Will's Weekly Wonderings

Texas Tech baseball got off to a great start over the weekend, hammering Texas 13-6 by coming back from being down 5-0 in the third inning on Friday night. It was what the Red Raiders had done all year long. The bats got hot, pummeling the Horns' pitching, Tech's own pitching staff tightened up the ship, and the defense made a few plays.

So, when I walked out of the gates at Rip Griffin Park on Friday night to go home, I thought it was going to be business as usual with Tim Tadlock's red-hot Red Raiders stomping the Horns like they'd done to the rest of the Big 12 so far in the season.

Well, I was wrong. Up 4-3 and rolling along in the 7th inning on Saturday afternoon, after scooping up a ground ball, Eric Gutierrez took a false step to the bag for the third out of the inning, and Texas stayed alive. That missed play, one that Gute makes nine times out of ten, ended up likely costing the Red Raiders the series.

Texas scored three runs to finish the 7th, took game two 7-4, and then carried that momentum over to Sunday where they steamrolled Tech 17-1. It was a rough way to finish off a series that the Red Raiders were totally expected to win.

That missed play by Gute is what likely cost this team a win, and that's when you realize that the game of baseball is sometimes an odd, finicky one that sometimes doesn't go the way it should go.

If you ask Tim Tadlock or anyone else in the know, they'll tell you that this Red Raider baseball team is flat out better than this year's Longhorn squad. Heck, Tadlock said just that exactly on Sunday after the 17-1 loss.

And that's why you can't take what happens in one single weekend series to heart. It's unlike any sport in that if a team gets rolling over the course of a few innings, they can beat just about anyone they play, and if an elite team goes cold, they can lose to just about anyone.

That's what I think happened on Saturday and Sunday afternoon for Tech baseball. I still believe this is one of the best teams in the country, and I still firmly think they can play with anybody they line up against.

Now, it's up to them to flip the momentum back. If they do that, they'll be just fine. They better do it, too, because there's a little series in Fort Worth this weekend that's going to mean a thing or two.

Here's a trailer for the new show Vice Principals coming to HBO this summer. Sign me up.

Due to costs to students, Eastern Michigan's faculty is suggesting that the school should drop football altogether.

Sam Bradford is apparently not happy with the Eagles and wants a trade

The FCC is apparently ready to wage war on data caps in this interesting read from The Verge

This week in Florida Man: Florida Man rescued from his bubble in the sea again

I cannot claim to be a child of the 80s. I missed that designation by a year being born in 1990. However, seeing as my parents grew up in the early 80s, I was raised on a big number of classic 80s movies. So, today I share my top five favorite movies from the decade that was 30 years ago. Fair warning that this bad boy is going to

5. The Terminator - The first movie that put Arnold on the map. It's also really and truly a horror film when you get down to the brass tacks. There's a constant sense of dread throughout, as the Terminator is this unstoppable force that slowly just keeps coming, despite any effort to stop him. It built such a great world, and it's a shame the last few films in the series have been such dumpster fires.

4. Blade Runner - I didn't see this movie until I was 22 or 23, and honestly, I don't think it would've resonated with me had I seen it when I was younger. It's a true blue sci-fi movie that tackles the idea of being human head on, and it keeps you guessing.

3. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade - I may get some flack for picking this over Raiders of the Lost Ark, but I'll take it. This movie was everything great about the first film, but it also added an incredible dynamic and chemistry between Sean Connery and Harrison Ford. I love, love, love this movie.

2. Ferris Bueller's Day Off - I think every kid from the 80s and 90s, at one point or another, wished they were Ferris Bueller. He was a trickster, he had charm, but he was also a good guy at heart just trying to live life to its fullest by playing hooky with his best friends. As I've grown older, I've also learned to really enjoy the movie more so for the real topics it tackles, including Cameron and his relationship with his father.

1. The Empire Strikes Back - Not only is it the best Star Wars film ever made, it also happens to be my favorite film ever made. It took what was a great and established universe from the original and really delved much deeper into the characters, their motives, and took a much darker approach that even both children and adults could relate to and understand. This movie is a cinematic masterpiece, and it was one of the first films that made me truly fall in love with movies.

Today, Alex Dunlap of OrangeBloods.com, the Texas affiliate for Rivals, released a Waco PD Incident Report he received detailing that Shawn Oakman got physical with his then girlfriend back in 2013, years before Oakman's most recent sexual assault charges were filed.

Anyone that's been paying attention to what's been going on with the sexual assault scandal at Baylor has seen just how horrific this entire saga has become, and it's all this evidence piles up into a damning statement on the culture of Baylor football under Art Briles and the university's administration.

That cannot be argued. There is real, tangible evidence that there is a legitimate, dreadful problem in Waco that those in green and gold seem just fine with accepting. No, not accepting. Encouraging. The lack of effort to combat the problem, and the seeming desire to do just the opposite by covering it up, is apparent.

You can only shove so much dirty laundry under the bed before a few garments peek out, despite your best efforts. That's where Baylor University finds themselves at right now.

However, there's something else in this whole equation that is really, really bugging me.

It's the thought process and culture created by the fans. I've seen numerous Bear fans chalk all this up to agendas of media members at other schools, people wanting to bring down the success of the football program, and exaggerations blown out of proportion because "it happens everywhere else, too."

That is what eats at me. That bothers me, and not just a little bit. It bothers me because there's clear, bright as day evidence that there's a problem, but these fans want to ignore that for the sake of the program. For the sake of winning games.

And that's what it boils down to: Fans want to hide real, legitimate problems of human cruelty in order to win games.

But, don't let me limit this to being a Baylor problem. I think this is a sports problem, one that transcends colors, fight songs, and traditions unique to different schools and fanbases. It's a universal problem that we - including myself - as sports fans sometimes are ready to be willing parties in heinous acts just for the sake of winning a game.

Because no matter how much I may love sports, how much I may love competition, at the end of the day, every sport is just a game. At the end of the day, it means nothing in the grand scheme of humanity and our place in the universe.

That's why this bothers me.