I’M SURE THINGS are better now — salaries and facilities certainly are — but the recent passing of Jess Stiles ended the last mark of a comfort zone that once defined Texas Tech athletics.
It was my good fortune to arrive on the local sports scene the very year the Raiders would be playing their first season in the storied old Southwest Conference. Tech sports had just moved into “town,” so to speak; but, like the country boys of lore, it was slow to adapt to “city ways.”