They give me a sick feeling and make me want to give up on football completely until about the following Thursday. I think it will be a true breakthrough when the Red Raiders can go just one year without one. I wouldn’t be surprised if we couldn’t go all the way back to around 1977 without at least one.

I haven’t checked, but am almost sure some of the great storied programs (including some on this list) have had very few such losses.

The chart below shows the games we’ve lost by seventeen points or more (I thought of going with twenty or more). This is my arbitrary definition of a blowout. One or two other games almost made the list.

Anyway, a few observations:

1. We have had at least one blowout loss (17 or more) each year
2. We have more on the road.
3. It seems to always be the same teams that rip us up.
4. We don’t have as many as we used to. This may be a hopeful sign.

year      |       score  |    difference   |       team lost to    |       place  

2001         42 – 7           35                       UT                          Austin
                  30 – 13         17                       Okla.                      Lubbock

2002         45 – 21         24                       Ohio State            Columbus
                  37 – 13         24                       Colorado              Boulder
                  60 – 15         45                       Okla.                      Norman

2003         49 – 21         28                       NC State              Raleigh
                  62 – 31         31                       Missouri               Columbia
                  56 – 25         31                       Okla.                      Lubbock

2004         51 – 21         30                       UT                          Lubbock

2005         52 – 17         35                       UT                          Austin

2006         38 – 21         17                       Missouri                Lubbock
                  30 – 6            24                      Colorado               Boulder

2007         41 – 10         31                       Missouri               Columbia

2008         21 – 65         44                       Okla.                      Norman

Do you think this could be the year we can avoid getting clobbered by someone? What will we have to do to accomplish this?

The Fox Lubbock guys have Jamar Wall featured as the 16th most important Red Raider coming into this season. They list his injury and lack of practice time during the spring training as the main reason for him not being rated any higher. As mentioned on the video, Wall has been extremely productive these last two seasons.

One thing I think we might see at some point from Wall is more return yards. There is probably no better athlete on the whole team than Wall, so at some point, he should be able to take one or two to the house.

 HE COULD GO... ALL... THE... WAY!

Marlon Winn comes in at number 15. They mention that Winn has quick feet, has lost weight in order to play better and gotten more serious in the weight room. Noted also is that Winn is the only 2008 starter returning from the front five O Linemen.

Sidenote: It was announced that Shannon Woods was drafted by the NY team of the UFL.

Here's a rundown of our scoring compared to our opponent's scoring. I will be posting a chart hopefully Also, a graph so we can see what kind of relationship there is to how much we score in comparison to opponent's scoring.

At first I was going to show how much time of posession matters. After researching it, it doesn't really seem to make any difference. Guess Leach knows what he's talking about.

                  Scoring      Scoring          
                     Tech           Opp.           
2001           35.10          23.80
2002           38.40          31.40
2003           42.80          35.70
2004           36.20          26.20
2005           39.40          18.80
2006           32.50          25.10
2007           41.80          25.80
2008           44.60          26.20

Something you can see by the chart (except for the year 2005 and to a degree last year) Whenever our scoring goes up so does our opponents'. When ours goes down, so does our opponents'. My theory for the reason behind this is to show one of the reasons for a lack of defense is the presence of a quick-strike, high scoring offense. This kind of offense is not friendly toward commendable numbers for the defense.