If the 2020 Texas Tech football signing class is going to be one that helps this program rebound, these signees are going to have to pan out.
This week, the deadline for Texas Tech football season ticket holders to renew their tickets for another season will come and go. As one of those season-ticket holders, never have I had a tougher time in deciding whether or not to renew my seats.
After all, there just hasn’t been much return on our investment (both financially and emotionally) in recent years. It’s tough to expect fans, many of whom are in the same boat as me and make a multi-hour trip to Lubbock for each game, to continue to give to a program that simply doesn’t give back in the only way that matters, on the scoreboard.
I’ve been a season-ticket holder since 2007. In over half of those years (seven to be exact), this program has failed to produce a winning record at home. What’s more, its been since 2015 that we saw Tech manage to go over .500 at Jones Stadium.
It’s tough to sell a fan base on that type of futility. So now, the program had better hope that it can find a way to convince fans that the future is promising.
That’s why recruiting is even more important to this program these days than it typically has been. For sure, the die-hard fans have always kept up with that aspect of Tech football (and if you spend your free time reading blogs like this one, you fall into that category) but there is a larger contingency of fans that only pays attention to the football program from September through December (or lately, November).
Of course, most of those fans aren’t going to notice if Tech’s recruiting starts to pick up but those of us who live and die with Tech athletics are desperately searching for signs that Matt Wells and his coaching staff can begin rebuilding this program one recruit at a time.
After two recruiting classes, the jury is still out. It’s tough to hold Wells accountable for the 2019 class given that he had been in place as head coach for less than three months when the No. 63 class in the nation and the 8th-best in the Big 12 was officially wrapped up.
The 2020 class will, in fact, be the first that reasonable fans use when evaluating Wells’ ability to recruit. The 19-player class was ranked 49th in the nation and 7th in the Big12, which puts it right in line with the average class that Tech has landed over the last 20 years.
But the real evaluation of a class doesn’t take place until after that group of players has finished its time in a program. After four or five years, a class can look vastly different than it did on signing day. That was certainly the case for the 2015 class, which was rated higher than any class of the Kliff Kingsbury era but which proved to be his ultimate undoing.
In the end, Tech has to develop the players that it signed this year and if it does, this could be the class that we look back upon as the one that started the resurrection of Red Raider football. If that is to happen, the following players will likely need to max out their potential.