Your Next 4,000 Yard Red Raider Passing King Has His Own Awesome Chinstrap

From 2002 to the present, no starting quarterback under Mike Leach at Texas Tech has passed for under 4,000 yards, and all have thrown at least 30 TDs in a season. Even if you discount Texas Tech's penchant for scheduling the Abilene School for the Recently Headless and Terminally Ill for out-of-conference games and their pass-first offense's natural tendency towards inflated stats, the streak remains impressive, especially if you consider the talent Leach works with as the head coach of North America's most geographically isolated major conference football program.

This streak should continue rolling under new starter Taylor Potts, a four star recruit coming into the position after an excellent spring game and two years of cramming to lean on in replacing Texas Tech's most successful passer to date, Graham Harrell (who went undrafted in this year's NFL draft, but let's not talk about that here for simplicity's sake. Coach Leach gets upset when you mention that.) Taylor Potts is experienced, intelligent, and until a few weeks ago had the most magnificent beard in all of college football.

This was the kind of beard one saw on 18th century Quebecois fur trappers, or on Jeremiah Johnson, or maybe on the faces of the members of Mastodon or somesuch other prog-metal band. This was a beard that said, "I'd rather be strangling a caribou to death with my bare hands," or "my other car is a Kodiak Bear loyal to me and only to me." It was the sort of beard suggesting he attended Texas Tech over Texas because he could not bear the thought of attending a school where a man named McCoy wasn't challenged to a duel on the spot. His beard had its own passport from the nation of Man-zania, and its pages were considered currency in almost every country on the planet.

Sadly, Potts has shaved his beard, a dangerous move on anyone's part since he had such good karma going. If he's any kind of pirate at all, he'll bring back at least the half-beard he sported at one point last year, sans mustache in the Amish style. That way it's less a beard and more of a chinstrap pad for your football helmet, and you can claim it as a utilitarian thing to prevent helmet slippage. It's simply too glorious to keep off your face, Mr. Potts.

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.