West Texans have long valued fighting hard against any and all challenges.
From fighting the land and the weather, trying to create an economy on the South Plains of oil, soil, ranching and more, to just fighting down-state interest that typically overwhelmed West Texas interests by pure population numbers alone.
For generations, West Texans have had to fight for what they could get.
In 2022, does that mind-set create a self-defeating mind-virus for Texas Tech athletics and the University as a whole? Are Texas Tech graduates and supporters so conditioned to thinking they’re a “have-not” in a world of “haves” that they embrace the Underdog role so much they can’t see all the good things and advantages Texas Tech has now in both sports and academics?
I’ve heard it for years on my radio show.
“We do more with less than anyone!”
”We don’t need 4-star recruits! We can do it with hard-working 1 and 2 star guys like us!”
”I’d rather lose with hard-working kids than win with entitled, pampered prima-donnas!’
You get the idea. You’ve heard it yourself.
As 2022 unfolds, it’s time Texas Tech fans embrace the Have and not the Have-Not aspect of college sports.
By nearly any and all definitions, Texas Tech is a Have school now. Texas Tech’s budget ranks in the top thirty of schools in the country. What Texas Tech spends on football, it’s right up there with the top programs. When it comes to basketball and baseball, Texas Tech has already proven they’re a Have school and not a Have Not. Same goes for Track and Field, Golf, Tennis, you name it.
Texas Tech isn’t a little brother to anyone.
Yet still, it seems like so many Texas Tech fans are afraid to embrace that idea that Texas Tech is a top school, both in Texas and nationally. Both in sports and academics. . .
I think it’s a cop-out.
I think it’s a default to another time that builds in excuses.
I think a lot of folks in West Texas want to perpetuate the myth that we can’t do things out here due to outside influence because it absolves them from accountability. It’s an escape route no matter what happens. Engage in success and it’s all about hard work and how much better we are than others. If we don’t succeed in certain things, we blame Austin or Dallas or the game that’s set up to beat us because we’re in West Texas.
Well, those days are over. Or at least they should be.
Texas Tech has over 40,000 students. Lubbock metro has over 300,000 folks and growing. Lubbock’s economy is diverse. Texas Tech sports is achieving at the highest levels. The time for excuses is over.
Before anyone says this is a generational thing, it’s not.
I hear 20-somethings make excuses just like I hear 70-year olds whine about how West Texas and Texas Tech are held back by outside forces.
It’s not.
It’s only held back by a mind-set of excuses. And those are dying by the day. . .
Texas Tech Basketball will play at Kansas tonight at 8pm. They’ve got a great shot to beat them for the second time this year. Not saying they will, but nothing is holding them back. Mark Adams squad, right now, today, in 2022 has every bit the right and chance to beat one of the greatest programs in college basketball history. If they don’t, it won’t be because the fates conspired and Texas Tech can’t do it, it’ll be because Kansas was better tonight.
Texas Tech has earned its spot on the national stage in sports and academics.
It’s time for West Texans and Red Raiders to embrace it, to shed the soft self-limiting bigotry of low-expectations for and for West Texans and Red Raiders to inherit the mantel of greatness that so many folks have worked so hard to create over the generations.
From here it’s possible.
That’s either a cheap slogan or something you really believe in.
What’s it gonna be, West Texans?
