After a decent freshman year with the Texas Tech Red Raiders in which he played in eight games and managed to see a little bit of time on the field, Micah Hudson (a phenomenally talented wide receiver) entered the transfer portal seemingly in search of greener pastures outside of Lubbock.
And then he ended up right back with the Red Raiders shortly after that.
The situation was a little odd and Big 12 Media Days gave Joey McGuire, the head coach of the Red Raiders the perfect chance to clear things up a bit. Granted, we’re not getting all sides of the story, but we are getting a bit more context than we had previously.
And that matters, in my opinion.
Texas Tech head coach Joey McGuire explained how Micah Hudson left and then returned to Lubbock
“You know, whenever the portal opened up, I called his mom and I said ‘I’m going to reach out to Micah’,” McGuire said at Big 12 Media Days. “Because his mom didn’t want him to leave.”
I, for one, appreciate a head coach who seemingly has contact with players and their parents and such. College football teams are large organizations and I imagine it can be very difficult for the guy at the top to stay in touch with everyone. That takes some level of intentionality.
Back to the matter at hand. As McGuire explained, Hudson’s mom noted that the talented wide receiver was on his way to speak to the Red Raiders head coach.
“She said ‘you don’t have to worry about reaching out to Micah, he’s coming to see you face to face’,” Mcguire said. “I said, ‘well, I can give him a call’ and she goes ‘no, whenever he left your office, whenever he got in the portal, he did it as a man and he’s going to come back and talk to you.’”
From there, McGuire noted that the face to face conversation provided him with the opportunity to own what he did wrong and to explain how he would have done things differently if he could.
And I fully respect that as well.
“I think that we’ve had a really good relationship,” McGuire said.
Yeah, from the outside looking in and just having one half of the story, I think that sounds accurate. It’s not often that you hear about a high profile head coach taking responsibility for something in a relationship dynamic when interacting with one of his players. I greatly appreciate that.