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Russel Skiles wrote the following editorial in the Lamesa Press-Reporter.

My condolences to all you Texas Tech alumni and Lady Raiders fans around here. It’s gonna be tough losing your identity.

As most of you probably know, legislative action appears close to being finalized to create a new university system involving your beloved Texas Tech and my great alma mater, Angelo State University.

It’s a move that State Senator Robert Duncan has creatively labeled a perfect blend, since San Angelo is the nation’s wool capital and Lubbock has grown up in the middle of the cotton patch.

A cotton-wool blend - kinda catchy, isn’t it?

But anyway, these mergers of schools into university “systems” can be sorta touchy.

The problem is that these systems normally want some sort of name recognition that ties all their schools together.

The state’s two giant university systems have become adept at such identity theft. Entire schools have disappeared overnight into the university protection system and reemerged with new names and hyphens.

Thus Texas A&I ceased to exist and Texas A&M-Kingsville took its place. East Texas State University became Texas A&M-Commerce. West Texas State University became West Texas Aggieville - oops, I mean West Texas A&M.

There seem to be University of Texas rubber-stamp schools everywhere: UT-Tyler, UT-Pan American, UT-Austin, UT-El Paso, UT-Permian Basin, UT-Punkin Center, UT-Too Many…

But apparently that’s not gonna be the case with this newly blended system.

I was tickled Raider pink when Texas Tech Chancellor Kent Hance stepped up as soon as this talk started and made it clear there would be no attempt to make Angelo State University change its name.

I personally thought it would look kinda tacky if I had to scratch Angelo State University off my diploma and use a colored crayon to write in TTU-SA.

But I do recognize that if this new system is gonna compete for political pork and truly be a Big Texas system it’ll need that same name recognition as the other systems.

So with Chancellor Hance already declaring ASU’s name home-free, it’s obvious that leaves the campus up north in need of a new moniker.

Yep, a new system, a new name.

ASU-Lubbock!

But you Tech fans don’t need to throw away all your T-shirts just yet. You’ll get to keep the Red Raiders and Lady Raiders mascots, and you can still run around playing guns with your fingers.

Once you get to know a little about Angelo State University - and learn it’s not San Angelo State University - you’ll be proud of your new name association.

After all, ASU long ago won a national football championship, something that TTU has long only dreamed about, with Lamesa’s own Billy Ray Mayfield playing on that undefeated squad.

And the ASU girls athletic program has a national softball banner to match the Lady Raider’s hoops title.

So let me be the first to welcome all you ASU-Lubbock folks into the fold.

Your Raider Red necks may itch a little until you get used to the wool, but it looks like this new blend is gonna work just fine.

Russel Skiles is the publisher of the Lamesa Press-Reporter and a former editor of the ASU Ram Page student newspaper.

© Lamesa Press-Reporter

Its like plastic surgery, only you can do it yourself!

Update: Jay, your beloved Sports Guy has expressed his opinions here. Thought you might want to read it.

Altercation \Al`ter*ca”tion\ (?; 277), n. [F. altercation, fr. L. altercatio.]: Warm contention in words; dispute carried on with heat or anger; controversy; wrangle; wordy contest.

Thank you Stu Jackson, David Stern, and the rest of the NBA front office. You have now taken an active part in attempting to decide a playoff series. You have used your positions of influence to favor heavily one playoff team over another. Congratulations!

For all my readers, do not mistake my displeasure over the ruling handed down yesterday as me disagreeing with the fact that Amare and Boris both came off the bench. Obviously there is video evidence of that. (Although Amare was simply trying to check in.) What is disappointing is how the front office has chosen to ignore when certain players leave the bench, yet make a point out of other situations.

According to Stu Jackson, Tim Duncan and Bruce Bowen were not punished for being on the court, even though according to the definition of altercation, they truly were in violation of the rule.

The Suns countered by saying that Duncan and Bruce Bowen were guilty of a similar leaving-the-bench offense in Game 4’s first half when San Antonio’s Francisco Elson fell on the Suns’ James Jones after a dunk. That play was also reviewed, but Jackson — while conceding that Duncan “should not have been on the playing court” — said that the league determined there was “no cause for the suspension rule” to be applied because the Elson-Jones tangle was not deemed to be an altercation.

If Stern is so sure about his ruling, why has he decided to cancel his scheduled appearance in Phoenix this evening? There should be no concern for backlash if he is confident that the league has ruled correctly and fairly in this issue.

Do I still believe that Phoenix is capable of winning this series? Absolutely. Has the league shown favoritism towards the Spurs? Undeniably. Was this Horry’s biggest shot of his career? Most definitely.

From Steve Nash after the game:

“I’ve been working on the guns a little bit so a couple of combos might have landed some points to the body.”

Classic.

So I figured since it is a Friday, and I am about to leave to get ready for my wife’s pinning ceremony this evening, I’ll leave a post to spur on some comments and discussion amongst my readers.

Amare Stoudemire has called out Bruce Bowen’s defense, accusing him of dirty play. The article can be found here. Now I am a big fan of defense (And yes, I believe that the Suns are capable of playing defense. It may not be as pretty or effective as other teams, but it is still defense.), but I believe that an argument can be made concerning Bowen’s “foot defense”. Some evidence of Bowen’s foot conveniently finding its way underneath opposing players can be found here, here, and here. The video of the kick can be found here. What do you think?

Now I know that there are those who are die-hard Spurs fans, and some who are Suns fans, and fans of every team in the league for that matter. I ask that you try to be as impartial as you can be on this issue. Just watch the videos and voice your thoughts.

Also, when I was reading this article, it reminded me of the referees and the league going after Kobe Bryant for his flailing elbow seen here, resulting in a suspension.

Update: This article just popped up on espn.com. Seems like the league thinks that Bowen’s “questionable” tactics are worth investigation.

So I was reading Jay Scott’s blog and he mentioned that he was in a relationship. Curious, I did a quick google search for “jay scott relationship” and found the following image.

The truth comes out at last!

A couple of videos for my 3 readers:

First up we have a video starring one of the infamous Dawsons! Recently tagged (incorrectly) on Facebook as “the most breathtakingly-beautiful woman on the planet” (We all know that is Laura Jane), Kristen makes her youtube debut about half-way through the video…

Next up we have Jay blatantly breaking the law by jaywalking. Typical Snyder behavior…

I just wanted to let everyone know how proud I am of my beautiful wife! She just aced both of her finals, paving the way for her to graduate on Saturday!

Yeah, she is pretty stinking awesome!