The time to bemoan Texas Tech football schedules was before A&M, UT left | Williams

The Texas Tech football program's two most heated rivals are Texas A&M and Texas. For folks who follow the Red Raiders, no other teams generate as much passion as the Aggies and the Longhorns.

Unequivocally, inarguably, no debate necessary. Ticket-sales numbers when those two teams come to Jones Stadium have proven it, over and over, for generations, dating to 1962 in the Red Raiders' early days in the Southwest Conference.

Games against the Aggies and Longhorns are no longer options, so it's hard to get worked up about the schedule the Big 12 released last week that covers each of the conference members for the next four years.

A commonly voiced complaint among Red Raiders fans is that the Big 12 didn't deem Tech and Oklahoma State permanent rivals, assigned to meet every year. Only Arizona-Arizona State, Baylor-TCU, Brigham Young-Utah and Kansas-Kansas State were accorded that status, paired for each of the next four seasons starting in 2024. Makes sense, given those schools' series history and proximity.

Tech vs. Oklahoma State? Eh, not really.

Four games, eight scenarios: Can Texas Tech football fashion a November to remember?

Peek behind the scenes: Hocutt credits Texas Tech football great Patrick Mahomes as key player in adidas deal

While it's true the Red Raiders and the Cowboys have played 50 times and continuously since the inception of the Big 12 in 1996, there are lengthy gaps in the series. The two didn't face each other from 1947-53, from 1958-64, from 1976-87 and from 1990-95, among other years.

Tech and Oklahoma State have little history of thrilling games in the way Tech and Texas A&M do.

And playing Oklahoma State might not seem so important when Mike Gundy retires. The Cowboys' coach is 56, an age when many who have had long, successful runs such as his, decide the grind is no longer worth it. Will Oklahoma State post a double-digit win total seven times under its next coach, the way it has under its current one? Not likely.

The Red Raiders and the Cowboys square off each of the next three seasons and, come 2027, when they don't, the Red Raiders likely can earn similar cachet by beating Utah, Kansas State or someone else.

As for an every-year rival for Texas Tech, Baylor and TCU would have made more sense than any other. Tech and Baylor have played 82 times and continuously since 1956. That run will come to an end in 2025.

Matter of fact, in 2025, Houston is the only Texas school on the Tech schedule, a throwback to the days of Pete Cawthon. To the consternation of his Tech administration, Cawthon stopped scheduling Texas schools when Tech's early efforts to join the Southwest Conference were rejected.

For the first 30 years of Tech's existence, the school's leaders and supporters threw their full effort behind earning admission to the SWC, determined to play with the big boys. When Arkansas, SMU and Rice held out against Tech admission, Red Raiders fans fought by famously boycotting Neiman-Marcus, the luxury retailer in Dallas.

Talk about mobilizing all the forces. And it worked, when the SWC approved Tech admission in 1956.

Nowadays, it's not the same. Tech leaders are doing all they can to get Texas to keep playing Tech after the Longhorns leave for the Southeastern Conference, but with no discernible grass-roots support. University officials went to the governor's mansion. Near as I can tell, no one else raised much of a protest.

Many misguided Tech supporters actually have cheered the pending early exits by Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC, hoping to be a big fish in a watered-down Big 12 pond.

Now those same folks are distressed to find the future schedules not all that attractive.

They should have thought about that two years ago.

This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: The time to bemoan Texas Tech football skeds was before A&M, UT left