The Saturday Column With No Name – QB Castellanos Official At Tech, What Will His Role Be, The NCAA Should Give Up/Move On And TCU Embarrassed The Big 12 All Week/Flops In Ireland Against Bill Belichick And UNC

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Welcome back to another edition of the Saturday Column With No Name. This will be the last one for a few weeks for all the right reasons! With Texas Tech Football back, we’ll only have the Saturday column during open dates for a while. We might sneak one in here and there with some night games, but for the most part, this will be it for a while. So, let’s get on with some Saturday thinking from Raiderland.

1. Texas Tech made it official today, announcing that former Florida State QB Thomas Castellanos will be on the roster and battle for the back-up spot. We love that Texas Tech’s Joey McGuire makes it clear that Will Hammond is the QB1. As it should be. It will be very interesting to see how they use Castellanos. He’s a great runner. Don’t be shocked if Texas Tech uses him in the Slot or in a Wild Cat formation here or there. Not to be mean, but he’s expendable. If you need some runs out of the QB spot in different situations, or at least the threat of that to keep the defense honest on a down and distance situation, Castellanos could come in handy. Early on though, it will still be Jack Francis. It will take at least four or five games for Casetllanos to ramp-up on the offense to really be the QB of record if pressed into duty. Again, you had a leg-up on the competition for Castellanos with the Sorsby Money laying around after his pay-off earlier this Summer. If it feels like we’re covering an NFL team making end of camp moves… it’s exactly the same thing. Welcome to college football 2026.
2. At this point, the NCAA and all the conferences just need to punt on the whole 5-For-5 battles. Let them all come back. It’s a one year issue. It resolves itself. Just get it over with. The NCAA keeps trying to find hills to die on when it comes to lawsuits and trying to enforce “rules”. The Lords of the Realm just aren’t very smart. And worse, they’re arrogant. All of this could have been avoided. It’s almost like some of the schools want this chaos in a desperate attempt to get the Protect College Sports Act passed. It ain’t gonna pass. At least not as currently constructed. The NCAA can still save college sports with common sense rules. They’re just a day late and a dollar short these days when it comes to common sense. Remember, these University presidents and leaders are in charge of educating or kids…. If they can’t get this right, what makes you think they can get a degree plan right for graduates looking to have productive lives…. Ouch.
3. TCU embarrassed the Big 12 all week long, and then went and did it today in Ireland. UNC has obviously improved their defense under Bill Belichick, getting the 15-10 win over the Frogs today. TCU’s offense has taken a major step back with a new Ivy League QB and and new UCONN coordinator. After the first scripted drive of the game (worked on for weeks) , TCU was uninspired and undisciplined. 11 penalties for 100 yards for TCU today. Of course after the news out of Ft. Worth surrounding the program, this shouldn’t come as a shock. Maybe, just maybe, Sonny Dykes and the TCU athletic department should have focus more on football the last week and less on the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. . .

Hyatt

Thanks for dropping by for some quick Saturday thoughts. We’ll be ready to go in the morning with our 5 Things We Know On A Sunday column! Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter/X. We’re gunning for 1K subscribers on our Raiderland YouTube channel before this time next week. If you can, sign-up and drive Raiderland to new heights! Don’t cost nuthin’ as all of our platforms are always FREE thanks to our great sponsors! See y’all Sunday