Tech hosts Oklahoma on Thanksgiving weekend
A day after Black Friday 2020, Tech fans can take a break from the retail version of Armageddon and have one last red and black Saturday. The opponent couldn’t be any more high-profile as the Oklahoma Sooners will come to town to close out the regular season.
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The Thanksgiving weekend has long been a tough one for Texas Tech football to navigate. Because Lubbock is so much farther from the major population centers of the state than other schools, in years past, attendance has been lower on the weekend after Thanksgiving than normal, especially among the student body.
That’s why the Red Raiders have been more than happy to alternate between playing Baylor in Arlington or Dallas and UT in Austin on the final weekend of the regular season for the last decade. But with the return of the Baylor series to campus, Tech was certain to eventually host another home game on the holiday weekend and that will be the case in 2020.
The last time the Red Raiders hosted a Thanksgiving weekend game was in 2010. That day, Houston came to town for the strange non-conference regular-season finale. Though I could not find official attendance numbers for that game, I do remember being on hand on that cold evening and I can tell you that the crowd was not only sparse but it was lacking its usual vigor.
The last Big 12 team to spend their Thanksgiving weekend in Lubbock was Baylor in 2008. That day, an official crowd of over 53,000 saw Michael Crabtree and Graham Harrell’s team sleep-walk its way to a 35-28 win in a game Crabtree left with a high ankle sprain. Of course, the team was still reeling after being beaten by OU in Norman 65-21 the previous week to end any hopes of a national title run.
Though next year’s meeting with the Sooners likely won’t carry that type of significance for the Red Raiders, it likely will be rather important on the national scene, especially if OU is in the mix for a spot in the playoff. Maybe a Red Raider home upset of the Big 12 bullies will set the stage for a great 2021 run the way the 2007 upset of OU did for the Red Raiders the following year.
That night, on the Saturday prior to Thanksgiving, Harrell and Crabtree stunned No. 4 OU 34-27 turning the college football world upside down. Hopefully, the same type of excitement is in store next season and hopefully, Tech fans can recover from their tryptophan hangover to make their way to the Jones for this huge game.