On the next-to-last weekend of April, the Texas Tech baseball team went to Utah for a series that matched two teams tied for 10th place in the Big 12. This past weekend, the Red Raiders hosted Oklahoma State, both teams starting the series below .500 in conference play.
It’s measure of how far Tech baseball’s fallen that the Red Raiders were swept in both series. On a weekend when many a Tech fan’s attention was diverted by George Strait twice playing Jones AT&T Stadium, Oklahoma State won 16-6, 9-8 and 11-2 at Dan Law Field/Rip Griffin Park.
Tech (22-22, 6-15 in conference) has lost seven consecutive Big 12 games, five straight conference series and is now, by one game, on the outside looking in for the last Big 12 tournament berth.
It’s a foregone conclusion Tech will miss the NCAA tournament three years in a row. Its slide gets more glaring by the weekend, painful for a program that made four College World Series trips from 2014-19. And it begs the question: Does the baseball program have the resources in the NIL era to recapture its glory days?
“That’s a good question,” said Tech coach Tim Tadlock after the April 26 series finale. “It’s harder and harder in college athletics to retain really good players because of what’s going on. I think our resources have gotten better in the last six months. I do.
“But when you don’t win — like we’re not doing right now … . It’s a lot easier to retain guys when you go to Omaha. Guys want to stay, right? They get a little taste of it, and they want to stay. They want to teach the next group how to get there. Right now, we haven’t been very good the last couple of years.”
Tadlock stuck up for his players, saying “they’re good people, and they play for each other.” He said his roster this year was good enough to beat Oklahoma State (28-16, 11-10).
“Your resources, if you really want to look at an SEC roster — you can do the research on what they’re putting in it — we haven’t had that,” Tadlock said. He acknowledged that he’s “guilty as anybody” who believed he could keep winning without adapting in a major way to the infusion of NIL money into the sport.
He became emotional and paused mid-sentence talking about it, then pivoted to an illustration of pitcher Micah Dallas, a Friday night starter for the Red Raiders, transferring after the 2021 season to Texas A&M.
“I can go back to the night before NIL started, Micah Dallas called me and said, ‘Hey, I’m going somewhere,’ ” Tadlock recounted. “It would have taken $50,000 to keep him. What I’m getting at is, I think J-Bob [longtime assistant J-Bob Thomas] and I especially are probably guilty of thinking we could always do it the way we always did it — because we never lost guys [pre-NIL]. Guys never left this program. They stayed. And so what am I trying to say: Over the last two or three years, there’s been a learning curve. That’s not really doable. Guys can’t walk out the door.”
Tech athletics director Kirby Hocutt has publicly committed to adding about 80 scholarships to non-revenue sports for the 2026-27 school year. That includes increasing baseball’s scholarships to 34, enough to cover a full roster and nearly triple the longtime NCAA limit of 11.7 scholarships that was eliminated by the House v. NCAA settlement agreement.
The House settlement makes all scholarships equivalencies, but Tadlock indicated Tech’s 34 will be fully funded. He called that “a good start.”
The 2025-26 school year is the first in which athletics departments can directly share revenue with its athletes. Tech allocated about $390,000 for baseball, which is separate from third-party NIL.
The Avalanche-Journal, using information obtained from Tech in an open-records request, earlier this year reported Tech athletes’ third-party NIL funding by year and sport in the five years before the House settlement. In baseball, the NIL dollars were $53,769 in the 2021-22 school year; $338,714 for 2022-23; then $26,758 for 2023-24; and $1,086,538 for 2024-25. That figure for this year has not been disclosed.
In February 2025, Tadlock said after being NIL-resistant in its first year, he had seen the necessity and been on board beginning with the roster assembled for the 2023 season. Explaining his shift in viewpoint in February 2025, he said, “You have to have aspirations to get impact guys here.”
Even so, Tadlock said on Sunday that soliciting money is outside his comfort zone.
“It’s probably not my nature to ask. That’s probably where my downfall is,” he said. “It’s just not my nature. You give me 11.7 and you say, ‘Here’s your roster,’ I’m going to go try to beat somebody. It’s been hard, but it’s doable.”
Since the inception of the NIL era in July 2021, the Red Raiders have been bitten by the loss of more than a few established players transferring out. Among the most prominent: Pitchers Mason Molina, Brendan Girton and Levi Wells; catcher Hudson White; infielders Nate Rombach, Gavin Kash, Travis Sanders and T.J. Pompey; and outfielders Dillon Carter and Gage Harrelson.
Acquiring talent is only the start. Retaining talent keeps coaches awake at night.
“Right now in this climate, we’re always thinking about that,” Tadlock said. “You’re always thinking about what you can do for guys, and the crazy thing is, the more success they have, the more you’re thinking about it.”
Tadlock is at 930 victories in his coaching career, five away from 500 with the Red Raiders. On Sunday, as he does after every home game, Tadlock spoke only a few feet away from trophies that commemorate his teams’ three Big 12 championships and the four CWS appearances.
At 57, he rejects criticism by some in the Tech fan base that he’s lost his passion.
“I go to as many games [scouting] as I’ve ever gone to. I stay in as many hotels as I’ve ever stayed in,” he said. Then he became emotional and tapped the table as he paused to collect himself. “So I guess you can bring them [critics] in here. Whoever wants to talk about that, I’d like to talk about it.
“When you do this for a living, you put a lot of emotion into it. Quite honestly, every time we ever got to Omaha, we were drained, because you put so much into it to get there. …
“We’ve got kids here right now. You’re always trying to get a player, and that doesn’t stop. It doesn’t stop 365 days a year. I think we’ve got a staff that loves what we do. I think we want to get it right, and I think we can get it right again. I’m pretty hardheaded. I think we can do it with what we have, but in this day and age, you’ve got to get a little bit lucky. Guys have got to stay. Guys have got to become real guys on the mound.
“As far as the passion, I think you could ask my colleagues. I think they know. If somebody’s outworked us over the last 14 years, I’d like to meet them.”
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Texas Tech baseball coach Tim Tadlock: ‘We can get it right again’
Reporting by Don Williams, Lubbock Avalanche-Journal / Lubbock Avalanche-Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
