By james art In an effort to support the formation of its national image and maybe to influence the people who run the College Football Playoff, Texas Tech hired a Dallas-based PR firm to get the word out about the school.
Typically, that goal will be met with derision, derision, and scorn in places like Austin, Fort Worth, College Station, Waco, and Houston. When you’re not Ohio State, Texas, Alabama and a few others and you’re in the Big 12, you have to explore all avenues to sell yourself.
Unbeknownst to many outside of Lubbock and the Red Raider community, Tech has real money. Amazing what the Barnett Shale can do. There are boosters who want to spend it.
The man in the midst of spending, hoping, and expecting is well acquainted with all these details and purposes. One year ago this week, Texas Tech fell to 3-5 and head coach Joey McGuire was on his way home from practice when he called his wife, Debbie.
“Joey, you need to start winning some games,” she told her husband.
“I know that,” he said.
“I’m serious,” Debbie said. “I love this place. I want to be here.”
McGuire and Texas Tech come to Fort Worth this week to play TCU in one of those games that feels like a high dive coin flip. For both teams, it could be a belly-flop into an empty pool or a perfect 10 without a splash.
According to people at Tech, McGuire has the university’s full support to clean up what his predecessor, Matt Wells, left him. Texas Tech wasn’t broke when it hired McGuire, but it wasn’t much.
McGuire has great assets to work with, starting with the full alignment from the board, core boosters, and himself. In major college athletics, it’s the holy trinity. The goal is to sell Texas Tech. The same goal is at Kansas State, Texas A&M, Alabama, or other schools that are located in cities that wouldn’t be at the top of a travel agent’s list.
After so many painful misses in previous coaching hires, McGuire feels like the right choice to make what Mike Leach proved possible happen again at Texas Tech.
“I 100 percent feel the hunger of this fan base. They want to succeed no matter who (is the head coach),” McGuire said in an interview earlier this year at Jones AT&T Stadium in Lubbock. “They understand that I’m a Texan and that I love this place. I am very passionate about Texas Tech.
“They see that and they see that I’m sincere and they want to see me succeed. Put that aside, they want to win in football.”
Hard stop. If the head coach was from Mercury, Moscow or even Waco and the Red Raiders won 11 games, the Techs would have found a way to handle it.
The Red Raiders are 20-13 under McGuire and on pace for their third straight winning season for the first time since 2008-10; these were the last two years under Leach and the first under Sen. Tommy Tuberville.
It helps immeasurably that, unlike some of the previous coaches who have had the job, McGuire “gets” Lubbock. Lubbock is the quintessential college town, where the university is the epicenter of the community. Same as Manhattan, Kansas, College Station, Columbia, Missouri, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and certainly South Bend, Indiana.
You’ll notice that none of these college towns are exactly tourist traps, but the major schools located in them are of interest.
Lubbock is also an atypical college town because its epicenter is so far from the rest of America.
Whether you’re a student, student athlete, coach, or middle-aged commuter, you need to understand and embrace the distance that comes with Lubbock. It’s not for everyone. It’s not for anyone.
That’s why Tech hired a PR firm.
“Look at what we’ve done to our facility, a $240 million upgrade,” McGuire said. “This doesn’t happen anywhere else. “Walking through (the stadium), you can feel the pressure, but I think you want that. You want that because you know you’re somewhere that means something. If you’re in a place where you don’t feel it, where there’s no pressure, how badly do you want to win?
“Technology has put its money where its mouth is. We have to go and win. We have an opportunity in the Big 12 to make ourselves a major program.”
Other than when Patrick Mahomes was destroying the scoreboard under coach Kliff Kingsbury, Tech hasn’t been a major program since Leach has been head coach. Even when Mahomes was a Red Raider, his defense was so atrocious that the program missed the opportunity.
Since Leach left, Tech has been an “average” program. At best. Has one nine-win season since 2008. The last time a team finished ranked in the final AP Top 25 poll was in 2009, the year Leach was fired.
Since then, other Red Raider programs have flourished nationally. Despite the distance, it can be done.
The Big 12 is there to be had. There is a real chance that Tech football can once again be a relevant and important program.
A PR firm can help, but nothing sells a school like Texas Tech more than a winning football team.