Three Thoughts - Texas Tech's Dream Season Ends at Orange Bowl as Ducks Suffocated Affair
New Year's Day provided an offensive test too stiff for Behren Morton and entire crew.
—(presented without an editor, so forgive the occasional typo)—
This was never close to being the day that Texas Tech had hoped it would be. Here they are at the Orange Bowl on New Year’s Day. The dizzying heights of a bye week and a chance to kick down the door to college football’s highest stage was right there, but so was an Oregon Ducks program that is absolutely loaded and capable of winning the entire national championship.
I know Joey McGuire doesn’t want anyone to make excuses for his guys, but college football should strongly consider altering the format where the 5-8 seeds get a home game in this tournament, but the 1-4 seeds do not. Instead, we want to send both teams across the country on New Year’s Day to play a Bowl game in a city that is not that interested in hosting the game with plenty of empty seats obvious to all watching on TV. Why are there empty seats? Because nobody has the budget to travel to see your team play three times in one month in three different neutral cities – even oil men. Instead, we reward Oregon with a home game and then they get to demolish James Madison as a prep for their neutral field game with Tech where is no disadvantage whatsoever. Heck, Tech’s lack of a home game isn’t even somewhat mitigated by allowing them to play in Dallas or Houston or somewhere where they could still enjoy the home vibes. Instead, here is Miami at 11am central time and, like I said, this does sound like I am making excuses here.
I just think the format is better than no format, but it does feel like nobody thought about any of these pretty obvious pitfalls along the way. Now, we aren’t sure if having a bye week is an advantage or a disadvantage? Guys, this is basic stuff. We know rest is a massive advantage, but then you undo it with having them play in Miami. If you want a proper advantage, then send Oregon to Lubbock and compound it with the rest and the noise and the tortillas. I promise you that will rattle cages and it also would if Miami is headed to the Big Horseshoe rather than AT&T Stadium when they play the Buckeyes.
If we want the top seeds to be rewarded for their seasons, let’s actually reward them. The Orange Bowl is an antique of a different time anyway and so is the Cotton Bowl and the Fiesta and the Sugar. Why are we spending so much time and effort with keeping them happy when we know the answer is to give the schools home games and atmospheres. This is pretty simple. If we want to move ahead in College Football, let’s do it. Home games all throughout the playoffs and then the potential for either a Final Four in the same city or just the final game in your Super Bowl cities like normal.
But, again, this all sounds like what I might be tempted to lead with when Oregon beats the living daylights out of Texas Tech after we spent all month anticipating Tech’s opportunity to announce their national presence with authority. They were pounded and shut-out and never were really in the game. They were smoked and seemingly completely outclassed by the Ducks, 23-0, and any idea of this being a Red Raiders Championship season have quickly disappeared.
That is football, after all. You build and march and dream for months and months. Then, it all disappears in one afternoon and you are left in rubble and ashes. It is over in an instant and you wonder how it went so badly, so quickly. In a 12-team playoff, 11 teams meet their demise and most of those deaths are painful and leave plenty of emptiness and 1,000-yard stares from the loyalists. Tech fans are there today. It was pain and it was despair on the faces of those caught by the cameras. This was not how it was supposed to end.
But, again, this is downside of the championship chase. Bad teams never meet this sort of pain. Only those who built up the hope and belief can then hurt you at this level and the 2025 Texas Tech campaign did all of that. The pain usually comes with the dream and that is what Tech must deal with now.
These are My Three Thoughts on Oregon 23, Texas Tech 0:
