I've written many times on my Tech football fandom here and as Ryan can tell you, he grew up with a tapestry of Raider Red on a wall in our apartment proclaiming this as "Raider Country:
BTW-I would have loved an OSU version, but never saw one.
However, I'm not sure if I have ever mentioned my basketball fandom, which peaked in the SWC, pre-Bob Knight days when Tech dominated the waning days of the SWC with a wide-open running style of play with four players that would play in the NBA, although not star in Jason Sasser, Cory Carr, dunk master Darwin Ham and lottery selection Tony Battie.
Fox Sports Texas used an announcer named Bill Land on most of these games and his catchphrase on a big play or dunk of "HO Mama" is one I still think of a lot when watching basketball games!
Between those tapes and a newsletter that was written by a fellow named Bill Peters named the Double T Times, I was more than an insider on Tech sports as Peters used to tell me in conversations that I was his only subscriber in the state of Maryland!
Tech was coached then by James Dickey, who was an Eddie Sutton disciple and other than Tom Penders at Texas dominated the SWC.
The Tech-UT games always determined the boss in the league and featured teams that would run up and down the floor.
Ryan's always been a Badger fan, but I bet if you asked him about a few of those above names, he could give you some memories and maybe even a smile if he was in the right mood.
Another player on those teams was a guy named Lance Hughes, who looked like the kid bagging your groceries, but was a hustling type that was also quite a leaper.
I often joke about certain players back then seeming like they played for nine years at their school-Lance Hughes was one of those guys, just seemed like he had been playing there forever.
Tech's run would end in the Sweet Sixteen with another up and down game against Georgetown with a 98-90 loss but looked to be set for a while entering the new Big 12.
The Red Raiders won 19 games and appeared to be headed to the big dance again, but during the Big 12 tournament, a scandal emerged over several sports, including basketball.
Tech removed itself from the postseason after discovering two players had played despite academic ineligibility and the resulting scholarship removals meant the destruction of the program with three losing seasons in a row and the firing of Dickey, who wouldn't be a head coach for ten years before a four year run at Houston, where it was Dickey that set the table for the current success of the Cougars under his replacement Kelvin Sampson.
I always respected Bob Knight and he had success at Tech replacing Dickey with NCAA appearances and a sweet sixteen, but Knight's team played a slower game and they just weren't as fun to watch.
When Tech made the tournament, I still rooted for them, but the same connections weren't there from those 90s times.
Lubbock and therefore Tech has always been a tough place to recruit from for players and coaches, which is why Tech is going to have a huge problem keeping Chris Beard over the long term, no matter his protests about Tech (where he was a long time assistant to Knight) being his dream job.
Unless Beard is completely honest about that (and if he is, he could make Tech the type of job that 20 years from now that a state school like Kansas is looked at today), it's likely that some traditional filled school will land him eventually.
During those videotape trading days, where I would get tapes of games, coach's shows, and season previews from around the country in those pre-internet days saw lots of videos from Texas (for Tech), Ohio (OSU, and various small teams), and with those shows, you would see different hosts and during those shows, you would see lots of hosts.
When you deal with college teams, you would see lots of younger talent with most either just out of college or even doing such work as part of their field of study and still enrolled.
One of these was a young lady named Emily Jones, who would host these previews for the various teams in Texas and the Big 12.
I instantly became of fan of her work and you could see she was going to be really good in the industry no matter the capacity.
I always had a feeling that despite being the host for these teams, she was a Tech fan/supporter/student, etc.
I had no concrete reason for thinking that, just a feeling, and years later with the internet and the MLB package, I discovered that not only had Emily made it big as the reporter during Texas Rangers games, but she was in fact, a Tech grad- a rare occasion where my feelings were correct!
Looking back on sports, it's odd to have feelings more about the past than the present.
That's the opposite of what so many say on how to live your life- Look forward, not back, etc.
However, in sports, it's the other way around. it is looking over your shoulder rather than down the road that makes the present means a little more.
The memories are what make these little games important and the people you share them with, whether you know them personally or not.
So, I'll be cheering hard for the Red Raiders tonight and win or lose, I'll be thinking and raising a glass of lemonade to James Dickey, those 95-96 Red Raiders, Emily Jones (now Jones-McCoy), Bill Land, those tape traders in Texas that made a guy in Maryland able to watch those games and of course Ryan, wherever they are tonight and making a usually dreary game for me involving the same college heavyweights exciting.
If not, for all of you, it would be just another game- Guns Up and Ho Mama- Indeed.
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