Has sideline technology made Texas Tech a victim of “hacking”?

Texas Tech conspiracy theorists have a new rabbit hole to travel down. That's because over the past 24 hours, the Texas Tech football program has brought up the possibility that its in-game communications have been intercepted by other teams.

Wednesday afternoon, news broke that coach-to-player communications (which were only introduced in college football at the start of the 2024 season) in the Power 4 conferences were unencrypted. That meant that it had been possible for those communications to be intercepted.

According to reporter Max Olson, "Texas Tech athletic director Kirby Hocutt said he raised the issue during a call with Big 12 athletic directors Tuesday, after learning the Red Raiders' helmet communications were unencrypted and accessible to anyone with a scanner and knowledge of how to locate the frequencies."

Meanwhile, Chris Level, host of the Locked on Texas Tech podcast and the sideline reporter for the Texas Tech football radio broadcasts reported Wednesday on his podcast that several programs, including Texas Tech's two most recent opponents, Baylor and TCU, were made aware of the lack of encryption weeks ago. However, Level said that Texas Tech's leadership only learned of the news this week.

As a result, Texas Tech asked the Big 12 to conduct an official investigation into the matter to see if opposing teams had gained access to Tech's communication channels during games. As you might expect, the Big 12 moved quickly and by Thursday afternoon the conference claimed to have found no evidence of foul play.

"Following the industry-wide concerns surrounding helmet communications, the Big 12 conducted a review of conference games and helmet communications processes to address any issues member institutions raised regarding the matter," the Big 12's statement read. "The review showed that at no point was any Big 12 competition compromised. All Big 12 helmet communications programs now have the encryption update from GSC, and schools may use either CoachComm or GSC for coach-to-player communication at their discretion."

Big 12 and Texas Tech football fans will have no choice but to take the conference at its word. However, it won't be hard for some fans to believe that TCU and Baylor had access to Tech's communications over the past two games.

At times, it seemed as if the Bears and Frogs knew exactly what was coming from the Red Raiders. That was especially true of Baylor which dialed up all the right calls in a 59-35 win in Lubbock two Saturdays ago. In that game, the Bears racked up 529 yards of total offense as time and again they seemed to have the perfect play drawn up to exploit the Red Raiders, especially when Baylor had the football.

There's no question that Tech has not looked as good over the past two games as it did prior to its October 12 open date when the Red Raiders were 5-1. Is that because Tech has played better teams in the last two games than in the first half of the season or was something more sinister going on?

Ultimately, Tech fans won't be able to blame the Red Raiders' last two losses on cheating by the Bears and the Horned Frogs without sounding like they are either making excuses or are conspiracy theorists. However, the fact that Texas Tech had enough information about possible hacks that the Big 12 conducted a report will make fans around Raiderland wonder what has been happening during the last two games.