Wreck'Em Red
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Texas Tech football: Streaks that need to end in 2022

By Matthew Conner

Oct 9, 2021; Lubbock, Texas, USA; The Texas Tech Red Raiders enter the field before the game agains the Texas Christian Horned Frogs at Jones AT&T Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Michael C. Johnson-USA TODAY Sports
Oct 9, 2021; Lubbock, Texas, USA; The Texas Tech Red Raiders enter the field before the game agains the Texas Christian Horned Frogs at Jones AT&T Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Michael C. Johnson-USA TODAY Sports /
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Jul 14, 2022; Arlington, TX, USA; Texas Tech Red Raiders head coach Joey McGuire is interviewed during the Big 12 Media Day at AT&T Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports
Jul 14, 2022; Arlington, TX, USA; Texas Tech Red Raiders head coach Joey McGuire is interviewed during the Big 12 Media Day at AT&T Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports /

One of the great things about the 2022 Texas Tech football season is that it represents a fresh start for the program. In fact, it is about as clean of a start as any program could hope for given that new head coach Joey McGuire has never been a head coach at the collegiate level.

Sure, some may hold his lack of college head coaching experience against him.  That’s understandable.

But one refreshing aspect of hiring a first-time head coach is that we don’t have to obsess over McGuire’s past seasons like many of us did with Matt Wells when he took over the program prior to the 2019 season.  That year, we spent all offseason wondering if Wells’ three losing campaigns in the previous four seasons at Utah State were indicative of a coach who would be in over his head at the Big 12 level and those fears proved to be legitimate.

Of course, the last time the Red Raiders hired a head coach with no prior experience leading a program, it didn’t go so well either.  But when Tech brought Kliff Kingsbury on as head coach in  2013, the popular opinion was split at the time of his hiring.

Some felt that he was a can’t-miss rising star in the coaching world after helping mentor Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel to a Heisman Trophy.  Meanwhile, others worried that the then 34-year-old was too green given his age and the fact that he’d been in the coaching game for only five years.

Naturally, we have to list that experiment as a failure as well since Kingsbury would have a losing record over the course of his six-year tenure in Lubbock.  But was that because of his inexperience as a head coach or other factors such as his failure to commit to the recruiting trail, the lack of quality assistant coaches on his staff, or the lack of a serious financial commitment to the program?

The reality is that every head coaching hire is a complete crapshoot.  For instance, first-time college head coaches Spike Dykes and Mike Leach proved to be the two most successful head coaches in Texas Tech football history while previously successful Tommy Tuberville was a disaster in Lubbock.

Thus, we should simply be thankful for a fresh start under McGuire and look to the future with anticipation in hopes that this new era of the program will be the one that sees the Red Raiders turn the corner.  Perhaps we will know that the turnaround is underway if McGuire can be the man to put an end to the following unpleasant streaks.

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