What Texas Tech football must do to be relevant in the Big 12 race
Win at home
By now, the realization of just how bad the Red Raiders have been at Jones Stadium in recent years has sunk in for most Red Raider fans. You’ve probably heard that it’s been since the final home game of 2015 since Tech knocked off a Big 12 team in Lubbock other than Kansas.
If the Red Raiders are going to be in the conference race in November, the once dreaded Jones Stadium mystique must return. That’s especially important in 2019 when Tech will have five conference road games and only four home games for the first time since the Big 12 went to a 9-game round-robin schedule.
Playing Baylor in the DFW area each year has kept Tech from having an imbalance of road and home games in league play but as that series returns to campus with a mid-season tilt in Waco, the Red Raiders are on the wrong side of the schedule this fall. What’s more, Tech also has to face both Oklahoma and Texas (both top-10 preseason teams) on the road meaning that defending the Jones will be more critical than ever this fall.
The good news is that the home games Tech will play are all winnable. The only team ranked in the preseason polls set to come to the South Plains this season is No. 21 Iowa State.
On the other hand, for far too long the Red Raiders have struggled against the teams that they will host in league play. For instance, Tech has lost three straight games to Iowa State last beating them in 2015 by the count of 66-31 in Lubbock.
Of course, the last time Tech managed to beat Oklahoma State at Jones Stadium was in 2008 when Graham Harrell and Michael Crabtree led the way in a 56-20 win in a top-10 showdown that came just one week after the famous win over the Longhorns. By beating the Cowboys in Stillwater last year, Tech put an end to a 9-game losing streak in the series and this year, it is time for them to stop a 5-game home slide against Mike Gundy’s team.
The TCU Horned Frogs also come to Lubbock this fall riding a Jones Stadium winning streak. With wins in 2015 and 2017, Gary Patterson’s team has left West Texas victorious on their last two trips.
Likewise, the other purple team in the conference has figured out how to come out of Lubbock with a win in recent years. Since 2011, the Kansas State Wildcats have gone 3-1 in road games against Tech (and 7-1 overall).
Neither Kliff Kingsbury nor Tommy Tuberville ever won more than two Big 12 home games in a season. What’s more, in 2010, 2014, 216 and 2018 Tech won just one conference game while going winless in both 2010 and 2017.
That trend simply can’t continue. If Matt Wells is going to get this football program back to relevance in its own conference, teams have to once again start to dread coming to Lubbock as they have for the majority of the last half-century.