Texas Tech football classics: Red Raiders stave off upset bid from A&M in ’08

It’s now the dog days of the offseason with no Texas Tech sports in sight for another two-plus months.  So that makes this the perfect opportunity to take some time to look back at classic games of the past. When the Texas Tech football team traveled to College Station in 2008, there was no last-minute score to secure victory, there was no post-game scuffle in the stands, nor was the outcome surprising to anyone in the nation.  However, the 43-25 Red Raider victory was an important step in what would eventually be the most memorable season in the history of the program.

It would also be the final time, perhaps ever, that Tech would enjoy the pleasure of taking down the most hated rival in program history.

Entering this game, most expected the Red Raiders to handle their business.  Behind Graham Harrell and Michal Crabtree, Mike Leach’s team had jumped out to a 6-0 record and the No. 5 national ranking.  Meanwhile, the Aggies had limped to a 2-4 record and had started conference play 0-2.

But this was a stretch in the 2008 season when the Red Raiders were not firing on all cylinders.  Just one week prior, Tech had to go to overtime at home to beat a highly undermanned Nebraska team.  And on this day in College Station, the heavily-favored Red Raiders once again found themselves in a dog fight.

The teams would trade scores throughout the first half until the home team would eventually hold a 23-20 lead at halftime.  At that point, Kyle Field was abuzz with the thought of finally paying the Red Raiders back for all the upsets Tech had pulled on the Aggies over the years.

But in the second half, the Red Raiders would turn to their non-marquee side of the ball to pull away.  Holding the Aggies to just two points in the second half, Tech’s underrated defense was the true difference in this contest.

In the first half, the Aggies would score on five of their six possessions.  However, after the break, they would fail to score on any of their five opportunities with the ball.  The only points A&M would muster in the final two quarters came on a blocked extra point that they returned all the way for a two-point conversion.

Still, for most of this game, Texas Tech could be accused of playing with its food.  Tech didn’t manage to build a two-score lead until the middle of the fourth quarter and a bevy of mistakes allowed the Aggies to hang around for much longer than they should have.

Three turnovers and ten Texas Tech penalties would help keep the Aggies in the game until the end making the afternoon far more uncomfortable than expected for Red Raider fans.  But as was almost always the case in the Mike Leach era, the good guys would find a way to take down their most loathed rival.  Of course, that day, we had no way of knowing that it would be the program’s final victory in the rivalry, perhaps ever.

Inexplicably, the Aggies would turn the tables in the series beginning the next season when they would upset the Red Raiders in Lubbock 52-30 in the game that would prompt Leach’s infamous “fat little girlfriends” postgame rant.  In all, the Aggies would take the final three games of this rivalry before bolting for the SEC, and now, it seems highly unlikely that we will ever see these two teams on the field together again making the way this series ended a bitter pill for Tech fans to swallow.

But let’s go inside the final win Tech secured over A&M and enjoy one more time the sweet nectar of taking down the Aggies on their home field.  And we will start by looking at the main factor that led to Tech’s triumph.