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Texas Tech football: Kickoff times for first two games announced

ByMatthew Conner|
LUBBOCK, TX - OCTOBER 11: General view of the end zone pylon prior to the game between the Texas Tech Red Raiders and the West Virginia Mountaineers on October 11, 2014 at Jones AT&T Stadium in Lubbock, Texas. West Virginia won the game 37-34. (Photo by John Weast/Getty Images)
LUBBOCK, TX - OCTOBER 11: General view of the end zone pylon prior to the game between the Texas Tech Red Raiders and the West Virginia Mountaineers on October 11, 2014 at Jones AT&T Stadium in Lubbock, Texas. West Virginia won the game 37-34. (Photo by John Weast/Getty Images)

Tuesday, the kickoff times for the first two Texas Tech football games were announced.

Another sign that the 2020 Texas Tech football season is upon us is the fact that we now have kickoff times for the first two games of the year.  That’s news that many Red Raider fans had been waiting for since the announcement of the 10-game schedule last month.

The season opener against Houston Baptist will kick off at 7 pm.  Meanwhile, the September 26th home game against Texas is set for a 2:30 kick.

But fans wanting to see the Houston Baptist game will have to pay extra.  That’s because the game will be televised on ESPN+, the streaming service of ESPN.  As for the Texas game, it will be aired nationally on Fox.

Of course, television broadcast information will be all the more important to Texas Tech football fans this year given the fact that the capacity of Jones Stadium will be limited to 25%.  And it will be strange to see the Red Raiders take on the Longhorns in front of such a sparse crowd.

Interestingly, this year will end a run of nine-straight seasons in which the Red Raiders and the Longhorns have met in the month of November.  The last time the two rivals squared off in September was back in 2010, a 24-14 UT win in the Hub City.  That was the second-straight year that this series was played in September.

Meeting in just the season’s second game will be a fascinating subplot to this year’s Big 12 opener because the teams will have had just one game to work out the bugs before league play begins.  Thus, one has to wonder if the starters will play more than normal against Houston Baptist, a game that figures to be a Red Raider blowout.

What will make that game against the Huskies all the more critical is the unusually large number of newcomers that will be seeing their first action as Red Raiders.  On defense, as many as five transfers will be expected to contribute this year and on offense, there will be three.

Additionally, true freshmen such as TE John Holcomb, WRs Loic Fouonji, Ja’Lynn Polk, and J.J. Sparkman could also see the field in significant roles this fall.  Then there are players coming back from injuries such as OL Jack Anderson, WR Seth Collins, QB Alan Bowman, and DE Gilbert Ibeneme, each of whom missed all or most of the 2019 season and who will figure to get plenty of work in the season opener to knock some of the rust off.

Now that we know the details of when those games will be played we can start to plan our first two football weekends of the year.  It’s another indication that the 2020 season is right around the corner and it gives us yet another reason to get excited about the fact that the calendar has finally turned to September.

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