Pat Forde: It’s Texas Tech vs. Everybody—Just How the Red Raiders Like It

It’s Texas Tech Week in college sports. How is everyone feeling about that?

Not too pleased, it seems. Armed with bravado, bluster and a brash billionaire, the Red Raiders have been crowding into areas that were previously off-limits.

They’re in the courtroom, shamelessly pushing a dubious legal argument on behalf of their currently ineligible quarterback. They’re in a Congressional committee room, cowboy boots on the table. They’re in the Big 12 boardroom, acting like they own the place. They’re on the softball diamond, talking junk and backing it up. They’re all over social media, taunting Texas and anyone else put off by their nouveau riche power trip.

And this week, we have reached Peak Tech.

Tech vs. NCAA bylaws

The biggest story in college football at the moment is in Lubbock District Court, where multimillion-dollar transfer quarterback Brendan Sorsby is hoping for a temporary injunction that will allow him to play this season for Tech. He was declared ineligible for breaking almost every sports wagering rule on the NCAA books—betting on his own team while at Indiana, betting on other teams at Indiana and Cincinnati, and betting on other college and pro sports. The only thing he hasn’t been accused of is game-fixing.

Confronted with $90,000 worth of impermissible wagers at three different schools, Sorsby spent a month at a gambling treatment facility. He offered to take a two-game suspension, which is like putting in a $100,000 offer on a million-dollar house. Now he’s hoping a judge will completely undermine NCAA bylaws because, on paper, Tech is one good quarterback away from national championship contention.

Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby goes through warmups before the spring football game in April. | Nathan Giese/Avalanche-Journal / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Tech president Lawrence Schovanec wrote a letter to the school community advocating for Sorsby’s eligibility to be restored. It included this gem: “The NCAA bylaws governing Brendan’s case have not adapted to the era of widespread legalized sports betting that this generation of college athletes now has to navigate.” Sounds good, until you factor in that Schovanec’s school voted last fall to rescind what would have been more permissive NCAA gambling legislation.

A court ruling on Sorsby’s injunction request could come at any time. If Sorsby wins, the backlash in college football will be audible from coast to coast.

Tech vs. handshake lines

Wednesday night, Texas Tech and Texas begin play in the Women’s College World Series championship round, a rematch of last year’s final won by the Longhorns. The Red Raiders’ route back to this spot went through the Southeastern Conference—a super-regional victory at Florida, then WCWS victories over Mississippi State and Alabama and a loss to Tennessee. Feelings were bruised along the way.

The freest softball spenders in the NIL market brought in star transfers from both Florida and Tennessee.

Mia Williams arrived from Florida and hit decisive home runs against her old team. She was also plunked multiple times by pitches. That escalated tensions in the stands, where Williams’s father, former Florida basketball star Jason, was making a spectacle of himself by taunting Gators fans. He was ejected but allowed to return, and wound up on the field addressing the Tech team after they won the series.

In the WCWS, a she-said/she-said imbroglio erupted after the Texas Tech–Tennessee game, with former Vol Taylor Pannell accusing Tennessee coach Karen Weekly of telling her in the postgame handshake line that she made a mistake by transferring. Weekly called that “an outright lie,” and video of the handshake line seems to confirm the coach’s version of events.

Pannell’s father, Brandon, reportedly fired off several shots on X after that controversy, then deleted them. (If there is one thing we need less of from Texas Tech softball, it’s parental grandstanding. Some dads seem to think they’re the stars of the show when they’re not even in the cast. Let your daughters handle it.)

Tech vs. trash talk

Karma did its part in promoting Tech Week by pitting the Red Raiders against the Longhorns in the WCWS final. This has become a proxy battle for a dormant-but-volcanic football feud, the kind that simmers constantly in the Lone Star State.

More than a few Texas Tech fans reveled in making the 2025–26 College Football Playoff while almighty Texas sat that one out. (As in softball, Tech’s football rise is attributable to money-whipping the competition in the transfer portal.) Longhorns fans, in return, scoffed at Tech’s schedule—both last year and this coming year. Horns coach Steve Sarkisian took it a step further at a booster event in Houston last month.

“There’s a team in our state, in another conference, with a schedule that I would argue, if I played with our twos and threes [second and third teams], we could go undefeated,” Sark said. “And they’ll probably make the CFP this year.”

That led to a great puffing out of Red Raider chests. Coach Joey McGuire declared at Big 12 spring meetings last week, “If they want to play Week 1, then we’re ready. We would love to play the University of Texas.”

Easier said than done, of course, with schedules already set. McGuire ruminated on both teams buying out their opening opponents—Tech is playing Abilene Christian, Texas is playing Texas State—to pave the way. Then the previously mentioned billionaire, former Tech football player Cody Campbell, piped up—certainly not for the first time, nor for the last—by declaring that Tech (meaning himself) would pay both buyouts to facilitate the game, in either Lubbock or AT&T Stadium in Arlington.

Upping the ante: @TechAthletics will pay the buyout for both the ACU and Texas State games. Let’s go!!! @CoachSark @_delconte https://t.co/IX637eSYmX
— Cody Campbell (@CodyC64) May 28, 2026

This prompted some Longhorns fan to commence a quién es más macho war of words on X last Friday, challenging Campbell to “an Oklahoma Drill. Name the time and place.” (For the uninitiated, an Oklahoma Drill is a one-on-one, brute-force football trench battle.) Campbell declared that he would accept the invitation in his backyard, that night. The posturing eventually ended with Campbell declaring, “All I need is a Miller Lite and a jock strap. Bring it!”

If this seems like crass talk from the chairman of the Texas Tech board of regents and co-founder of Double Eagle Energy, welcome to the South Plains. It certainly fits in well with the current WWE style of governance in America, which is also an agenda item in Tech Week.

Tech vs. the future of college sports

A U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation hearing is scheduled for Wednesday morning, part of the effort by Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) to pass the “Protect College Sports Act,” bipartisan legislation that they introduced last week.

The lineup of witnesses for the hearing include Nick Saban, Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua and Pac-12 commissioner Teresa Gould. The unseen guiding hand in the background belongs to Campbell, whose fingerprints are on the legislation. He has powerful allies in Cruz and, to some extent, President Donald Trump, who has leaned on Campbell for guidance in navigating college sports issues.

Part of the bill, over strident objections from the two most powerful conferences in the country, the Big Ten and the SEC, is the potential for a pooling of media rights among leagues. That would level the playing field for schools in the ACC and Big 12—including Texas Tech. Naturally, Campbell is the person pushing hardest for it.

Campbell made ripples last fall by buying advertising airtime during college football games to promote his “Save College Sports” agenda and has maintained the pressure since then. This week, that group sent a letter to lawmakers ahead of the hearing. (One problem: LSU president Wade Rousse, whose name is on the letter, says he never signed on to it.)

When not posturing on X, Campbell is the most prominent voice pushing for substantive changes in college sports. That prominence seemed to happen overnight last year, as the former offensive lineman at Tech embarked with missionary zeal to become a major player in that realm. With the swagger of a gunslinger bursting through the swinging doors of an old South Plains saloon, he’s throwing his weight (and wallet) around.

That includes firing back at the Big 12 for moving the Tech-Houston football game this fall to a Friday night, which interferes with the unofficial state religion of high school ball. Campbell called out commissioner (and native New Yorker) Brett Yormark for that. Yormark responded by telling the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, “Cody Campbell does not run the Big 12.”

Campbell, in response, on X: “Apparently Brett didn’t get the memo. EVERYTHING RUNS THROUGH LUBBOCK!!”

This is the current mindset at Texas Tech, where the upstarts are making a push in the always-competitive Most Obnoxious Fan Base in Texas race. The Lone Star State is the most contentious place in the football universe when it comes to one-upping thy neighbors, even when the takeover attempts by have-nots tend to end badly. (See: SMU in the 1980s, Baylor in the 2010s.)

The Red Raiders are taking their swings. America is taking notice. And taking sides. Here in the middle of Texas Tech Week, it’s them against all y’all. And they love it.

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