ORLANDO — Money may not buy happiness, but it has gone a long way toward Texas Tech’s three-decades-long pursuit of a Big 12 football championship.
Backed by billionaire booster Cody Campbell and other investors, the Red Raiders’ fortunes — literally and figuratively — have changed dramatically in the Name, Image and Likeness era. Campbell told USA TODAY in the summer that his group spent more than $25 million on this year’s roster, including a reported figure of roughly $7 million alone on its dominant defensive line.
The return on that investment: a 9-1 record, the No. 6 spot in the College Football Playoff rankings and control of its own destiny ahead of a 3:30 p.m. home game Saturday, Nov. 15. against struggling UCF (4-5, 1-5).
Asked about adapting to and competing in spite of the conference’s financial disparity, Knights coach Scott Frost stated he hates “where the game is right now” with the lack of guardrails in place. Simultaneously, though, he believes the fault does not lie with Texas Tech or college football’s other freewheeling spenders.
“It’s the old saying, ‘You don’t hate the player, hate the game,'” Frost said during his weekly press conference. “I don’t blame them, and they did a good job of using their resources to get a good enough team to be (9-1) right now. I’m sure everybody wishes they could do that. Not everybody has the ability to do that.”
Should it handle business against UCF and West Virginia out of a bye week, Texas Tech will appear in the Big 12 championship game for the first time. The Red Raiders joined the league in 1996 but never found a way previously to get over the hump — even as legendary coach Mike Leach revolutionized modern offense with the Air Raid, or when Michael Crabtree won the Biletnikoff Award as the nation’s top wide receiver, or when three-time Super Bowl MVP Patrick Mahomes threw for more than 9,700 yards and 77 touchdowns in his two seasons as a full-time starter.
It’s an oversimplification to attribute Texas Tech’s success this fall solely to its spending. General manager James Blanchard targeted the portal’s best available options to fill immediate needs, and head coach Joey McGuire — who cut his teeth in the Lone Star State’s high school ranks for nearly two decades — molded a group of so-called mercenaries into a menacing, winning machine.
Transfer portal success has also not guaranteed subsequent on-field results. LSU had the nation’s No. 1 transfer class, per 247Sports, and fired Brian Kelly after an ugly home defeat to Texas A&M to drop out of the CFP race at 5-4. Florida State, Auburn, North Carolina and Kentucky fielded top-10 transfer classes as well, and none of them boast a record topping .500.
UCF needed to patch more than three-dozen roster holes through the portal when Frost replaced Gus Malzahn in December, and landed a handful of potentially foundational pieces, with a fractional budget by comparison. The Knights will need to stage an upset of either Texas Tech or BYU, plus hold serve at home against lowly Oklahoma State, just to achieve bowl eligibility.
UCF, which lost five starters to injury during last week’s Space Game loss to Houston, opened as a 24-point underdog, according to Circa Sports’ betting lines — a signal of the gulf currently dividing the opposite ends of the Big 12.
“Nothing worth having is ever easy,” Frost said. “(Defensive coordinator Alex) Grinch sent me something this week; to paraphrase it, when you’re going through a process like this where you’re building, maybe deep down you’re hoping there’s an easy way — that it’s just going to happen without the hard work, without the trials, without some setbacks. Nothing good ever comes without those things happening.
“And you’ve got to go through the hard to get to the good. We’re having fun, even though we’re going through the hard.”
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: UCF coach Scott Frost says don’t blame Texas Tech for spending money to be football power
Reporting by Chris Boyle, Daytona Beach News-Journal / The Daytona Beach News-Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
