(Editor’s note: This is part of the Star’s ongoing “Big 12 Blitz” series, where we introduce U of A fans to the on- and off-field need-to-know details surrounding each member of the new 16-team Big 12. Today: Texas Tech University, located in Lubbock, Texas.)
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Greg Hansen is the longtime sports columnist for the Arizona Daily Star and Tucson.com.
You’ll never guess who has dominated Arizona more than any college football team across the last 100 years. Never, never, ever.
Not USC, which is 39-8 against the Wildcats, with 11 consecutive victories.
Not Washington, which is 26-11-1.
On Sept. 14, 2019, Arizona running back Gary Brightwell (23) gets knocked out of bounds just short of the goal line by Texas Tech defensive back Douglas Coleman III (3) in the fourth quarter of the Wildcats’ matchup with the Red Radiers at Arizona Stadium. That was the first time the former Border Conference foes had met in 20 years, with the Wildcats winning 28-14 in Tucson. The once lopsided rivalry will renew this October, again in Tucson.
And not the Oregon Ducks, who are 29-17 against the Wildcats.
The Arizona Wildcats’ football program tussling with the Texas Tech Red Raiders was a seemingly-annual occurrence in the 1940s, ’50s and ’70s. But since 1979, the teams have only met three times. That will change with Arizona joining the Big 12. Pictured, the Wildcats face Tech in Lubbock, Texas, on Oct. 19, 1974.
Store this in your memory: Texas Tech has absolutely owned Arizona’s football program. The Red Raiders are 26-5-2 against the Wildcats. And it’s not that the Techies learned that much about Tucson, either. In their football record book, Tech misspelled Tucson 16 times.
More? The longest losing streak in Arizona football history — 15 consecutive losses — was to Texas Tech, 1937-58.
Now, after meeting just once in the last 35 years, Arizona and Texas Tech will resume their lopsided football rivalry Oct. 5 at Arizona Stadium, a not-so-hostile road venue at which the Red Raiders have gone 13-4-2.
But, of course, this is a new century. Times have changed — a lot.
From 1932-59, the Wildcats and Red Raiders were part of the low-brow Border Conference. The only thing they shared was that they wanted out. Both knew that staying in a conference with Hardin-Simmons, West Texas State, UTEP and New Mexico State would forever limit their appeal, both nationally and locally.
The Red Raiders were so dominant in the Border Conference, both against Arizona and everyone else, that they went 35-3-2 in conference games from 1947-55, winning seven of nine league titles.
They also swept Arizona in nine straight games.
As early as 1948, Texas Tech appealed for admittance to the Southwest Conference, a Texas-strong league that included TCU, Texas A&M, SMU, Baylor, Rice and Texas, as well as Arkansas.
Tech needed five votes to gain admittance to the SWC; it took a decade to get those five votes.
One reason the SWC didn’t want Texas Tech was because the Raiders had twice been placed on NCAA probation for recruiting irregularities. So the Red Raiders waited, cleaned up their act and on May 12, 1956, were unanimously voted to join the SWC.
Joy reigned.
“It’s the greatest day we’ve ever had,’’ Tech quarterback Bob Kilcullen told the Fort Worth Press-Telegram. “They’ll never be sorry they admitted us.’’
In 1961, led by Arizona athletic director Dick Clausen, the Wildcats were the aggressors as a quartet of today’s so-called Four Corner Schools — Utah, BYU, Arizona, ASU — created the Western Athletic Conference.
Both Arizona and Texas Tech were free of the bonds that limited their exposure, but strangely, they continued their lopsided rivalry. The Wildcats and Red Raiders played one another nine consecutive seasons, 1971-79, and the script didn’t change.
In other Texas Tech-to-Tucson connections, it was toward the latter-end of his legendary — if not controversial at times — coaching career, but Bob Knight made McKale Center and Tucson feel like home for Texas Tech when he guided his sixth-seeded Red Raiders to wins over UCLA (78-66) and a Top-10 Gonzaga team (71-69, with a then up-and-coming assistant coach Tommy Lloyd on the Bulldogs bench) to reach the Sweet 16 of the 2005 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. That was the second-to-last time McKale served as an NCAA early-round site.
Texas Tech was 7-1-1 against Arizona in the ’70s before the Wildcats wisely began scheduling other nonconference opponents. Since then, Arizona and Tech have only met in 1988, 1989 and 2020, with Arizona going 2-1.
It’s not that anyone in Tucson misses the trip to Lubbock, Tumbleweed Central, which will never be confused with a weekend football visit to old Pac-12 rivals Stanford, Colorado, Washington and Oregon. There are no tumbleweeds in Palo Alto, California or Boulder, Colorado.
What Arizona and Texas Tech have most in common is a history of failure to win an outright conference championship. It’s head-shaking.
Arizona never won an outright football championship in the WAC or Pac-12; it tied for the title in 1973 and 1993. Texas Tech’s best seasons in the SWC (1960-95) was a tie for first place in 1973, 1976 and 1994. Its best finish in the Big 12 (1996-2024) was a tie for first in 2008.
Imagine the celebration if the Wildcats or Red Raiders ever win an elusive, sitting-on-top-of-everyone Big 12 championship. It might not match the Rose Bowl, but given the hunger at each school, it would be close.
Also away from the football field, Arizona and Texas Tech have some semi-modern hoops history, including this 79-58 UA win over the Red Raiders at McKale Center on Dec. 3, 2013. Pictured, Arizona guard T.J. McConnell dribbles around Texas Tech forward Jordan Tolbert at the top of the key during the second half of the matchup in Tucson.
If there is such a thing as the “greatest” Arizona-Texas Tech football game, UA fans would surely vote for the 1959 game at Arizona Stadium. It was meant to be the end of an era, the last UA-Tech game for the foreseeable future. (They would not play one another again until 1971).
Tech was a three-touchdown favorite that night in Tucson. And why not? The Wildcats had lost 54-6 to a so-so Utah team a week earlier.
Yet the headline in the Daily Star on Nov. 7, 1959 read:
Cats Stun Tech Upset Is One Of Greatest for UA.
The Wildcats won 30-26 and the players carried first-year coach Jim LaRue off the field on their shoulders.
“Lordy, Lordy, Lordy,’’ said LaRue, known as “Gentleman Jim.’’ “It was a great spiritual victory.’’
On that night 65 years ago, after decades of failure against Texas Tech, the football gods finally smiled upon Arizona. The prayers are likely to resume Oct. 5 at Arizona Stadium.
Prior to Arizona joining the Big 12 for 2024-25 and beyond, one of the more recent meetings between any UA and Texas Tech teams came on Sept. 7, 2023, when Nicole Dallin (right) and the Wildcats played Hannah Anderson (left) and the Red Raiders to a 1-1 draw in soccer at Mulcahy Stadium in Tucson. The teams won’t face each other in the Wildcats’ first Big 12 season, but surely will in the years to come.
