Insights on the 2024 Texas Tech football schedule

Texas Tech gets a boring opponent for the regular-season finale

We all assumed that the Big 12 would give Tech a home game to close out the regular season on November 30. That's because the university already scheduled a home basketball game against Texas A&M for the day before and the plan all along was to make that weekend a showcase for the athletic department.

The Big 12 did help Tech out by playing along with that plan but it didn't do McGuire's program any favors by making West Virginia the opponent for the last game of the year at Jones Stadium. It would have been better for Tech to either have a premier opponent like Colorado or a traditional rival like Baylor fill that slot instead of a school that few Red Raiders outside of passionate John Denver fans give half of a care about.

There really isn't much juice in the series between Tech and WVU, especially now that former Mike Leach assistant Dana Holgorsen is in Houston instead of Morgantown. So it is hard to say how many people will hang around Lubbock or return early during Thanksgiving weekend to see the Mountaineers come to the South Plains.

Remember, the basketball crowd for the A&M game will top out at 15,000. Thus, even if every one of those fans goes to the football game on Saturday, it would fill up only a small portion of Jones Stadium.

The rush to see WVU and Tech play isn't going to be all that intense unless the Red Raiders are playing for something of consequence such as a spot in the conference title game. So while it is great to have a game at home after the A&M basketball game, it would have been nice to have had a more intriguing foe coming to town that day. But hey, at least it isn't Cincinnati.