Texas Tech football fans are channeling their inner Dabo Swinney today. They want to fire back at Tyler from Chandler in the way the Clemson football boss unloaded last year on Tyler from Spartanburg, his critic on the coach's call-in show.

They want to tell the Texas Tech-turned-Louisville quarterback: There's plenty of stuff to do here and Lubbock smells just fine, Ty-ler. (You know how to pronounce that, right?)

Tyler Shough, in a clip that surfaced Thursday, jabbed at the place he just left. Asked by Louisville radio host Paul Rogers to describe Lubbock for people who haven't been here, Shough said, "It smells like cow (manure) and wind. There's not much else out there than drinkin' beer and doin' nothin'. But really, it's just the university.

"So it's kind of nice being out here (in Louisville) where there's a lot of great food spots, there's a lot of really cool people and there's a lot more stuff to do, so me and my wife have really enjoyed it."

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In tennis, they have a term for this: an unforced error. The host didn't appear to be fishing for Lubbock putdowns. Nothing in his tone suggested he was trying to set up Shough to bash the Hub City. Shough just did it on his own.

C'mon, Ty-ler.

Shough's a smart guy. He came to Texas Tech from Oregon already with degrees in criminal justice and political science and, while here, added a master's. Someone once reported Lubbock had more restaurants per capita than any city in America. I don't know if that's accurate, but it still feels that way.

Generations of Texas Tech students, known for their partying ways, will attest: If you can't find something to do here, that's on you.

Though Shough spent much of his time at the Texas Tech facility studying football, he surely got out enough to know he was on a campus of 40,000 in a city of a quarter million with a thriving medical community and robust agriculture.

Shough's three years here didn't turn out the way he or anyone else wanted, with his endless injuries and last year's team, in particular, underachieving. A guy can still put himself into the good graces of a city and a fan base.

It's easier than ever these days. It's the Henry Colombi way.

Like Shough, Colombi transferred to Tech from another university, spent multiple seasons here with some good and some bad, then finished his college career elsewhere. Like Shough, many fans made him a pinata.

Three years gone from the program, though, Colombi appears to be all about the Red Raiders on social media, sharing Texas Tech posts mixed with pro-Tech posts of his own. They might not have liked your game, but Texas Tech and Lubbock people will love you for that and make you part of their posse.

What's interesting about Shough's comments this week is how they contrast with what he said about Lubbock three years ago.

"It's been overwhelming — overwhelmingly good, actually," Shough said in April 2021. "When I got here, I was like, 'Wow, this is really the opposite of Oregon.' Definitely flat, dry, but it kind of reminds me of Arizona, my home place, so I'm loving it.

"The food here is great. The people are super nice. Definitely a lot different — Southern hospitality — than some of the people on the West Coast. So it's been great."

What changed? I suspect Shough's shots were less about Lubbock than a poorly conceived retort to his critics.

Maybe Shough felt put on the spot to play to a new audience. It happens. Remember Tommy Tuberville, on Birmingham sports-talk radio in 2017, comparing Lubbock to Siberia in one sentence and to Iraq two sentences later?

Related: Former Tech coach Tommy Tuberville apologizes for jabbing Lubbock

Two weeks later, Tuberville called into Thetford & Ashby, Saturday morning Lubbock sports radio, and apologized profusely. Called himself an idiot and said he'd broken his own rules of decorum.

“As you always teach your kids and players and even people around you, don’t downgrade anybody,” Tuberville said. “If you downgrade somebody, you deserve to be ridiculed and I deserve it. I deserve it, shouldn’t have done it and I apologize."

Sen. Tommy told the Lubbock hosts that, to the boys in Birmingham, he'd described Lubbock as "true America" and its citizens as "patriotic." Those aren't the words that made headlines, though, or the ones anyone remembered.

"They’ve made a living jabbing folks,” Tuberville said on Thetford and Ashby. “When you get on there, they say, ‘Coach, let’s be funny.’ (But) you can’t make fun of people. You make fun of situations, but when you make fun of where people live and those kind of things, it really doesn’t go over that well."

Not then, not this week. Now it's Tyler's turn to deal with the consequences.

This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Tyler Shough steps in it with critique of Lubbock | Don Williams