{"id":476,"date":"2008-10-31T17:01:57","date_gmt":"2008-10-31T22:01:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/reddickfamily.org\/blog\/?p=476"},"modified":"2008-10-31T17:01:57","modified_gmt":"2008-10-31T22:01:57","slug":"tech-vs-ut-a-sociological-delight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reddickfamily.org\/web\/2008\/tech-vs-ut-a-sociological-delight\/","title":{"rendered":"Tech vs. UT – a sociological delight"},"content":{"rendered":"
Football IS the official state religion of Texas, but I’ve never seen anything to equal the religious fervor we’ve had in Lubbock this week over this Saturday’s game.\u00a0<\/div>\n
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Yes it’s a battle of unbeatens. No. 1 ranked Texas Longhorns against No. 6 Texas Tech Red Raiders in Lubbock.\u00a0<\/p><\/div>\n

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Yes, it’s two of the highest scoring teams in College football. Yes, it’s Sports Illustrated’s\u00a0Game of the Week<\/a>. However …<\/div>\n

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\"Red<\/a>
Red Raider fans whoop it up<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Students started standing in line at Jones Stadium MONDAY for Pete’s Sake, to get the best seats (student seating is not reserved). They pitched tents. Some had generators. Tuesday there were a couple hundred who had taken up residence at “Raiderville.” They even have a mayor and a police department. By Wednesday there were 700 residents. Thursday another 1,000 moved in. Friday classes across campus were noticeably \u00a0devoid of students. If it were Harbor High in the early sixties, I’d swear 17th Street was breaking over head with a 15-knot offshore and water temps in the 70s.\u00a0<\/p><\/div>\n

His Eminence\u00a0Mike Leach<\/a>, Master of the\u00a0Spread Offense<\/a>,\u00a0Pirate Potentate<\/a>\u00a0(“once in awhile a pirate can beat a soldier<\/a>“) and\u00a0Pigskin Plenipotentiary of the South Plains<\/a>\u00a0paid a surprise visit to the student throngs surrounding the stadium Thursday afternoon. He fed the multitudes while preaching love and (school) spirit to them. One\u00a0eyewitness report worth reading<\/a>\u00a0was written by one of my former students.\u00a0<\/div>\n
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\"Tech<\/a>
Tech football team in black<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

All that is interesting enough, but somebody else started moving onto campus Tuesday. ESPN. ESPN is doing their College Game Day thing on the Tech campus. So they started moving in Tuesday. They plunked down their trailers, their trucks, their cameras, their satellite dishes, furniture, fencing and all right in the middle of campus. They took over the Tech Engineering Key with all their munitions. And it’s clear they agree with Sports Illustrated. This is ESPN’s “Saturday Showdown<\/a>.”\u00a0<\/div>\n

It doesn’t stop there, folks. All flights out of Lubbock for Sunday were sold weeks ago. There’s not a hotel room left in town for the weekend. And some enterprising soul has all the local media, students, and even people not ordinarily conscious of Raider football involved in a city-wide “blackout.” Tech’s colors are crimson and black. And the call this week has been for everyone to wear black on Friday (Black Friday?) and to the game on Saturday.\u00a0<\/div>\n
As a sociological phenomenon, this is about as good as it gets.\u00a0<\/div>\n
You might want to tune in at 7 p.m. (Central) Saturday, and keep your<\/div>\n
Guns UP!!!!!<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Football IS the official state religion of Texas, but I’ve never seen anything to equal the religious fervor we’ve had in Lubbock this week over this Saturday’s game.\u00a0 Yes it’s a battle of unbeatens. No. 1 ranked Texas Longhorns against No. 6 Texas Tech Red Raiders in Lubbock.\u00a0 Yes, it’s two of the highest scoring […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-476","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-musings","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reddickfamily.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reddickfamily.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reddickfamily.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reddickfamily.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reddickfamily.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/reddickfamily.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reddickfamily.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reddickfamily.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reddickfamily.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}