Behind Texas Tech's decision to keep the 3D Double T as stadium centerpiece
When the Texas Tech football team trots into Jones AT&T Stadium this season, the logo at midfield will look the same as the one used for the past two decades-plus. Tech will stick with the 3D-style Double T logo as part of an ongoing turf installation job at Jones AT&T Stadium.
The Tech athletics department, in a social-media announcement Friday, posted a rendering of the turf showing a beveled Double T identical to the one used before. The design was not yet in place Friday afternoon.
Some Red Raiders fans had been hoping for Tech's old-school flat Double T at midfield.
"We considered lots of different options," Tech senior associate athletics director Robert Giovannetti said. "There's been a couple of different iterations, but ultimately we decided to go with the current mark."
Asked the reasoning behind the choice, Giovannetti said, "The 3D Double T is the official mark of Texas Tech athletics. The other is in our vault as a throwback. We'll still use that on occasion when the occasion presents itself, but at all of our current facilities that are external-facing like the [United Supermarkets] Arena, baseball, soccer and everything else, we use the current mark."
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Texas Tech began using the 3D Double T as its primary logo in 1999, Giovannetti said.
Asked the difficulty, if any, of using the throwback flat Double T instead, Giovannetti said, "There's not really a difficulty to it. It's not any more or less difficult to use any of the marks, but ... we decided to keep it consistent with all of our other venues and continue this mark."
Tech has all of its marks trademarked, including the 3D and the flat Double T, Giovannetti said, so that does not enter into the choice.
"If there was ever a time — and I'm not saying there is — that we were going to change the official mark," he said, "then we would change the official mark at our venues.
"This is anecdotal, I haven't done any research on it, but most schools use their official marks on their and at their venues."
Texas Tech is eight months into a two-year, $220 million football facilities project whose key features will include a four-level south end zone building and a two-level team headquarters to be called the Womble Football Center. The latter two won't be done until 2024.
The installation of new turf and a retrofitted lighting system are scheduled in time for the 2023 season.
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Behind Texas Tech's decision to keep the 3D Double T as stadium's centerpiece
