Alamo Bowl
Michigan State Spartans vs. Texas Tech Red Raiders
January 2, 2010, 8pm Central
San Antonio, Texas
Network: ESPN/ESPN Radio
Fourteen Michigan State players suspended. One Texas Tech head coach fired. Two programs in turmoil. The winner will be the one that can pull things together to field a cohesive team.
The challenge to Michigan State is straight forward, but significant. On the other hand, they've had a month to prepare replacements for those lost.
For Texas Tech, however, this is brand new, and there are lots of unknowns. Some players have indicated that things will be better without Mike Leach, and there were certainly signs earlier this season that he had lost the team. They very well could be better without the pirate on the sidelines.
Heading into the game between the Texas Tech Red Raiders and the Texas Longhorns, if you had told me that Tech would only score twenty-four points, I would have confidently predicted a win by three or four touchdowns. As it happened, the Texas defense held Tech to three touchdowns and a field goal, but Texas only won by ten points, in a game that was actually much closer than the final score indicated.
I've waited a few days to write about the the game as I wanted to have some time to think about it. It was an ugly win, but I'll take an ugly win over a pretty loss on any day of the week.
Saturday evening, September 19, 2009, Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium hosted the largest crowd ever to attend a game in the state of Texas (101,297 official attendance). I shot this video of the opening kickoff to capture the environment.
