn good he is at what he does. I quickly went from that to being very excited that a friend of mine has had his dream come true. I don’t say this lightly, but in my years of covering Texas Tech athletics and covering/working with the football and basketball programs I have never respected anyone more than Brian Burg. He will do great things at Georgia Southern.
… In a weird way, I think the Burg news is great for Texas Tech, or at least could be in time. If Burg does well there, and I expect nothing less, then he is someone that could absolutely come back to Lubbock as the head coach if Chris Beard were to ever leave for a blueblood or the NBA. And don’t chuckle at the NBA suggestion, either. Beard will get that opportunity at some point down the line. Whether he takes it or not is another story, but the opportunity will be there.
… Beard will almost certainly take his time in looking to fill his assistant coach vacancy, but he will be hard-pressed to find someone that checked every box like Burg did. Burg was involved in every aspect of the program, every single part of it and I’m not sure most realize that. Burg was helping with the Joel Ntambwe case. He was heavily involved in the academic piece with every player on the team. Burg drew up recruiting plans and executed them. He was involved with the scouts, game planning in pretty much every single game, especially the big ones. You find anyone in that program that has anything bad to say about Burg and isn’t over-the-moon thrilled for him. He was respected by everyone and very clearly deserved an opportunity like this.
… I wonder who Burg will take with him to Georgia Southern because it’ll be someone(s). It could be a grad assistant like Casey Perrin or a player that is seeking to more playing time somewhere else. Who knows? I’m also curious to see if Georgia Southern or if UTA end up on Texas Tech’s schedule in the near future. I’m not sure how Beard will feel about playing Burg or Chris Ogden, but it would help those guys out which I know Beard would want to do. We’ll see though because playing against friends usually isn’t much fun.
… This is Beard’s next real challenge, keeping continuity on his staff. He’s lost Al Pinkins to more money and an elevated role at Florida, Max Lefevre to the NBA, Chris Ogden and now Brian Burg to head coaching opportunities. Bill Self has had his current staff in place for eight full seasons, Scott Drew for three full seasons and Bob Huggins for eight full seasons. That stability clearly pays off if you can get it. Does Beard hire someone young and hungry for their next break or someone more established that wants to stay a while? Again, we’ll see.
… I’ve seen Beard get onto everyone in his program for various things before and most of the time they deserve it, myself included. I can’t say for sure it never happened, but I never saw him get onto Brian Burg for anything at all. He’s the only one, and that’s because there was never anything to criticize.
… I was asked to nominate some of Texas Tech’s football players for Athlon’s preseason magazine earlier today. They were looking for suggestions for their first, second, third and fourth all-conference teams.
Here is what I submitted. No wrong answers here, but trying to fight for some of the Red Raiders to get some recognition if I felt they were deserving.
First-Team Suggestions:
ILB Riko Jeffers - 76 tackles, second on the team behind Jordyn Brooks.
OG Jack Anderson - Was preseason All-Big 12 last year and postseason All-Big 12 the year before.
P Austin McNamara – All-Big 12 first-team. He's a stud. Led all freshman nationally in punting at 45 yards per punt.
PK Trey Wolff – All-Big 12 honorable mention, was 20 of 22 in FGs which ranked seventh nationally in terms of percentage.
Second-Team Suggestions:
C Dawson Deaton - Graded out as fourth-best interior OL of anyone in the Big 12 and graded out the best OL every game as a sophomore for Tech.
OWR TJ Vasher - 515 yards and 6 TDs last season, 19 career TDs.
OWR Erik Ezukanma - First freshman since Michael Crabtree to lead team in receiving yards with 664, 4 TDs and almost all of that was in Big 12 play.
RB Sarodrick Thompson - Led team in rushing as a freshman, 765 yards rushing and 12 TDs.
DL Eli Howard - Was second-team All-Big 12 as a junior, 30 career starts, 14 career sacks.
Third Team Suggestions:
CB Adrian Frye - He is moving back to corner and he had 5 INTs there as a freshman, played safety last year as a sophomore. Since 2000 he's just the second Texas Tech player to have 45 tackles and 6 INTs before his junior season. Vincent Meeks is the other to do it.
Zech McPhearson - Started all 12 games, had 5 PBUs and 51 tackles.
I’m sure some may disagree but that is how I had it.
… I watched the Dennis Rodman 30-for-30 over the weekend and the two main basketball takeaways I had were the fact that all of his Pistons teammates loved him at the beginning because he didn’t want the ball at all but still dominated. They called him a throwback and this was in 1986. Imagine what we’d call a guy like that now. That part about the sport these days bugs me, too often defined by how many points you score when there are so many other ways to impact and dominate a basketball game. My other takeaway is how much it affected him early on when his coach or guys on the team would leave. Nothing in sports stays the same for very long and we take it for granted in the midst of it how much fun a good team or staff is. That part tore him apart as he thought his Bad Boy Pistons would be that same team going forward. Nothing stays the same in sports which is the best and toughest part about it.
… I rewatched Wolf of Wall Street over the weekend, too. Leo drops a cuss word a whopping 332 times in that film.
… There’s a lot of talk about whether football will be played in the fall and it’s still too early to determine what is going to happen there, even though everyone has an opinion or concern about it. My stance on it is this: College football will do whatever the NFL does or at least closely pattern itself after whatever the NFL opts to do. Secondly, if there is no football, I’d imagine the TV networks will help however they need to in order to ensure they have a product to air the following year. There is NOTHING like live football to those networks and they get premium dollars from advertisers and sponsors to air those games. I bet Disney, FOX, CBS and the rest will step up if needed.
… Today is “National I am in Control Day” and why do I feel like I’m not. At all.
… If you’re on Twitter, make sure you are following @RexChapman. Easily the best follow on Twitter there is from my seat. I’ve been following him for nearly a year I think and after watching his piece on E60 this past Friday night, it made me even more of a fan. Lots of laughter and feel good on his feed and we could all use more of that in our lives these days.
… Finally, some Tiger King references for those that have seen it. It is good to know that with the popularity of the documentary, authorities in Florida are asking for any leads in the case of Carole Baskin’s missing/deceased husband. She very clearly knows what happened and I refuse to believe otherwise with her dumb smiles and laughter whenever she’s asked about it. I find it hilarious that Cardi B started a GoFundMe to try and help Joe Exotic get out of prison as she thinks he was railroaded. Oh, 2020, it has been quite a year and we aren’t even to April yet.
… Stay safe everyone.
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