2019 Texas Tech football home schedule could be worst ever

1997 saw Tech fall victim to a stunning upset

When your home schedule features no ranked teams, it is probably best to avoid losing to a 32-point underdog.  But that’s what the 1997 Texas Tech football team did.

In week-three, the Red Raiders inexplicably lost a 30-27 game at Jones Stadium to North Texas.  Making matters worse was the fact that the Mean Green went on to go just 4-7 that season.

You could make a case that this game set in motion the end of the Spike Dykes era in Lubbock.  In the second year of the new Big 12, it was a tremendous black eye for the program to lose to lowly North Texas in what was one of the biggest upsets in the history of college football.

As for the rest of the home games, the Red Raiders beat a Louisiana-Lafayette team that would go1-10 by the score of 59-14, a KU team that finished 5-6 by the score of 17-7 and No 20 Texas A&M 16-13.  Meanwhile, a hard to watch 13-2 loss to No. 13 Kansas State and a 32-21 loss to a 3-8 OU team also left fans in Lubbock feeling less than fulfilled.

That year did see Tech face two top-5 teams on the road, Tennessee and Nebraska.  Unfortunately, the Red Raiders lost those games by a combined score of 81-17.

With two ranked teams on the home schedule, 1997’s docket was better than others on this list.  But a ranked KSU team being the best opponent to come to town is not going to excite Red Raider fans at all.

As always, upsetting the Aggies was a thrill but that was not one of R.C. Slocum’s classic “Wrecking Crew” teams.  Rather, the defining game from that season was the confounding loss to UNT which did as much damage to the reputation of Texas Tech football as perhaps any loss in the  last three decades.