Sporting Madness

The Mike Leach saga took a bizarre twist this morning when Texas Tech fired him [ Tommy Craggs , Deadspin ] just before [ Matt Hinton , Dr. Saturday ] he received a court order [ Pete Thamel , Twitter] allowing him to coach in their bowl game. This comes after [ AP ] their suspension of him a few days earlier in response to allegations [Craggs] of mistreatment by Tech wide receiver Adam James , the son of ESPN analyst Craig James . The whole thing stinks to high heaven. Seth C of Double-T Nation , the SBN blog for Texas Tech, has an excellent post here detailing the lack of communication between the university and Leach, the financial implications at stake and the power play between Leach and athletic director Gerald Myers . Spencer Hall goes through more of the details and discusses the power struggle between the two sides over at SB Nation, Chris Brown has an interesting analysis of how this might eventually shake out and Matt Hayes of The Sporting News has a great ...

This past season in American college football, Texas Tech quarterback Graham Harrell broke the NCAA record for most touchdown passes thrown in a college career with 134. He completed 442 of 626 passing attempts for an outstanding 70.6 completion percentage, threw for 5,111 yards, completed 45 touchdown passes while only being picked off nine times and became the first NCAA quarterback to record multiple seasons with more than 5,000 yards passing. Despite all that, Harrell wasn't selected in the NFL draft. In the first five picks alone, the Detroit Lions and New York Jets opted to take Matthew Stafford and Mark Sanchez respectively, despite each accomplishing significantly less than Harrell at the college level. By comparison, Stafford completed only 235 passes on 383 attempts at Georgia last season for 3459 yards and a completion percentage of 61.4 per cent; he also threw 25 touchdowns and 10 interceptions. Sanchez completed 241 of 366 attempts (65.8 per cent) at USC for 320...