Sunday, December 25, 2011

Sportsfans

So,I was watching an ESPN films production called "Catching Hell", it was an in depth story about the Steve Bartman story and the downfall of the Cubs playoff run in 2003. I enjoyed it a lot especially because I was watching the game and remember it well. We were having a party at my house and just so happened to have it on the TV and we were all glued to the television set, not as cubs fan, but as regular baseball fans and fans of the history of the game. After the Cubs fell apart I remember looking at my friend and saying that the poor guy they kept showing will be blamed for this and his life will never be the same. One ground ball that should have been an easy double play needed to be made to make Bartman's life normal and he could be forgotten, but nope didn't happen. Anyways, as I watched I realized what kind of blind idiots fans can be. I also recalled a conversation I was having in the living room of my wife's grandparents house the night before, which was Christmas eve, with some of her family members. I don't argue alot especially with people I don't know or respect because it isn't worth my time. I am very opinionated about certain things but I never tell people that their opinions are wrong even if I don't agree with them. We started talking about Texas Tech football and the mediocre season we just had. I agree it was hard to watch, but I watched it, every bit of it, down to every last whistle in every game, did you? Probably not. All I heard the following days were comments about how bad we were and that "I changed the channel after halftime", all I wanted to say to them was maybe you should go to Walmart and pick up a burnt orange shirt and jump on the wagon with the rest of the t-shirt fans. I got more tired about hearing what Leach could have done instead of Tubberville. So her cousin and uncle were just all over the coaches and the team and i just sat there and listened and every now and then threw in my 2 cents, all up until they both said "I don't really keep up with the team or anything tech related, but that was bad", that made me more angry than anything else I heard all night. What gives you the right to make these comments when you have no idea what was even going on outside of the score, what a joke. So I gave them a few facts from the season and then sat there, they quickly changed the subject. Was I Mike Leach fan, of course, the biggest. When he got fired I made a rare comment on the KCBD facebook site and they posted it on TV. I was just as angry as the rest of "RaiderNation". How it went down was a disgrace to the double T, however, I also looked at it from a management standpoint and realized that he needed to go and wasn't worth the commotion that he caused each and every season because he didn't want to be here. That all depends on who you ask of course, but every year he was throwing his name in the hat for another job. Did he deserve better than he got at Tech, of course, he did a lot for the school as a whole by making them a viable program. Did he deserve to be fired the way he did, of course not, it was all very wrong and very petty by the upper management at Tech, will we ever know the true reason of why he got fired, NO, but we all can agree on that it was wrong. However as a manager, you can only take so much insubordination, before something has to be done, win or lose. In ten years we had ONE ten win season and was always in third or fourth place at the end of the season. People try to tell me that the team in 2010 was gonna be his championship team, please what a joke. That probably comes from you people who thought that "sticks" was a better qb than Potts. Neither one was a good qb by any stretch of the imagination, and to think that he was gonna win the Big12 with that team is a far cry from the truth. Mike Leach was good at one thing and that was taking a group of mediocre players and making them good enough to win 8 maybe 9games a season but never being able to beat the big boys. Will Tubberville ever be able to beat them, who knows, will anyone be able to win that next level game at Tech, maybe, maybe not. Do I believe in Tubberville to get us pointed in the right direction to do that, of course I do, as a Tech fan I have to. Do I think it will happen, ehh hopefully, I'm willing to wait and find out, compared to most people around here, who thinks that the answer to the prayer is Mike Leach, which it isn't. What most people seem to forget that as I argue for Tubberville, I am not a Leach fan or Tubberville fan, I am a TEXAS TECH fan. So whoever is our coach, is who I will defend over the previous guy win or lose. I will give that present coach the benefit of the doubt until he is gone. If Tuberville isn't winning at the end of his fourth year, I will be first to say that it is time to look in a different direction, but will still not give up on him or the team until he no longer wears a doubleT on his shirt. Look at what Christy Curry has done to the women's basketball team. I'm sure a lot of the so called Tech fans out there wanted her gone soon after she took over an extremely depleted team, no on even wanted to think about moving on from Marsha Sharp. Now look, we are ranked and dominating games and looking good to make a pretty strong run towards winning the Big12, which I may add is probably the toughest conference in the country for women's basketball. Yes it took her 5 years to get here but she is hear and all because the athletic department did not listen to the average fan about her when they wanted her job. I hope they do the same thing with Tubberville, and I would stand behind that no matter who our coach is. I just wish that the average fan would stay off the radio, I'd rather listen to the crap that is called music now a days, than listen to a fan who really doesn't know what is really going on. Not all fans are like this, just seems to be the ones that want to voice their opinion on the air. I hate the "what have you done for me lately" attitude that we as a culture have developed. I want my teams to win as much as the next person, and I don't care how they win, just win, especially on a professional level with the amount of money they get paid. I am a Mavericks, Rangers, Colts, and a Texas Tech fan. All teams come with a certain amount of patience (I was a Colts fan before Manning, for some unknown reason, probably cause the Oilers left Houston, and I hate the Cowboys, or used to anyways). I support all these teams win or lose from my home for now, and when I can afford it I will be in the stands as much as possible for Tech football. I will keep an eye on Leach at Washington State with mixed feelings. One, in hopes that he does good, not to rub it in Tech administrations face, they know he was a winner and a good coach, but for himself because he is in a good school to eventually win and get himself to a BCS bowl or even a PAC12 championship, which I guess would get him in to a BCS bowl game. Two, I want him to lose the first few seasons just so I don't have to hear about him anymore here in Lubbock. People hate change, especially when the change comes after winning, but they also need to move on or move to Washington and buy some purple shirts cause I don't want to hear about it. I will watch the games on tv if they are on, but I will not go out of my way to watch them. Good luck to Leach an Washington State, but I am a RED RAIDER and will not be a t-shirt cougar fan. So to those that continue to bash Tubberville because he is not Leach, get over it. And to those fans who like to blame crazy circumstances on why your team lost, have fun with that. There were a bunch of reasons why the Cubs lost that game and the series, Bartman had nothing to do with it,and his life was ruined by it. It would have only been the second out and the error from Gonzales and bad pitching all played a major part in that inning and why 8 runs were scored. On a last note Tech fans in general make me angry. They expect Tech to be this great program but yet they won't fill the stands when we lose. A true following has nothing to do with the amount of crowds you have when you win, it is how many people show up to games when you are losing. Nebraska football is a perfect example, when they had a few losing seasons in the middle of this decade, they still sold out every single game and lost almost every game in one of those seasons. So as everyone here has an opinion on where we should be as a football program we need to look at how we treat the team when we lose and not focus on the amount of people in the stands when are winning. Do I go to the games, no, but not because I don't want to but because I can't afford tickets yet. I will be a student there starting this summer and plan on attending as many games as I can. I also think it is funny when peole around here try and compare us to UT or OU. Makes me laugh because as a football program we will never be the caliber of football program as they are if we keep acting the way we do as fans. I came to terms with that fact a long time ago, and have not once have ever thought about being a fan of a different school and never will no matter how bad we may get. Besides, I look horrible in an ugly color such as burnt orange. I understand why some Lubbockites hate Tech and jumped on the UT bandwagon with no real reason or ties to them, it is probably why I grew up hating the Cowboys, hated hearing about them every single day. Just do me a favor and try watching your favorite teams not as a fan but as a sports analyst or non biased fan if you will, and you will get a much better look at your team as a whole through a different light. Also makes for less heartache when you really understand what you can expect from your team in every different game.

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