Texas Tech football: The path to a bowl game in 2019
Getting back to a bowl game would signify progress for the Texas Tech football team in 2019. Here’s how Matt Wells’ squad can reach the postseason.
Getting to a bowl game used to be extremely difficult, unlike today when over half of the teams in the nation are invited to a postseason game. Though the distinction of being a bowl team does not carry the weight that it used to, that is still a worthy goal for the 2019 Texas Tech football team.
In all, the Red Raiders have been to 38 bowl games in program history. That ranks 20th nationally and is more than programs such as Norte Dame, TCU, UCLA, Stanford, Wisconsin, and Oklahoma State can claim. In fact, the only Big 12 teams with more bowl appearances are Texas (55) and Oklahoma (52).
After first fielding a program in 1925, it took Texas Tech 13 seasons to finally reach its first bowl game in 1937. That year, an 8-3 Tech team that had captured the Border Conference championship fell to West Virginia in the Sun Bowl by the rousing score of 7-6 in front of 12,000 fans.
The Sun Bowl remains the most common postseason destination in Red Raider history. Tech has played in that game seven times (1937, 1941, 1947, 1951, 1955, 1964, 1972) but the only win the program has brought home from El Paso was in 1955 when Tech defeated the Pacific Tigers 25-14.
The most prestigious bowl the Red Raiders have been to is the legendary Cotton Bowl. Unfortunately, Tech is 0-4 in Texas’ most prestigious postseason college football event. In 1938, Tech lost to St. Mary’s 20-13 preventing the team from an undefeated season.
It would be 56 seasons until Tech returned to Dallas for the Cotton Bowl. Unfortunately, the celebration of the return to Fair Park was short-lived as the Red Raiders were obliterated by USC 55-14 on New Years Day 1995.
Mike Leach twice took Tech back to the Cotton Bowl. On New Years Day 2006, his Red Raiders lost to Alabama 13-10 on the ugliest last-second field goal in the history of the sport. And in 2009, Tech lost the final Cotton Bowl ever played at the Cotton Bowl Stadium 47-34 to Ole Miss.
Speaking of Leach, he is the program’s leader in bowl appearances by a head coach with 10 (though he did not coach in the 2009 Alamo Bowl after being fired). Taking the Red Raiders to the postseason in every year of his time in Lubbock, his teams went 6-4 making him one of only three Red Raider head coaches to have a winning record in bowl games.
Spike Dykes is second on that list with six bowl games. However, his teams often struggled in the postseason going 2-4.
Jim Carlen’s four bowl trips are next in line. But he too had a losing record in the postseason going 1-2-1 with his only win being the 1976 Gator Bowl.
Dewitt Weaver (1952, 1954, 1956), Dell Morgan (1942, 1948, 1949), and Kliff Kingsbury (2013, 2015, 2017) all made it to three bowl games. Of those three, Weaver is the only one with a winning record going 2-1 while Kinsbury went 1-2 and Morgan was winless in the postseason.
Now, Matt Wells will try to add his name to the list of coaches to take Tech to a bowl. If he does, it will be his sixth bowl game after he took Utah State to five from 2013-18.
Of course, there’s a wide variance in the perception of bowl games these days. Fans may not be as excited to see the Red Raiders participate in another lower-tier bowl as was the case in 2017 when the Red Raiders were invited to the Birmingham Bowl to play South Florida.
Neither the destination nor the opponent on that rainy December day was able to elicit much interest among the fan base as the game was played in a stadium that was 75% empty. The same could be said of the 2011 Ticket City Bowl against Northwestern. Played in the Cotton Bowl Stadium, the first edition of this lowly bowl game officially drew just over 40,000 people to the massive Cotton Bowl but having been there on that frigid New Years Day, I can attest that the attendance felt much closer to 25,000.
Of course, at times Tech’s bowl game has been a hot ticket despite being a mid-tier game. For instance, the 2015 Texas Bowl was highly-anticipated because the opponent was LSU. And in 2009’s Alamo Bowl and 2012’s Texas Bowl, Tech fans showed up to support a program that had in each season been stunned by unexpected coaching turnover.
But regardless of who the opponent may be or what bowl the Red Raiders may be invited to, seeing the program return to the postseason in the first year of the Matt Wells era would be cause for mild celebration and significant optimism. Getting Red Raider football back on the right track by returning to the postseason would help the new head coach fully win over the vast majority of a constituency that is still divided on whether or not he is the right man for the job.
Interestingly, only three men in history have led Tech to a bowl game in their first year as head coach (Kingsbury, Tuberville, Leach). But if Wells can become the fourth-consecutive to do so, we will all feel much better about the direction of the program. So let’s take a look at what Tech must do to play a 13th game this fall.