What Texas Tech football must do to be relevant in the Big 12 race

The Big 12 race could be unpredictable this year so here’s what the Texas Tech football team must do to be a factor this fall.

We all want the Texas Tech football program to reach the lofty heights we have seen the basketball, baseball, and track programs attain.  But before Matt Wells’ team can be a player on the national stage, it must first figure out how to be relevant in its own conference.

That has proven to be a tough task for the majority of the Big 12’s existence.  From 1996-2010 when the conference was split into a North and South division, Tech finished higher than third in its division just five times (1996, 1997, 1999, 2005, and 2008).  And in the eight years of the round-robin format, the Red Raiders have finished no higher than tied for fifth place.

During that time, the Red Raiders have gone just 25-46 in a conference game, a winning percentage of just 35.2%.  And the Red Raiders are coming off three consecutive 3-6 conference seasons.

By comparison, in the previous eight years, Tech went 38-31 including a 7-1 mark in 2008 and a 6-2 mark in 2005.  Both of those seasons ended in trips to the Cotton Bowl.  Meanwhile, the Red Raiders have been to only two bowl games total in the last five years.

For a bit of a humbling perspective, consider how the programs Tech considers itself on the same level with have fared in conference games since 2011.  The newest member to the conference, West Virginia has gone 33-30 since joining the league in 2012.  In other words, the Mountaineers have won eight more Big 12 games than the Red Raiders despite playing one season fewer in the conference.

Meanwhile, Baylor has piled up a 51-32 record against Big 12 teams.  That comes after a span where the Bears finished in one of the bottom two spots in their division every year from 1996-2009.

Another in-state rival, TCU, has also had much better success in the Big 12.  Going 36-27 since 2012, the Frogs have also outpaced the Red Raiders in league play.

Texas Tech fans like to claim that Oklahoma State has copied many of the Red Raiders’ most famous traditions but the Cowboys have not mimicked the tradition of being terrible in Big 12 play that the Red Raiders have become so accustomed to. Since 2012, OSU is an impressive 47-25 in the conference.

Finally, there is Kansas State.  With a Big 12 record of 44-28 in the last eight seasons, the Wildcats had reached eight-straight bowl games until missing out on the postseason last fall.

There’s no denying that the Red Raiders have fallen behind the other middle-class programs that they compete with on an annual basis in the Big 12.  If the Red Raiders are going to return to the level of national relevance that they occupied in the first decade of this century, they will have to figure out how to once again be the non-blue blood program that sets the pace in the conference and threatens the stranglehold that Oklahoma and Texas have had on the Big 12 trophy.

So let’s take a look at where there Red Raiders can make a jump this year.  If Matt Wells’ team can make an appreciable improvement in the following areas, they could be a factor in the conference race for the first time in over a decade.