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Joey McGuire received a text message three days after Texas Tech’s season ended in the Orange Bowl from one of his best players.
“Coach, I got to see how bad you’re hurting. You need at some point to take a deep breath and understand we did something that nobody has ever been able to do at Texas Tech, and you have to appreciate that.”
The text came from Red Raiders linebacker David Bailey. This was a message the Texas Tech football coach needed to hear, but it was not one that he expected from a player who was preparing for the NFL Draft.
“Culture” is an overused, sports cliche, but that text message is an example of what coaches and players mean when they use the term.
The finale to the Red Raiders’ historic season was a 23-0 loss to Oregon on New Year’s Day, the quarterfinals of the playoffs; the way the game played out bruised an otherwise a near flawless year that made Texas Tech nationally relevant. The Red Raiders finished No. 7 in the final rankings.
“The one thing I hate is we played really, really well on defense, and just picked the wrong day to play our worst game on offense,” McGuire told the Star-Telegram on Monday night before an alumni event in Dallas.
“I hate it for those guys. It kills me for (quarterback) Behren Morton. The ending for him, because he’s done so much for this university.”
The goal now for McGuire and his program is to modify a narrative that Tech aggressively molded, and became a defining point for their 2025 season: Money, and no one does NIL better than the Red Raiders. The altered narratives now are to convince college football is that this success is sustainable.
“Before this last year, everybody just hoped we could do it,” McGuire said. ”We’ve done it, so now expectation is we can do it again, because we know that it can be done.”
And to convince college football that the Red Raiders are more than the bag.
“Last year, we opened our doors, and we were very up front with that we were going all in,” McGuire said. “This year, the story has to be that we’re here to stay, and this is how we’re doing it versus that it was about the money, or stuff like that.
“Let other people talk about that. Let them call the other teams out there, and let them talk about the money they spent. We’re not hiding from the money we spent, but we’ve got to create a narrative that guys are coming here because they want to be here, that this is a great place for players, and guys are playing the best years of their career here.”
Texas Tech wants to be more than just the money
At the alumni event was Tech’s most famous fan, Fort Worth resident Cody Campbell. He took pictures with his fellow Red Raiders, and signed autographs. Everyone at The Rustic was aware that much of Tech’s football status today is thanks to his generosity.
Along with Phil Knight at Oregon and the late T. Boone Pickens at Oklahoma State, Campbell has become one of those rare men whose support for his alma mater is known throughout college football. It helped Campbell’s visibility that he personally funded an aggressive ad campaign that aired on college football game broadcasts during the ‘25 season to lobby congress for reform in major NCAA sports.
BTW – That reform remains stuck in a “discussion” phase between college leadership and our elected officials, and is currently moving at the pace of highway construction.
McGuire is not naive, or blind, to any of this.
“I understand where everybody is coming from. I get it,” he said. “If this was the best team that ‘money could buy,’ it had a 3.23 (grade point average). These guys are graduating. A lot of these guys could have just done the bare minimum. A lot of our guys were offered more by other programs but chose to be here. (Nose tackle) Lee Hunter was offered a lot more than what we paid him.
“The culture was really strong in our building, because they bought in to what we’re doing. That’s what people are missing.”
Tech must offer something other than money, although that does really help, because a lot of other places can offer bags of cash, too.
Tech’s goal now is to prove this is sustainable, and this program is more than just a check book.
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Mac Engel
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