Each morning Longhorns Wire will share the top stories from around the Big 12 Conference. For this edition of the Big 12 morning rush, NFL.com, Sports Illustrated, and 247Sports will provide the headlines.
Former texas tech quarterback Patrick Mahomes agrees to 10-year, $503 million contract extension
According to NFL.com’s Ian Rappaport and Tom Pelissero, former Red Raider Patrick Mahomes has agreed to the biggest contract in sports history with the Chiefs. The Super Bowl MVP is reportedly getting a 10-year, $503 million dollar extension, keeping him in Kansas City until 2031.
ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported the length of the contact first.
Chiefs and QB Patrick Mahomes have reached agreement on a 10-year — 10-year! — contract extension that ties him to Kansas City through the 2031 season, league sources tell ESPN.
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) July 6, 2020
The #Chiefs and QB Patrick Mahomes have agreed to terms on a 10-year extension worth $503 million, sources tell me and @TomPelissero. He gets $477M in guarantee mechanisms and gives the ability for Mahomes to have outs if the guarantee mechanisms aren’t exercised. No trade clause
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) July 6, 2020
Big 12 Looking at Protocols for Games, Postponements, and Cancellations
With the coronavirus still prevalent in our world, there are still questions as to what the college football season will look like. Luckily, the Big 12 is already looking for alternative options, trying their best to make sure there is a season.
(Oklahoma State athletic director Mike) Holder and others will get their chance to weigh in but in the meantime the quintet of Baylor’s Mack Rhoades, Kansas State’s Gene Taylor, Oklahoma’s Joe Castiglione, TCU’s Jeremiah Donati, and West Virginia AD Shane Lyons are looking into the issues of football in a pandemic and how to navigate the potential problems and issues. After the committee comes up with it’s plans, coaches, players, Big 12 Conference officials, and the other five athletic directors in the league will get a chance to weigh in.
The last few weeks have revealed a few options, as a week ago it came out that Bowlsby was looking at moving or creating flexibility in the Big 12 Championship Game of moving it a week back from Saturday, Dec. 5 to Dec. 12, allowing for the potential of a make-up week.
“I think trying to build in flexibility makes sense. That’s not the decision we’ll make this kind of year,” Bowlsby said to The Dallas Morning News. “I hope the season is orderly enough that those kinds of options can be viable. I suspect that we won’t have that luxury.”
Bowlsby has been the leading proponent of a fractured and disjointed football season because of the coronavirus. One of the athletic directors on the committee Shane Lyons of West Virginia took it a week further saying there was no reason the Championship Game couldn’t be pushed back to Saturday, Dec. 19, allowing for two weeks of potential make-up games.
What is Dave Aranda’s ceiling with Baylor?
247Sports discussed recently hired Baylor head coach Dave Aranda and what he can accomplish at Baylor. Replacing Matt Rhule, who left for the NFL, Aranda has big shoes to fill. Will the former LSU defensive coordinator be able to keep the momentum rolling in Waco?
“I think that I like the Dave Aranda hire at Baylor because of the fit,” said Barton Simmons, CBS Sports national writer and 247Sports director of scouting, Friday on the Cover 3 College Football Podcast. “I think Dave Aranda has to be in, sort of, the right place. Baylor is the right place for Dave Aranda. I think he is similar to Matt Rhule in a lot of ways. I think he can, sort of, maintain the momentum that Matt Rhule built. I think it’ll be easy to have buy-in with Dave Aranda, if you had buy-in with Matt Rhule. I think that his approach to the players will be similar. He’s a really good coach.
“My question has always been, with Dave Aranda, as it relates to his head coaching ability, recruiting. And I think … Baylor is the right place to recruit the way he’s going to recruit, which is to evaluate. But I’ll say this — and we’re fresh off the Elite 11 where (Pearland [Texas] Shadow Creek three-star quarterback) Kyron Drones, the Baylor commit (since April 29), was fantastic — I think Baylor, right now, they’re (at) 16 commits. I would say seven of them are guys that I would consider blue chips. And that’s a pretty good number. And some of those are more, sort of, my opinion than industry consensus. But I really like a couple of those guys that I’m a little bit higher than the industry on. So I think this is an encouraging class for Baylor to be this challenger.”
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