The History of Texas Tech and West Virginia

Oct 13, 2012; Lubbock, TX, USA; Texas Tech Red Raiders fans fill the field after the Red Raiders defeated the West Virginia Mountaineers 49-14 at Jones AT

I’m all for dubbing this game the John Denver bowl and giving the winner a trophy of John Denver. West Virginia plays John Denver’s ” Country Roads” at the end of every game, but John Denver attended Texas Tech.

• A side note ( John Denver had never visited West Virginia when he helped write this song, and neither had his co-writers Bill and Taffy Danoff. The Danoff’s had intended to get Johnny Cash to sing this song because they didn’t think it would fit Denver’s style of music.)

There hasn’t been much history at all between these two schools, but for schools who have only face each other twice in their program history they have a lot of connections between them. I already mentioned John Denver, but Dana Holgorsen was also on the Texas Tech staff under Mike Leach from 2000-2007 and helped coach Texas Tech greats Wes Welker, Michael Crabtree, Danny Amendola, Graham Harrell, and current Texas Tech staffer Trey Haverty and Head Coach Kliff Kingsbury. Holgorsen also has children who still live within a few hours of Lubbock as well.

It has also been mentioned earlier this year that Kliff Kingsbury credits Dana Holgorsen for getting him into coaching, and say’s that if it weren’t for him he would have never gotten an opportunity at the University of Houston with Kevin Sumlin.

Asked about the biggest thing he learned from Dana H.? Kliff said it was ” learning to adapt to the personnel you have around you. Dana was a master at it.”

The all time series between the Mountaineers and Red Raiders it tied up at 1 a piece, with West Virginia taking a 7-6 victory in the 1938 Sun Bowl and Texas Tech throttling the then # 5 Mountaineers 49-14 last season in Lubbock. Texas Tech has never made the trip to West Virginia but gets an 11 am kickoff so hopefully the fans won’t be as riled up as normal.