Texas Tech Football Schedules Home-And-Home with Oregon State
Thursday, the Texas Tech football team announced it has agreed to a home-and-home series with Oregon State.
As college athletics has dealt with conference realignment in the past decade, many wondered if Texas Tech would wind up in a conference with the existing Pac 12 schools should the Big 12 crumble. Though those rumors have subsided in recent years, the Texas Tech football program is doing its best to give fans a taste of what life in the Pac 12 (or Pac 16) would be like.
Thursday, Texas Tech announced a home-and-home series with the Pac 12’s Oregon State, to be played in 2025-26. This marks the fourth Pac 12 team to find its way onto the Texas Tech football schedule during the Kirby Hocutt tenure.
In 2016-17, Texas Tech split a series with Arizona State in which the Sun Devils won at home in ’16 and Tech returned the favor last season. In 2019, Tech will return to the Grand Canyon State to face Arizona before hosting the Wildcats in 2020.
https://twitter.com/TexasTechFB/status/997162053986082823
Three seasons later, in 2023, the Oregon Ducks will travel to the South Plains before Tech makes the return trip to the land of Nike in 2024. Tech will venture outside the Pac 12 for two non-conference series as well. Hocutt has inked a home-and-home with ACC foe N.C. State in 2022 and 2027 and a series with SEC member Mississippi State in 2028-29.
As for the newly announced series with the Beavers, there is very little history between the two schools. Texas Tech has faced Oregon State only once, a 15-14 home win in 1959.
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The two programs have disappointed over the past few seasons as Tech has had a losing record in consecutive seasons while Oregon State went just 1-11 last year and has not had a winning season since 2013.
A historical comparison of the two programs reads well for the Red Raiders. Texas Tech’s all-time winning percentage of .557 is 58th in the nation while Oregon State’s .475 winning percentage ranks 107 of 130 programs.
The Red Raiders have played in 38 bowl games (20th nationally) while Oregon State has appeared in only 15 (68th nationally). And though the Beavers played their first game in 1892, 33 years before Texas Tech football was born, the Red Raiders have won 37 more games overall (562-535).
Of course, none of those stats will have a bearing on the teams’ next scheduled meetings and there is no telling what state either program will find itself in seven years from now. By then, some predict that this game could even be a conference matchup.
The current Big 12 media rights deal is set to expire following the 2024-25 school year. Prior to the signing of that deal in 2012, many speculated that the Red Raiders could be one of four teams to join the existing Pac 12 to form a new 16-team conference given the shaky state of the Big-12.
When the media rights deal nears expiration, the Big 12 will have to make some tough choices and could once again face possible dissolution if other conferences look to poach away top schools like Oklahoma and Texas.
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However, there appears to be discord growing within the Pac-12 making some question if the conference will be viable financially moving forward. There is no doubt that the two most vulnerable Power-5 conferences are the Big-12 and Pac-12 and until one of the conferences makes a stabilizing move, speculation about the two leagues merging in some way will continue to grow. Should that happen, the second and third meetings between Texas Tech and Oregon State could be far more significant than originally planned.