Admit it. You’re a Tech fan, and you’ve taken grief for it. People talk trash about your school, your city, your football team, and your football coach. And somewhere underneath those jabs is an implicit insult directed at you, the poor guy who couldn’t get into Texas or A&M, had to inhale cow stench for four (or maybe six) years, and is sadly scarred with the curse of having to root for a football team that will never, ever, ever, ever rise any higher than they did last year, when a fluke play allowed them to stand tall next to the mighty Horn and Sooner in the Big XII South standings.

 

Now, I don’t want to believe that. In fact, I don’t believe that. But it does make me wonder just how high I can reasonably expect Mike Leach to take us. I just re-read TaylorTRoom’s excellent summary of the history of cheating in college football:

Good Times

In the final chapter, he makes this assertion:

 

“There are very, very few coaches who can overcome significant talent deficits with superior scheming. I can think of none who have done so for extended periods of time. If a coach does develop a superior way to line up his players, he will be mimicked within a season or two.  His assistants will be hired away. All experienced head coaches know that superior talent is the best edge to have.”

 

I agree. Mike Leach had an advantage for a few years with his spread offense. Now it’s the common offense in the conference, so we don’t get wins against defenses that can’t defend the spread anymore. Over his eight years in Lubbock, Leach has lost two offensive coordinators and a number of good assistants (fortunately, he’s on a hot streak hiring replacements). So the only way to keep getting better is to get better players. We’re doing that, and I’m pretty damn sure we’re not cheating to do it. But is it enough?

 

 

Is it really possible for a Division I college football program to rise from a history of mediocrity to MNC-challenger status without cheating? In my lifetime, Miami rose up in the early 80’s, but my guess is that Schnellenberger wasn’t afraid to stretch the rules to get there. Same could be said for Colorado in the early 90’s and Kansas State in the late 90’s (there was a recent story from Jason Whitlock about suspicious money moving in the Bill Snyder era).

 

But some programs seem to have risen without too much suspicion. Virginia Tech is one. West Virginia is another. Utah, Kansas, and Boise State have all won BCS games. In the past few years, South Florida has risen from no program to a perennial 9-win team, albeit in the Big East (Don’t get me started on automatic BCS bids from the Big East). Even Cincinnati is suddenly, um, good?

 

And then there’s Texas Tech. We’re good, but can we be National Championship good? Is there a ceiling for certain programs deprived of ideal location, recruiting base, and super rich alumni? Should I be satisfied with one annual upset of OU or Texas and a good showing in a bowl game? Maybe. But right now, I’m not. When you taste the dream (and for two weeks leading up to the OU game last year, I was sipping it like 18 year-old Scotch), it becomes something you keep wondering about. You re-watch last year’s games. You attend the Spring Game. You write long-winded articles on websites, if they’ll let you.

 

So what will it take?

 

 

If it is possible to rise up in today’s college football environment, I’ve come up with six ingredients:

 

1. Coaching Consistency – All the programs I listed above have had one charismatic leader (like a Beamer), or they had a coach on the rise (Urban Meyer) who established a football style for the program and was replaced by an assistant loyal to the program (Kyle Whittingham at Utah, Chris Peterson at Boise State). Tech gave me a big scare during the Leach Contract Crisis, but happily that’s over and we can keep this thing rolling for another five years. I think a culture has developed around this coaching staff, and everyone has bought in to how we win football games at Texas Tech. Now we just need more players…
2. Recruiting Game Plan – Leach survived the early years taking slow tight ends and turning them into wall-off OL. He also went the JUCO route, with mostly poor results. Playing the JUCO game can really kill your depth chart (see 2003 defense), but sometimes all it takes is one Dwayne Slay to change the identity of your defense. I always felt confident in Leach’s ability to find the right players for his offense, and since 2006 the defensive recruiting has improved as well. At this point it looks like Tech knows how to identify, recruit, and sign 18-20 of ‘their type of players’. Then they take a shot at a few of the big national recruits like Julio Jones. They’ve even won a few interesting battles (Pearlie Graves, Eric Ward). Now we’re shooting for a few WR in Florida. How do they know about us? Well…
3. Create a Buzz – Teams with very little history need something to be known for. If you say Rutgers, I say Choppin’ Wood. If you say Boise State, I say Hook and Ladder, then Statue of Liberty. We’re known for throwing the football, and never being out of the game (unless we’re getting pasted in Austin or Norman). It’s something that inspires the student body and energizes the alumni. I remember sitting anywhere I wanted at a football game in 1994 (except the section being protected by a bunch of fraternity pledges, heh). Now we sell out SMU and there’s a tent city called Raiderville for all the big games. National radio talks about us. All this helps. When I read quotes from a player in Florida saying that he liked the way we play and started watching all our games, I’m pretty fired up.
4. Build, Build, Build – Cheating is risky these days (in football, not basketball), so what’s the best way to spend big money without cheating? Facilities. Tech’s actually lagged a bit here, but the stadium is getting renovated, and I’m starting to hear more and more recruits talk about how much they like the apartments, the campus, and the game day atmosphere in Lubbock. I’d like to personally thank Delbert McDougal for the Overton Project.
5. Win Some Big Ones – You don’t want to be that program that’s pretty good, but just not good enough. Kansas State’s loss to A&M in 1998 changed everything. KSU would still post double-digit wins for a few more years, but Colorado, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas got better, and they never got another shot at the National Championship. Tech’s win against UT needs to be a stepping stone, not a pinnacle. We’ve proven we can beat OU in Lubbock, and now we’ve got a second win in ten years against UT. Ultimately, that must lead to…
6. The Magic Year – One benefit of being in the Big XII: If you go undefeated (and sometimes even if you have one loss, eh Stoops? Twice?), you’re likely to have a shot at the MNC. But that comes with a price. There has to be a year, probably not next year(McCoy, Bradford) but possibly 2010, when you run the table. You beat Texas in Lubbock and beat OU in Norman, or vice versa. Oh, and you don’t stumble in Stillwater, or Lincoln, or Boulder. And you don’t blink in the Big XII Championship game like KSU in ’98, Texas in ’01, OU in ’03 (wait, they still got to go after that 35-7 drubbing by K-State? Hmm.). You have to be perfect once. After that you can tell every recruit that Lubbock is a place where you can win a championship.  Remember, Adrian Peterson chose OU over UT for this very reason.

 

So that’s my list of ingredients, and essentially we’ve already got the first five. When I look at our last four recruiting classes, I still see some reaches and some busts, but we definitely know what we’re looking for these days, and while we might not have a 4-star guy at every position, we’re likely to have a 3-star guy who’s been in the program for three or four years.

Is that enough?  I’m not sure.  It was good enough for Boise State to beat OU, Kansas to beat Viginia Tech, and Utah to beat Alabama.  But none of these games were for the National Title.  What I’m looking for this year is a game where it looks like we’re physically out-matched, like in Norman last year.  It’s one thing to get beat, it’s another to watch you team get physically dominated.  Until we reach a point where we only get beat on occasion and never dominated, we won’t really have the stuff it takes to dream.