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03/17/2005: Thought for the Day:
The only Texas Tech alumni I can name other than me played football or shot Ronald Reagan. Lubbock was a wondrous place to eat meat or hear a band, but uglier than a group "before" shot from The Swan. There's a reason all the postcards show Buddy Holly or a bale of cotton. Lubbock is flatter than whichever Olsen twin doesn't eat and has all the greenery of the moon. Even the sky gets ugly this time of year. The winds kick up loose topsoil from the South Plains cotton fields and everything—cars, teeth, blondes—turns the color of dry dirt.
To outsiders, a "dust storm," as townies call these brown-outs, sure seems like a trailer for Armageddon. From what I read last year about the new basketball coach's dust-up with Texas Tech superiors, the place is a little uglier with Bobby Knight in town. Reports had university Chancellor David Smith chatting with Athletic Director Gerald Myers while both happened to be getting lunch at the same salad bar. As they discussed Knight's recent behaviors, who bellies up to the same salad bar but the coach himself. Knight didn't like something he heard over his bed of lettuce, so a public squabble full of all the tired Knightly lo-jinks ensued.
But he's still the coach. Knight can get away with being Knight only in a one sneeze-guard town. This all reminded me of a road trip early into my college years, when, about 280 miles to the east, I passed a tiny central Texas city called Cool (pop. 162, says the 2000 census). To this day I haven't heard a better way to nutshell Lubbock than "about 280 miles from Cool."
--Dave McKenna ["Teams We Hate" rundown of least favorite NCAA tournament participants]
Len on 03.17.05 @ 05:40 AM CST
