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Texas Tech football: The defining victories of the 2010s

By Matthew Conner

NORMAN, OK - OCTOBER 22: Texas Tech players celebrate after the game against the Oklahoma Sooners October 22, 2011 at Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium in Norman, Oklahoma. Texas Tech upset Oklahoma 41-38. (Photo by Brett Deering/Getty Images)
NORMAN, OK - OCTOBER 22: Texas Tech players celebrate after the game against the Oklahoma Sooners October 22, 2011 at Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium in Norman, Oklahoma. Texas Tech upset Oklahoma 41-38. (Photo by Brett Deering/Getty Images) /
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Cameron Wright #89 of the Texas Tech Red Raiders  (Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images)
Cameron Wright #89 of the Texas Tech Red Raiders  (Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images) /

The 2010s were not a pleasant experience for Texas Tech football fans but there were some memorable victories to celebrate.

Let’s just admit the obvious.  When it comes to the Texas Tech football program, we are all glad to see the 2010s go away.

With an overall record as a program of just 60-65, it was a decade worth forgetting.  That included a wretched Big 12 mark of 27-54.

But the decade started off in a decent way despite the Mike Leach vs. the Texas Tech administration civil war that tainted the Tommy Tuberville era.  Of course, Tuberville himself didn’t do anything to put the fan discord to bed being as his three years in Lubbock were marred by constant complaining about the school, the facilities, the community, the weather, and whatever else ruffled his feathers.

From 2010-13, the Red Raiders had three 8-win seasons with only the 2011 5-7 campaign as a scar on the program’s ledger.  Of course, none of those were 8-win regular seasons as in 2010, 2011, and 2013, Tech won a bowl game to get to that win total.

Still, we’d all kill for seven regular-season triumphs and a bowl win these days.  But ironically, at the start of this decade, we didn’t appreciate those seasons.

That’s because we were still drunk on the fumes hanging around from the end of the Leach era, especially the 2008 season.  Little did we know what was in store.

From 2014-19, the Red Raiders had just one winning season, 2015.  Though the program did manage to reach bowl games in 2015 and 2017, they lost both.

It gets even worse when looking at how Tech fared against Big 12 rivals.  Only three times this decade (2012, 2013, 2015) did we see this program get to four conference wins.  Never did it get to five.  That means we have gone since 2009 without a winning Big 12 record.  In the previous decade, that happened only once, the 2000 season which was Leach’s first on the job.

Think about the Big 12 losing streaks that Tech has endured in the last ten years as well.  Currently, the Red Raiders are in the midst of an 8-game skid against OU.

But given how the Sooners have dominated the league recently, that’s not too surprising.  On the other hand, the still-active 4-game losing streak to Iowa State rubs fans the wrong way much more as does the ongoing 4-game slide against Kansas State.

Who could forget the 9-game run of dominance Oklahoma State had over Tech from 2009-17?  We also didn’t enjoy the 5-game string of defeats we endured at the hands of West Virginia from 2014-18.

Yeah…we are ready for a new decade.  That’s got to be what Red Raiders point to as our hope for the future.  After all, the 2020s can’t be as bad…right?

But for all the losing we had to suffer through in the last ten years, there were some brief moments of respite from the misery.  So let’s try to harken back to those isolated moments of joy in what was an otherwise dark forest of woe and angst.  Here are the defining victories of the 2010s.

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