Opinion: I won’t renew my Texas Tech football season tickets if Matt Wells is retained

If the Texas Tech football program retains Matt Wells as head coach, I will not renew my season tickets in 2021 and neither should anyone who wants to see a change happen.

Helplessness is one of the worst feelings a person can have.  Fortunately for Texas Tech football fans wanting to see an alteration in the leadership of the program, there’s something we can do to try to enact some change.  We can stop financially supporting Red Raider football and send a clear message to AD Kirby Hocutt and the powers that be that we are not willing to put up with the slop they have tried to feed us for the last decade.

But do we have the resolve as a fan base to deny ourselves that which we’ve loved for so long?  It’s a question I’m forced to wrestle with myself and the answer I’ve come to is that for my own sanity and for the sake of proving a point, I will give up something I love, in-person Texas Tech football.

To provide some context, I enrolled at Tech as a freshman in 1999 and since then, there have been only three seasons (2004-06) in which I didn’t have season tickets to Texas Tech football (not counting this crazy COVID-19 ruined 2020 season of course).  What’s more, since I graduated from Tech, I’ve lived multiple hours from Lubbock (as many as seven hours one way), and yet I’ve maintained my season tickets and I’ve driven to about 90% of the home games.

Over the course of that time, I’ve endured the Tuberville civil war years, the years of Kingsbury and his who needs a defense? philosophy, and the first year of the Matt Wells letdown.

But through it all, Texas Tech football has been as much of a part of my life as have been family traditions, holidays, and religious observances.  Hell, I even skipped my brother-in-law’s wedding to go to a Tech home game in 2016.  Yet, I’m ready to give it up because that’s the only way I can make my voice heard.

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I don’t say all of this to brag about my passion or fandom.  The point I’m trying to make is that people as dedicated as I have been, of which there are many given that it is estimated that around 65% of Tech’s season-ticket holders live multiple hours away from Lubbock, are now ready to turn away from the program joining the already apathetic majority of the fan base in simply throwing up our hands and saying “no mas”.

That should be a terrifying thought for Kirby Hocutt and Co. and it should be enough for a logical man to make a change at the head coaching position.  However, Hocutt is driven by his own ego more than by what is right for our university and never doubt the power of the ego of a man in power.

I don’t know if Kirby Hocutt is going to fire Matt Wells.  He should.  I don’t know if President Lawrence Schovanec is going to force Hocutt to fire Matt Wells.  He should.

I’m not a so-called “insider” who talks to big-money boosters and people of great influence.  I’m just a fan who lives and dies by everything Texas Tech sports just like most of you reading this.

Thus, there’s nothing I can do to bring about change other than cancel my season tickets and stop supporting this program with what little money I put into it.  But as we just learned in last month’s presidential election, if enough people choose to do the same thing at one time, real change is possible because ultimately, when the masses speak in unison, the message can’t be ignored.

Alone, I’m not important enough to be an agent of change.  Likely, neither are most of you.  But what we all can do is take a stand and let Hocutt and Schovanec know that we will no longer be financially supporting their most lucrative entity.

You can e-mail Hocutt at kirby.hocutt@ttu.edu and Schovanec at lawrence.schovanec@ttu.edu as I have done and let them know why you won’t be wasting any more of your money on a Matt Wells led program.  And they probably won’t read your e-mail.  But someone in their office will and if there are hundreds or even thousands of emails of the same ilk, the message will get through.

Maybe you are still willing to give this program your financial support.  If you are, you are a more patient and optimistic person than I will ever be and you truly do have my admiration.  Or maybe you are related to Matt Wells.

But I can no longer give my discretionary income to a product that is supposed to be entertainment yet which provides no joy or pay off.  More importantly, I can no longer sit back and be complicit in the demise of Texas Tech football as I have been for the last decade by continually supporting a program that is not willing to do everything it can to join the ranks of the “elite” as we were once promised it would.  So for now and until Matt Wells is no longer the head coach of the Texas Tech football program, my money will go to Chris Beard.