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Texas Tech football ticket sales show fans not tuning out over NIL | Don Williams
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- Texas Tech football ticket sales show fans not tuning out over NIL | Don Williams
The Texas Tech football season started two weeks ago with the Red Raiders holding off Abilene Christian 52-51 before a sellout crowd.
Last week, Tech officials announced two months in advance the Nov. 9 game against Colorado is a sellout . This week, they announced the Sept. 28 game against Cincinnati is also a sellout.
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Makes me wonder again, where are the people who swore off college football three years ago when the courts and the NCAA allowed the players to make money off their name, image and likeness? The people who said they would find other things to do with their fall Saturdays — mow the yard, clean the garage — rather than watch athletes who were no longer pure amateurs (the horror!) ... Are they making good on their vows?
Because they should have more reason than ever.
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That first year, 2021, Tech receiver Erik Ezukanma did a commercial for a Lubbock furniture warehouse. It was shown for several weeks. Many other Tech players struck small deals with local and national businesses.
What we have today isn't that.
A robust market materialized in no time for — call them what they are — recruiting-related NIL inducements, organized via donor-based collectives. Players have gone from plugging a business for a nominal fee to being on payroll. Texas Tech athletics director Kirby Hocutt told the Avalanche-Journal last month The Matador Club is raising $9-10 million a year for Tech athletes.
By the way: The likelihood of long-discussed "guardrails" being implemented seems unlikely after federal judge Claudia Wilken last week rightly took issue with attempts to curb NIL in the proposed House v. NCAA settlement.
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So fans who over the past three years declared personal boycotts on big-time college sports should be more appalled than ever. Maybe a few are making good on their word and tuning out. Probably the same number of people who followed through on 2016 pledges to leave the country if Trump became president.
Mascot Raider Red gestures and Texas Tech fans throw tortillas onto the field at opening kickoff of the Red Raiders' Aug. 31 season opener against Abilene Christian at Jones AT&T Stadium.
Last week, Illinois fans rushed the field after an Illini win over Kansas and Nebraska fans rushed the field after the Cornhuskers beat Colorado.
Tech announced a sellout of 32,000 season tickets four months before the opener. That was helped, no doubt, by the opening of the new south end zone building, part of a $242 million football facilities project in and around Jones AT&T Stadium. Yet, after the Red Raiders' uninspiring performances against ACU and Washington State, this week started with Tech announcing a sellout against Cincinnati, of all teams.
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Here's the reality: College football's not been more talked about, at least during my lifetime, than it is today. There used to be a down time, the period between the end of spring football and the beginning of workouts in August. Now that's conference realignment season and hashing out how a team looks with the newest comings and goings via the transfer portal.
From the time I was born until age 18, there were 23 Tech football games on television. Now every game is on TV and fans pound away at their keyboards in real-time reaction to what they're seeing.
Bottom line, if Texas Tech is playing football, people are going to be paying rapt attention. They'll go to the games or not go to the games for the oldest reason: Whether the team's winning.
There was another announcement this week out of Tech. Fall enrollment topped 41,000 for the first time, coming off a year in which the university awarded 9,994 degrees, also a record.
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For those choosing dove hunting over Tech football games, they're minting new fans all the time.
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Texas Tech football ticket sales show few put off by NIL | Don Williams
