Texas Tech football: Matt Wells needs 2020 season played as scheduled

Texas Tech Red Raiders cheerleaders pump up the crowd (Photo by John E. Moore III/Getty Images)

A spring season means Wells has to compete with basketball and football

Perhaps the best thing Texas Tech football has going for it is the fact that during the fall, it’s the only game in town. Though Wells’ program has to share November with Chris Beard and his basketball program, the truth is that football rules the fall and basketball and baseball rule the spring semester.

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But one of the most highly-visible faces in the college football media is suggesting that the 2020 football season could be pushed back to February of 2021. That would be a huge problem for Matt Wells.

ESPN’s lead play-by-play man, Chris Fowler, recently said that informed sources are speculating that the next college football season could begin in February of 2021 and finish in May.

"“It would be bizarre and it would wreak havoc on other sports that time of year,” he said in an Instragram video, “but to avoid the financial disaster of having no football season in the academic year, I think it might be a fallback position. I think testing will come a long way by then. Perhaps a vaccine. It would make more sense for people to gather in large numbers in stadiums in eight months, instead of three or four.”"

That scenario would be a nightmare for Wells. Fans would then have to decide whether to spend their emotional energy in a fledgling football program or the two most successful programs on campus, basketball and baseball.

Though most of the fan base for those two sports lives in Lubbock, whereas over 60% of the football season-ticket holders live two hours outside of Lubbock, (most in the Dallas-Fort Worth area), you will have to wonder if the football fans that travel to Lubbock every fall for football games would be as inclined to do so when basketball and baseball were in the middle of their seasons and taking up more of our interest and passion.

Also, in this scenario, Tech football would be starting Big 12 play right about the time the Tech basketball team would potentially be playing in the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament. Imagine how sparse the crowd at Tech’s first home Big 12 game (currently scheduled for week five against West Virginia) would be if that night, the Red Raiders were playing in the Elite 8 (potentially in Houston, which is one of the second-weekend hosts next year) or the Final Four in Indianapolis on that same day.

Just like a moderately attractive woman who doesn’t want to go clubbing with prettier girls, Matt Wells’ program doesn’t want to have to compete directly with Beard’s and Tadlock’s. If that happens, it will push football even further to the back of our collective consciousness. Of course, we will still watch but the entire time, we will be comparing what happens on the gridiron to what happens on the hardwood and diamond more closely than ever before and that’s a comparison Wells can’t win.