FB Notebook: Fat girlfriends could hurt recruiting

To Texas Tech head coach Mike Leach, there were many different factors in his team’s upset loss to Texas A&M on Saturday. Poor play from the quarterback position. A faulty defense. And of course, players listening to their fat, little girlfriends who apparently aren’t objective followers of college football.

“As coaches, we failed to make our coaching points more compelling than their fat little girlfriends,” Leach said Monday about his team. “For one thing, their fat little girlfriends are telling them what they want to hear, which is ‘how great you are’ and ‘how easy this is going to be.’”

Mark Mangino, who worked with Leach while both were assistants at Oklahoma, knows probably more than anybody of Leach’s frequent off the wall opinions. So if Leach wants to talk about his team’s portly, rotund female friends, who should stop him? Leach says what he thinks.

“You can’t accuse him of being a hypocrite,” Mangino said. “I am always more concerned with guys with one-liners and fancy clichés and then they don’t believe in what they are saying.”

Leach has already received criticism over his remarks. Which according to Mangino, just goes to show you the politically correct world that we live in. The head coach that Mangino loves listening to the most is Penn State’s Joe Paterno, who has been making off color remarks since 1966.

“He is the king of college football,” Mangino said. “He can say anything he wants. I sit there and think, ‘geez, if I say something like that, I would have to apologize.’ We need some of that. We are too uptight as a society. We need to loosen up and have some fun and not have everybody take everything so literally.”

Defensive coodrinator Clint Bowen may have had the best take on the whole Texas Tech/fat girlfriend situation.

“I think that is a bad statement for Texas Tech recruiting,” Bowen said. “Nobody wants to go there if they have fat little girlfriends. Here at KU, our player’s girlfriends are smart, attractive KU students.”

Springer or Dudley?

Linebacker Justin Springer started his first game of the season against Oklahoma, replacing Drew Dudley and led team with nine total tackles. Springer, who excels at stopping the run, may see less time on the field against the pass happy Texas Tech offense.

“When he moves he isn’t the fluid, rangy type guy, he fits the run for us and does the things we need him to do,” defensive coordinator Clint Bowen said.

“Texas Tech puts a lot of pressure on your underneath defenders and the way they spreads things out. We will have a few defensive packages and some adjustments to keep them out of bad situations.”

57 yards? No problem

On Tuesday, Mangino talked about his decision to let Jacob Branstetter try a 57-yard field goal against Oklahoma:” “I have always had confidence in him. I am not going to budge in that I think his range, when there is no wind factor, is around 48-49 yards. But, when you have a 15-mile per hour gust of wind behind you, I will give him another 10 yards, which he proved he could do that. I am not going to say that I was on the sidelines saying ‘well here is three easy points, let’s get inside’ but he is fairly accurate if he can get the help.”

“There was stiff wind behind him. I knew that if he hit it accurately, he would have enough on it, because he does have a strong enough leg to get it up in the air and with the wind, I thought he had a chance. Did I think he would get it? I don’t know, but I figured it was worth a shot because we had nothing to lose. We had the clock run down to about two seconds, so we thought ‘hey, lets give him a shot’. And it worked out.”