(AP) Texas Tech football coach Tommy Tuberville can breathe a sigh of relief. The growing clamor for his firing after Texas Tech’s dismal 5-7 season, may very well dissipate a bit after the recent revelation of a fundamental error made by a trainer on the Tech staff. The trainer in charge of taping the Tech defensive players in preparation for each game apparently wrapped the athletic tape around the arms of the Texas Tech defenders, pinning them to the torso, rather than tucking the tape underneath the arms. Tech insiders suggest that this might explain why Tech defensive players would constantly run up to the opposing offensive players but be unable to actual bring them down. "We watched hours and hours of game tape, and we never could figure out why our guys kept harmlessly bouncing off opposing players," said Tuberville, "This is certainly a more creditable explanation than bad coaching." The trainer in question has been reassigned to helping Raider Red get his pants on, and Tuberville is now more optimistic than ever about next season. "Now that we’ve figured out how to use our arms," the Tech coach said, "we can devote the entire off-season to figuring our how to use our heads."

This was a lot of work. My source was the 2000 Texas Tech Alumni Directory. A questionnaire was sent to all known addresses in 1999 & those that were returned were included in the directory. 147,000 names are in that directory.

My source for total students having attended Tech each decade is various La Ventana's I've collected. We'll start with a total student SWAG. I'll take the average annual enrollment per decade & multiply it by 2.5 to get a total for that decade (each class stays 4 years making 2 1/2 units [4+4+2] for each 10 years).

1950's 10,000 students x 2.5 = 25,00

1960's 12k in 1964/18,000 in 1968 = 38,000

1970's 26,000 students x 2.5 = 65,000

1980's 28,000 students x 2.5 = 70,000

1990's 30,000 students x 2.5 = 75,000

2000's 33,000 students x 2.5 = 82,500

Rough total of living persons who went to Texas Tech 

355,500

Total in 2000 Alumni directory 147,000

355,500 / 147,000 = 2.42 We will multiply this by all known numbers from the 2000 directory to get a total number.

6 County Dallas/Ft Worth Metropolitan Area - Tech alums in the 2000 directory by county

Dallas - 13,777

13,777 x 2.42 = 33,340

Tarrant - 6,130

6130 x 2.42 = 14,834

Collin - 3788

3788 x 2.42 - 9,167

Denton - 1975

1975 x 2.42 = 4,780

Ellis, Rockwall - 705

705 x 2.42 = 1,706

Those were the counts in 2000. Here are the county growth rates between 2000 and 2010 census:

http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/02/17/2858363/search-more-than-38-percent-of.html

Dallas 6.73%

Tarrant 25.1%

Collin 59.12%

Denton 53.04%

Ellis 31.04%

So assuming Red Raiders moved from elswhere into the Metroplex at the same rate as the rest of the population the 2000 counts multiplied by the growth rates will look like this:

Dallas County 33,340 x 1.0673 = 35,584

Tarrant County 14,834 x 1.251 = 18,557

Collin County 9,167 x 1.5912 = 14,587

Denton County 4780 x 1.5304 = 7,315

Ellis/Rockwall Counties 1706 x 1.3104 = 2,236

Scientific Wild Ass Guess (SWAG) as to the number of living persons in the Dallas/Ft Worth Metro area who enrolled at Texas Tech:

78,279

Add wives, husbands, children & friends who Tech alums have infected with Raider mania & 100,000 Tech fans is probably about right. 

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With this many choices, it will only take a handful of votes to win. In order to meet the 75 word text requirement, I'm pasting the text from the original post: "Chris Level has asked the member or RedRaidersports.com (the rivals pay site) to come up with a name for the walk Tubs wants to start from Dan Law Field to Jones AT&T Stadium. The walk would be similiar to his Tiger Walk at Auburn and many other walks seen in the SEC. He wants to do this so that the fans can have an opportunity to high five or touch their favorite players before each game and thus feel closer to the program."

Texas Tech had the 4th best offense in the nation last year and last year was an off year for the offense due to spotty QB play. As tempting as it might be for a new coach to think he can improve things, it's a much harder climb from 4 to 1 and a very easy drop to the 20's or 30's if any changes do more harm than good. The only change I would really like to see is never keeping the offense on the field on 4th and less than 5 in the hopes of drawing the defense offsides. It never works & it's a waste of timeouts. If you're going to line up on 4th down, snap the ball. Unless you're in the Cotton Bowl down by only 7 late in the 3rd quarter and it's 4th and 6 & your QB somhow thinks it's a great place for a QB sneak. In that case, please punt & live to fight another day.

This is one of the more egregious examples of an institution destroying their own football program due to short sighted and selfish interests (the people in charge lacked the skills to nurture and manage a talented employee and wanted somebody more pliable, more like them). Darwin Awards are for individuals whose lack of intelligence leads them to actions that bring about their own destruction, thus removing them from the gene pool. Can an institution win one?

I'm watching Nebraska vs. Arizona now. How many of you are thinking about the night Leach & Tech spanked the number 4 team in the country California in the Holiday Bowl? That was the 1st time in my memory that Texas Tech football was taken seriously on the national stage. And it's been  mostly uphill from there. But that's it Red Raiders. That's as good as it gets:

http://sportsnation.espn.go.com/fans/mbrown603/images/1268462

It's all downhill from here kids.