Don't blame Texas Tech for buying a championship roster, blame the rules of the game
The bad guys won. Rode into town and ran roughshod over the good guys, and danced and pranced all the way back to Lubbock, that black, double-T villain flag whipping wildly back home in the West Texas wind after Texas Tech's impressive 34-10 win at Utah.
There, feel better now?
Because we can’t feel good about a college football program that spent tens of millions in NIL deals to secure the best team money could buy. Can’t embrace the mercenary philosophy of building a roster in the era of player empowerment.
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I mean, who could stomach it?
Certainly not the hoity-toity Big Ten, whose last two national championships were built on the back of critical transfer portal additions at both Michigan and Ohio State .
Not the arrogant and annoying SEC, whose king, Georgia , led the nation in dropped passes last season — then went out and completely revamped its wide receiving corps through the portal. Or LSU , the current best team in the conference, which rebuilt its defense with six new starters from the portal — and now has the best unit in college football.
Or maybe, the second-best.
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Because the best defense might just be Texas Tech, the program Mike Leach made famous by throwing it all over the yard and not giving a flip about stopping anyone.
The program that — say it slowly with me, everyone — has seven new defensive starters from the portal. Or one more than LSU.
One program and coach is celebrated for the gutsy call to find answers, the other is the leper of the sport.
It is here where I remind everyone that Georgia and LSU and Ohio State and Texas and every other heavy hitter in college football spends millions in private NIL deals. It’s just that Texas Tech, nothing more than a carnival sideshow for much of its existence, isn’t a blueblood of the sport.
And more than anything, the Red Raiders have a face to the rebuild. The same face trying to upend the elite power structure of the sport — one way or the other.
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Billionaire booster Cody Campbell , who played for Leach’s first team at Texas Tech, has invested hundreds of millions in the roster and facilities. He’s also — and here’s the key moving forward — the point man for President Donald Trump’s desire to prevent the insatiable growth of football potentially eliminating Olympic and women’s sports.
Campbell, also a member of the Texas Tech board of regents, told USA TODAY Sports earlier this summer that he and his small group of investors spent more than $25 million on this year’s roster. Because he can.
Because, as they say on the Hub of the Plains, them's the rules.
The same rules Ohio State used last year on its $20 million roster, a buildout that was heroically hailed as embattled Buckeyes coach Ryan Day going “all in” to save his job. Not trying to buy a championship.
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So while Campbell is working to fix one end of the system and taking advantage of the other, Texas Tech coach Joey McGuire has figured out a way to marry those who have been part of his three-year rebuild — and those who just joined the ride this season.
The same Texas Tech team that was without starting quarterback Behren Morton for the entire second half, where it outscored Utah 24-7 in the fourth quarter behind backup Will Hammond .
“We should expect to play at a high level,” McGuire said this summer. “There are no excuses now.”
Texas Tech held Utah to 263 yards and forced four turnovers. The Red Raiders got a big win on the road while their Heisman Trophy-candidate quarterback sat on the bench with an undisclosed injury.
They had eight — that’s not a misprint — false start penalties while dealing with the wild crowd at Rice-Eccles Stadium. They had 14 penalties for 122 yards, and Morton threw two first-half interceptions.
And they didn’t flinch in a brutal environment when they easily could have, despite playing with a collection of mercenary players on one-year, prove-it deals — and facing adversity as a team for the first time.
Sounds more like the beginning of a storybook season than a bunch of villains overtaking the sport.
Besides, that story played out last year at Ohio State. And it was celebrated.
There, feel better now?
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB .
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Texas Tech defeat of Utah proves millions can buy CFP roster
