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Texas Tech football: Team records that may never be broken

By Matthew Conner

LUBBOCK, TEXAS - OCTOBER 19: The Will Rogers and Soapsuds statue is pictured before the college football game between the Texas Tech Red Raiders and the Iowa State Cyclones on October 19, 2019 at Jones AT&T Stadium in Lubbock, Texas. (Photo by John E. Moore III/Getty Images)
LUBBOCK, TEXAS - OCTOBER 19: The Will Rogers and Soapsuds statue is pictured before the college football game between the Texas Tech Red Raiders and the Iowa State Cyclones on October 19, 2019 at Jones AT&T Stadium in Lubbock, Texas. (Photo by John E. Moore III/Getty Images) /
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General view of the Texas Tech Red Raiders scoreboard  (Photo by John Weast/Getty Images)
General view of the Texas Tech Red Raiders scoreboard  (Photo by John Weast/Getty Images) /

120 points in a game

The one Texas Tech program record that we can be most confident will never be broken is the single-game record for points that Tech established in 1925, its first year of varsity football when the then Matadors scored 120 points against Wayland.

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That’s a mind-boggling number.  It’s 40 points more than the modern-era scoring record (since 1950) which is 80 points.  Tech put up that number in 2005 against Sam Houston State.

To get to 120 points in a game, a team would have to average 30 points per quarter.  Last season, the Red Raiders averaged 30.5 points per game and failed to score 30 points five times.

But the reason this record won’t ever be broken is that it is now considered bad form to run up the score on an opponent and if any team tried to get to 100 points, that head coach would be vilified in the press and on social media.  In fact, should a team start to approach triple digits, its head coach would probably tell his players not to score and would resort to such tactics as trying ridiculously long field goals on first down to try to keep from completely embarrassing the opponent.

The last time an FBS team got to 100 points was in 1968 when Houston beat Tulsa 100-6.  Amazingly, Houston scored 49 points in the fourth quarter that day despite pulling their starters.  Much of that was due to the fact that the Tulsa roster had been seriously depleted by a flu outbreak that swept through the locker room.  One other interesting note is that a backup lineman on that Tulsa team was Phillip McGraw…who you probably know today as Dr. Phil.  You can watch him discuss his memories of that game with Davide Letterman here.

Next. Tech has had success after four-win seasons. dark

In the end, Tech isn’t going to require a third digit on the scoreboard at Jones Stadium ever again given the societal pressures about not humiliating your opponents. In fact, if he had wanted to, TCU’s Gary Patterson could have hung a 100 on Tech when the Horned Frogs beat the Red Raiders 82-27 in 2014 but he called off the dogs in the second half.  So while all the records we’ve discussed today seem certain to stand for quite a while, if not forever, the record of 120 points in a game is one that will never be broken because if it is ever even remotely approached, the team will actively try not to break it, unlike the rest of the milestones in the record book.

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