Want to save Texas Tech-UT series? Better act now

Texas Tech announced this week that Saturday's game against No. 22 Texas at Jones Stadium is a sellout. That means for the 30th time in their past 31 trips to Lubbock — all but once since 1962 — the Longhorns will be the Tech opponent that draws the biggest crowd of the season.

That proves they move a needle with Tech fans. No matter how many times your friends, or even you perhaps, say you don't care if the Red Raiders never again play the Longhorns, the numbers don't lie. Sports-wise, nothing stirs passion like facing the team you dislike the most, and in Tech territory, there's no doubt who that team that is.

You've maybe heard mention that Saturday's game might well be UT's last appearance in Lubbock for the foreseeable future. The Texas Tech administration hopes not. They're bringing as much pressure as they can to bear on UT athletics director Chris Del Conte and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to keep the series going after the Longhorns leave the Big 12 for the Southeastern Conference.

Related:Texas Tech linebacker Tyrique Matthews remains ready, humble after career game

As they should. University leaders understand the importance of Tech-Texas games to Tech athletics' financial health and to the Red Raiders' visibility at a time when the power in college sports is coalescing elsewhere, around the SEC and the Big Ten. Those university leaders also understand the importance of the series to the Lubbock economy and to West Texas, not to mention the increasingly quaint notion of preserving a traditional rivalry.

What they can use is help from the grassroots in making it less of a covert operation. What if Tech fans en masse fired up the laptops and gave the governor's office and the people at UT a little what for. Think of the fun.

Think of the last few months.

Twice this summer, Tech fans mobilized like mad. When a low-level TCU football staff member likened Lubbock to a desert, Red Raiders folks took it personally, turning, on social media, into a stirred-up nest of gila monsters.

Everybody flash your cactus was a display at once impressive and amusing, though not particularly meaningful, except for merchants who woke up one morning and discovered a market for saguaro-splashed polo shirts.

Around the same time, Fox Sports ran a Twitter-poll tournament to convey the title of best college football fan base. Scarlet and black people, embracing their place as kings of social media, sprang into action to win the fan vote.

That says something about the fervor of Red Raiders' supporters, but I'm guessing guys like Nick Saban, Kirby Smart and Ryan Day, to the extent they even knew the Twitter poll existed, didn't take the outcome as any kind of sign.

Now's the chance to accomplish something that actually matters.

The fact that the Tech higher-ups are likeminded that continuing a series with Texas long term serves a vital interest for the Red Raiders, that should be a sign for people to get on board.

In the old days, the campaign to maintain such a rivalry would need no prompting. Go back to the 1950s when Tech yearned to be in the Southwest Conference, only to be told no again and again. Spoiler alert: Tech finally got the votes necessary in May 1956 and began SWC competition a few years after. But not without a scrap. Arkansas tried to thwart Tech's being admitted. So did SMU and Rice.

Tech backers fought back at the cash register, directing their anger most pointedly at Neiman-Marcus, the popular luxury retailer in Dallas. For a Tech fan, cutting up your Neiman-Marcus store card and sending it back was the 1950s version of putting a cactus in your Twitter profile. Only, their action carried more weight.

Here's how A-J sportswriter Joe Kelly led off a column in June 1952:

"Don't think for a minute that the economic boycott of Dallas, Fort Worth and other East Texas cities isn't having its effect. It won't cause any of the stores to close down, but the loss of revenue from West Texas hurts."

Kelly wrote he'd received a letter from a reader who'd returned his Neiman-Marcus card, only to have the retailer mail it back to him with a conciliatory note. It began this way:

"Thank you for your letter. It gives us the opportunity to explain to you, and to any of your friends you may wish to speak to about this, that the decision by the Southwest Conference not to admit Texas Tech was something over which we had no control whatsoever. No one in the whole Neiman-Marcus organization had any influence whatsoever in that decision, any more than any of us here could decide who was going to be the Republican nominee for the Presidency.

"As a matter of face [sic], I can tell you very truthfully that there is a considerable sentiment here in the store on the part of many of us that the Conference would have been greatly improved by the addition of Texas Tech."

The fellow goes on for a few more paragraphs, making nice.

Tech fans, feisty then as now, apparently weren't buying it. DeWitt Weaver served as the Tech football coach from 1951-60 and the athletics director from 1952-60. To Fort Worth Star-Telegram columnist Jim Trinkle in May 1971, Weaver recounted Red Raiders' frustrations at being rebuffed.

"Vernon Thompson, Bob Walker, Carl Maxey and some others were over at my house talking about it," Weaver said. "Carl Maxey bought a lot of stuff from Neiman-Marcus. I said I didn't know why Lubbock folks traded in Dallas if SMU was against us."

The movement grew from the meeting. Neiman's and other Dallas stores were swamped by charge account cancellations from West Texas.

"Everybody wanted to send back his wife's credit card," Weaver said. "It caught on like wildfire. Lubbock people spent a lot of money in Dallas. I always liked SMU. I sent my son to school there. I wasn't mad at anybody. I just wanted in the conference."

So we return you now to 2022 where the crisis of the day is not Tech's getting into a conference but rather, not letting a rival get out of one scot-free. It's OK to despise the Longhorns and acknowledge the benefits of continuing to play them.

The Big 12 is going to be damaged by the departures of Oklahoma and Texas, no two ways around it. Tech, for security's sake, is going to need all the high-profile games it can get.

Want to be taken seriously? Want your team to be given credit nationally when it has a big winning season? That big winning season had better include a win or two over a marquee brand. BYU, Cincinnati, UCF and Houston aren't going to deliver the same sizzle. As the SEC vacuums marquee brands away from the Big 12, more of the spotlight goes with it.

Both teams are scheduled up years in advance for non-conference games. Tech AD Kirby Hocutt said he'll move games to keep the Longhorns on the schedule, the unspoken suggestion being that Del Conte can make the effort too.

Abbott spokesman Mark Miner recently told The Avalanche-Journal the governor "remains committed to seeing Texas Tech play the University of Texas." He has an election coming up, the governor. Against that backdrop, it wouldn't hurt him with West Texans to twist some arms over on the Forty Acres.

Nor would it hurt the 146,000 folks who voted in a Twitter poll to ask the governor for a favor.

An act of rebellion these days doesn't even require postage.

College football

Who: Texas at Texas Tech

When: 2:30 p.m. Saturday

Where: Jones AT&T Stadium

Records: Texas 2-1; Texas Tech 2-1

Rankings (AP/coaches): Texas 22/19; Texas Tech unranked.

Line: Texas by 6½

Last game: Texas 41, Texas-San Antonio 20; North Carolina State 27, Texas Tech 14

Last meeting: Texas 70, Texas Tech 35 in 2021 in Austin

TV: ESPN

Fast fact: Dating to last season, Tech has held its past six opponents under 31 points, the program's longest such streak since the Red Raiders did the same in seven consecutive games from 2007 into 2008.

This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: The numbers don't lie: Texas Tech football fans pack the stands vs UT