A confluence of demand meeting supply, I met “Boat” in junior high. He loved Texas Tech as much as oxygen and Jack in the Box tacos. I was already driving the neighborhood nuts yacking sports.
In the ’70s it was a simpler time, yes. But also a much more difficult time to follow your favorite college basketball team. So a decade before ESPN and two before the internet, we fashioned a sports communication system barely one evolutionary step above two cans and the piece of string.
At my house in the sleepy suburb of Duncanville, I’d call Boat on the rotary-dial wall phone in our kitchen. I then walked it – 30-foot chord twisting and knotting and snaking along the way – to my bedroom and a tiny transistor radio. On some obscure, static-filled AM station, I’d listen to Texas Tech basketball in one ear, and relay my version of play-by-play to him into the phone on my other ear. For the entire game. Over a full Southwest Conference season.
We’ve been friends for 45 years, and there hasn’t been one minute when Boat’s devotion to Tech has wavered.
With the Red Raiders playing for their first national championship tonight against Virginia, his guns are up. And fully loaded.
“One more game,” he says. “Not time to celebrate anything yet. Gotta win more game. Just one game. But you know what? They can win it. This is the time we’ve all been waiting on for so long. One more game.”
You know that long-suffering Cubs fan that made you – out of sympathy – root for them to win their World Series in 2016? Tech is Boat’s Cubs. But his wait isn’t 100-plus years of history. It’s infinity, bordering on eternity. Not in his lifetime – or any other Tech fan’s – have the Red Raiders won a men’s national title. There is no “since …” in his misery, only “never …”
It’s often been more hope than belief and more prayer than faith, but through the likes of coaches Gerald Myers, James Dickey, Bobby Knight, Pat Knight, Billy Gillespie, Tubby Smith and now Chris Beard, Boat is the loyal fanatic that’s died hard more than Bruce Willis. When the Raiders went an unfathomable 38-110 in conference play from 2008-16, he never missed a game on TV or radio (thankfully technology has long since eradicated me from the equation). When Tech was wholly irrelevant, he still bet with his heart in Las Vegas and negotiated a way to have at least one TV in the sports bar switched to the Red Raiders.
He’s thrown his share of tortillas. He affectionally calls them the “Techsters.” His house is a shrine of red-and-black memorabilia. But other than Sheryl Swoopes delivering a women’s title in 1993 and the Michael Crabtree catch that beat No. 1 Texas in 2008, rooting for Tech has been one big Lucy yanking the football away from Charlie Brown on a dusty, desolate West Texas field.
Until now.
Boat is a simple man. He likes consistency. Cherishes routine. He’s 54, and has had only three jobs in his life. Yes, he owns a boat. But his needs are modest: Good friends. Cold Coors Light. Tech success.
Now all those lonely nights rooting for Rick Bullock, Bubba Jennings, Andre Emmett, Darvin Ham, Tony Battie and Jason Sasser weren’t a waste of time. They were merely long-term investments in an oil well about to blow.
One more game.
In a rock fight that should be played with peach baskets and officiated by James Naismith, on Monday night defense will indeed win a championship. Virginia and Tech are so good defensively that the point total of 118 is the lowest for a title game in 20 years.
First one to 40 wins.
Tech will rely on Beard’s hard-nosed philosophy, manifested in the defense of Tariq Owens, the grit of Matt Mooney and the clutch scoring of Big 12 Player of the Year Jarrett Culver.
“Why not us?” Beard says. “We’ve got good players. We’ve got a great university. We play in arguably the best league in the country. We won the Big 12 regular-season title. We’re a good team. Yeah, I think we deserve to be here.”
If you’re not rooting for Tech for Boat’s sake, do it out of state pride.
This is the 81st Final Four, but only the 13th featuring a team from Texas. Tech could become only the second Lone Star State champion, joining the legendary, all-black Texas Western team that shocked Adolph Rupp’s Kentucky Wildcats in the transcendent title game in 1966.
Like the idiots in Lubbock last Saturday night, Boat isn’t overturning cars or flipping out. He’s not about to set a couch on fire. When you’ve waited almost 50 years to drink from the spigot, no sense in getting over-anxious now and yanking off the handle.
He’s got the same quiet confidence about a team that not many believed in. He’s had it before about Tech teams, but ultimately been viewed as naïve or sad. Tech? C’mon! Tech will never win! Because they’re Tech.
But we’re on the verge of patience paying off. Of loyalty being rewarded. Of good things happening to good fans.
And this time, Boat putting his money where his mouth is might finally produce dividends.
In Vegas last month – the day after Tech was upset in the Big XII Tournament quarterfinals by last-place West Virginia – he put a $60 wager on his team to win the national championship. Buy low, sell … high? At 25/1 odds, that ticket is poised to pay him $1500.
“I love this team,” he told me at the time. “This loss will be good for them. Gonna get their mindset right for the tourney.”
Now, as the stat geeks and gambling experts are advising him to “hedge” his wager by placing $500 on Virginia and guaranteeing at least a $500 net profit, he scoffs. Why? Because he’s the same Boat that suffered through me channeling Red Raiders forever play-by-play voice Jack Dale all those years ago.
“Can’t do it. Won’t do it,” he says defiantly. “I’ll never bet against Tech.”
Guns up.
Hopes up higher.
