Texas Tech football classics: Red Raiders score emotional win in 2010 Alamo Bowl

NORMAN, OK – SEPTEMBER 28: Head Coach Lincoln Riley of the Oklahoma Sooners. (Photo by Brett Deering/Getty Images)

Tech will forever regret letting Ruffin McNeil and Lincoln Riley get away

We would be remiss if we talked about this game and didn’t give full credit to Ruffin McNeil and his offensive coordinator that night, some guy named Lincoln Riley. How then AD Gerald Myers and the Tech administration let that duo leave for East Carolina after that season is one of the great mysteries in Texas Tech football history.

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One of the main subplots of this game for ESPN was that McNeil was essentially auditioning for his job. They even asked him prior to the game about his desire to be Tech’s successor to Leach. And he was not shy about stating that he would love the job.

He should have gotten it after the way his team played.

How many times have we seen teams head into meaningless bowl games and fail to show up after some type of controversy or deflating setback? In fact, in most bowls, the winning team is the one that wants to be there the most.

That wasn’t a problem for the Red Raiders that night. I once had former Red Raider and NFL DE Devin Lemons tell me that the one coach for whom he’d played that he’d run through a wall for was Ruffin McNeil and that night, it looked like the entire Red Raider team and most of the fans in the stands would have done the same for the long-time college assistant.

Now for the truly painful part of the equation. Had McNeil been given the job that offseason, there’s a great chance that Lincoln Riley would be the head coach of the Red Raiders right now.

After that season, he went with McNeil to East Carolina as the OC, and had he stayed in Lubbock in that capacity for McNeil, he would have essentially been a coach in waiting. After a few years of grooming under MeNeil, Riley would have been ready to ascend to the throne, perhaps in 2016 as McNeil was done at East Carolina in 2015.

So instead of the second year of the Matt Wells era, we could be gearing up for the fifth year of the Lincoln Riley era in Lubbock. Which would Tech fans have preferred? Thanks for nothing, Gerald Myers.

Sometimes sports can bring about healing the way few other things in our world can. We saw that in the wake of the 2001 September 11 terrorist attacks and we know just how much sports would mean to our COVID-19-ravaged country right now. Thankfully in 2010, we had a night of healing thanks to Tech’s rousing Alamo Bowl victory. But unfortunately, that bandaid wouldn’t hold for long.