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United Bank Playbook: Texas Tech
October 12, 2016 11:36 AM | Football
Twentieth-ranked West Virginia is expecting lots of flying footballs and, yes, some flying tortillas when the Mountaineers travel out to Lubbock, Texas, to face the 3-2 Texas Tech Red Raiders on Saturday afternoon.
Unlike many of the cities where West Virginia used to play on the East Coast - such as Pittsburgh and Syracuse where the fans came to the game disguised as empty seats, or Miami and Tampa where there were always a million other things going on besides a college football game - the Mountaineers’ game on Saturday against the Red Raiders is the No. 1 thing to do in Lubbock, Texas.
As people from Lubbock like to say, you can sit on your front porch and watch your dog run away for miles and miles and miles.
The West Virginia players who have been out there before are well aware of the passionate football fans they have out in Lubbock.
“I haven’t really had much time to go around in Lubbock but from what I’ve seen it doesn’t look like there is a whole lot to do, but one of the things they have to do and they are very passionate about is football,” said West Virginia linebacker Al-Rasheed Benton, who resides in Newark, New Jersey, about a driver and a three-wood away from New York City. “I wouldn’t say it’s like here, nothing is like here - there is no place like Morgantown, but they have a great atmosphere, the fans are really into it and I know they will be ready to get them pumped up for the game.”
West Virginia quarterback Skyler Howard, who grew up Fort Worth, Texas, got a fun sampling of Tech’s tortilla toss tradition during the 2014 game there, a 37-34 come-from-behind Mountaineer victory.
“I think they like to throw the waffles when it’s a morning game,” Howard said. “It’s just part of their thing like we do our stuff here. It’s a good atmosphere and it’s the type of atmosphere you want to play in.”
Howard admitted he was almost tempted to pick up one of the tortillas thrown at him and have a little afternoon snack.
“You kind of want to pick one up and eat it because I don’t see many tortillas up here (in West Virginia),” he laughed.
Offensive coordinator Joe Wickline, who has been to Lubbock many times through the years while coaching at Oklahoma State, said Lubbock is one of those special places that makes college football so great.
It’s a place where everyone is happy when their team wins and is upset when it loses, much like it is in Morgantown.
“I’ve been in a lot of conferences, the SEC, the Big 12, and different places and (Lubbock) is a special place,” Wicklline said. “I think Stillwater is a special place and I think Morgantown is the best place on earth to have a football game. It’s what makes football great. It’s the people, the interest, the idea that, ‘Hey, this is a great matchup and it’s a lot of fun and we look forward to it.”
So, how did Texas Tech students get the idea to throw tortillas out on the field during games?
According the website EverythingLubbock.com, the tradition first began in 1989 when students took the lids off their soft drinks they purchased at the stadium and tossed them on the field. But once the lids were gone, and because tortillas were much cheaper than buying stadium drinks and were easy to conceal when they entered the stadium, it soon became the item of choice to throw.
During a 1992 game against Texas A&M, a television commentator remarked that there was nothing else in Lubbock, Texas, but football and “a tortilla factory.”
Texas Tech upset the Aggies that day and from that moment on flying tortillas became a part of the Red Raider football experience - the importance of the game being usually measured in the number of tortillas flying onto the field.
As for those flying footballs, West Virginia is going to have to deal with those as well.
Out there, they toss footballs just like they toss those tortillas, going back to the mid-1980s when Billy Joe Tolliver was chucking them.
The football went into the air even more frequently when Mike Leach and Dana Holgorsen arrived on the scene in 2000, and rarely did it ever get airborne by any other means than coming out of the arm of a quarterback on any down, including fourth and long.
“You’ve never heard me tell those stories?” Holgorsen asked a reporter during his Tuesday afternoon news conference. “I’d say, ‘Mike it’s fourth down. What do you want to do? Punting is probably a good idea, it’s fourth and 20.’
“‘Yeah, but …’”
Leach loves to throw it, but not like the guy they have now, Kliff Kingsbury, who has become the George Metesky of college football. Kingsbury will throw it, throw it, and throw it some more, and his Red Raider aerial attack leads the country this week by averaging 544 yards per game.
Tech has scored at least 50 points and generated more than 600 yards of offense in each of its last nine games played at Jones AT&T Stadium.
That’s a lot of points, a lot of yards and a lot of tortillas.
Next up to try and slow down Tech’s aerial circus is a West Virginia defense that has sometimes been good and sometimes been not-so-good this year.
The expectation for Saturday is that the 4-0 Mountaineers are going to have to score at least 50 points to have a chance to win.
“How do I view that?” asked Benton, one of four West Virginia defensive players to intercept a pass so far this season. “Well, first off I’ll start off by saying I don’t expect anybody to put 50 points up on us. As far as the number of points they score and the number of yards they put up, there is no doubt they put up a lot of points and get a lot of yards a game so with the game plan we have, we’ll work on managing that and keeping that to a minimum.”
Benton’s coach, Dana Holgorsen, will sleep a lot better on Saturday night if his offense can cross the goal line more frequently than it has so far this year in victories over Missouri, Youngstown State, BYU and Kansas State.
On Tuesday, Holgorsen gave a very basic answer to how he plans on doing that against Texas Tech this Saturday in order to keep up with the Red Raiders.
“You take the ball and you put it in the kid’s hands and he crosses the goal line, he said. “The guys have to score. We’re moving the ball. We’re averaging a lot of yards but we have to score more. How does that happen? Well, you get guys that get the ball in the end zone and that’s how it happens. I think you understand where I am with that.”
On a more serious note, Holgorsen said it’s very impressive what Texas Tech has done offensively, particularly at home since quarterback Patrick Mahomes has taken over the offense.
“They’re putting up a lot of points, running a lot of plays, and we have to be prepared for that,” he said.
Indeed, West Virginia must be prepared for lots of points, lots of flying footballs and, of course, those tortillas.
The game will be televised nationally on FS1 (Gus Johnson, Joel Klatt and Shannon Spake) while the Mountaineer Sports Network from IMG’s coverage begins at 8:30 a.m. with the Go-Mart Mountaineer Tailgate Show leading into regular game coverage at 11 a.m. with Tony Caridi, Dwight Wallace and Jed Drenning on stations throughout West Virginia and online via leanStream and the mobile app TuneIn.
Kickoff is set for noon.
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