Americans are weird and hard to understand at times. That is one small but important part of a new identity emerging in college sports: Texas Tech, located in West Texas — supposedly out of everyone else’s way — has become the villain, the school everyone else seems to hate. We’re not making this up, either. Just do a Google search on the topic. You’ll get multiple podcasts — and not rinky-dink broadcasts, either, but prominent national shows with recognizable figures in college football media — talking about the subject.
Texas Tech has clearly touched a nerve. We have to ask: Why? How? Is the anger from the outside world righteous or full of horsefeathers? Let’s dive in:
Winning
Let’s not beat around the bush here. Texas Tech wouldn’t be a villain for an increasingly large segment of the national college sports ecosystem if the Red Raiders weren’t winning. They have the best football and softball programs in the Big 12. They have a top-eight football program on a national scale, and a top-two softball program which is about to compete for a national championship. They’re very good. Now, however, we have to go deeper: Lots of teams win. Not all are hated. Not all of them get under people’s skin. What’s the secret acid sauce which makes other fans get mad at Texas Tech?
Oil money
Cody Campbell’s oil fortune is helping Texas Tech spend competitively in the transfer portal. Is it just the money, or is the label of “oil” money rubbing outsiders the wrong way? Some of the biggest soccer clubs on the planet are backed by Saudi oil money, so there is probably something to be said for “oil” dollars jabbing other fans in the gut and creating an unpleasant vibe about Texas Tech.
Money
Even without the “oil” part, Texas Tech’s spending is creating the impression that, for many American college sports fans, the Red Raiders are buying championship-caliber rosters. Again, we don’t need to pretend this isn’t fueling a lot of the animosity toward Texas Tech. The real question (again) is why? Now we need to take this conversation deeper.
Transfer portal and NIL
Texas Tech — located in the West Texas town of Lubbock — has become a major player in the transfer portal space, capitalizing on the NIL era. Texas Tech was not competitive on this scale in the era before NIL spending, and a liberalized portal democratized college sports. Right or wrong, fair or foul, it’s a plain reality of college sports that a lot of fans don’t like this new era. They generally feel college sports have become too professionalized, too much of a mercenary-like business. Texas Tech has become emblematic of that reality, which is why it has become the magnet for a lot of outside hatred.
Mia Williams and softball
Texas Tech softball is in the Women’s College World Series Finals — the two-team championship finale — for the second straight season. The Red Raiders have brought in top players such as Mia Williams, who transferred from Florida. In the recent NCAA Super Regional, Texas Tech and Florida were pitted against each other. Naturally, when an athlete transfers from School A to School B and then faces School A in the postseason, emotions will run high… but this was beyond high. This was deranged.
Florida pitchers hit Mia Williams with a pitch five times — FIVE! — in the super regional series. That’s crazy! If they didn’t want to pitch to her, they simply could have walked her, but no, they went out of their way to hit her with a pitch five times! One or two, okay, but five? It’s hard to absorb that kind of fact and not think Texas Tech generates a bizarrely fresh and potent form of hatred.
Joey McGuire and football
Joey McGuire isn’t afraid to talk a big game. He has challenged Texas and Steve Sarkisian to play the Red Raiders. Being so direct and upfront can create the identity of an upstart who puffs his chest and doesn’t exhibit good manners… at least in the eyes of some people.
However, McGuire isn’t challenging a small and cash-strapped school. He’s challenging the University of Texas, as big a school as there is. Maybe McGuire is cocky, but it’s hard to see his cockiness as off-putting; it’s just being competitive and ambitious in an innocent way.
People losing their minds
The hatred for Texas Tech is both understandable and delusional. Okay, we get it: Texas Tech has a billionaire who is willing to spend some money. That’s not a cute and cuddly feel-good story. However, Texas Tech is not the king of college sports spending.
Ohio State is a gargantuan college sports program and empire. Texas — for decades, superior to Tech — is a behemoth that has massive resources. Plenty of SEC and Big Ten programs spend ungodly sums of money. Tech has elbowed its way into that same space, but it’s not as though the Red Raiders are spending many tens of millions of dollars more than those powerful schools. You would think, from all the hatred being generated (and how visceral it is at times), that Tech is spending $50 million more than everyone else. It’s not so, and it’s not close to being reality.
We’re still trying to dig deeper and grasp why this hatred is so intense. There has to be something more.
Well… yes and no.
The American mind
This is where the strange and confusing American mind comes into play. Americans are just weird and often self-contradictory.
A school in little ol’ Lubbock, Texas, rising to the top of the food chain and competing with brand-name Goliath schools such as Texas, Florida, and Ohio State should, it seems to me, be celebrated. Texas Tech is a fresh face, representing a modest community (Lubbock) as opposed to a huge metropolis such as New York or Los Angeles. This is supposed to be the underdog story Americans claim to love.
Yet, for all that Americans say they like new faces or underdogs competing with the big boys, they don’t really back it up. Americans love dynasties and brand names. Americans really aren’t rebellious outsiders — Red Raiders, if you will — but like established power and wealth, the ruling class.
This is not a cultural landscape by, of, or for the outsiders. There’s an accepted club, and Texas Tech isn’t part of it. Seeing Texas Tech in the College Football Playoff or in the Women’s College World Series feels — for a lot of Americans — like a disruption of something they used to enjoy more rather than the emergence of something fresh and exciting.
Yes, it’s irrational. Yes, it’s dumb. No one ever said Americans weren’t either of those two things.
You do what you need to do, Texas Tech
It’s reality that Texas Tech has become the villain of college sports. That doesn’t mean the school deserves the label. If anything, Texas Tech simply spends its dollars more effectively than other schools do. There’s nothing to say in response to that other than “Good job. Keep doing what you’re doing. Let the haters hate, because that means you’re relevant and have acquired office space inside your opponents’ heads.”
Wreck ’em, Tech! A lot of people have allowed themselves to get wrecked by the Red Raiders for no truly good reason.
This article originally appeared on Red Raiders Wire: How Texas Tech became the primary villain of college sports
Reporting by Matt Zemek, College Sports Wire / Red Raiders Wire
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
