Continuing its exploration of the unthinkable, UTSA will finish among the 40 best college football teams in the world, and it will feel like a disappointment.
Welcome, Roadrunners, to the real big-time, where every inspirational feel-good story turns into, "What have you done for me lately?"
Texas, the first preseason No. 1 ever to be listed as an underdog in its opening game, will provide plenty of week-in, week-out debate-show content, and maybe even a third consecutive trip to the national semifinals.
This time, though, Arch Manning might be on the field for the biggest play.
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And Texas A&M? With an absolutely loaded offensive backfield, plus a season of adjustment under a promising new coach behind them, the Aggies are poised to make college football history:
For a record 86thYear in a row, they will end a season utterly convinced they're a year away from greatness.
But none of those schools boasts the most interesting team in the state, nor do they have the potential to make the entire sport rethink a hierarchy that has existed for at least a half-century.
This fall, Texas Tech will either crash a party or fall on its face. It will either show the power of oil money, or remind everyone of its limits. And if it works out like the Red Raiders hope?
The result won't be overturning one playoff bracket.
It will be "disrupting college athletics."
That's how Tech athletic director Kirby Hocutt put it in a Lubbock Avalanche-Journal story this week about the Red Raiders' unprecedented name, image and likeness (NIL) fundraising.
At a luncheon on Thursday, in which Cody Campbell, the oil billionaire chairman of Tech's board of regents, announced that the school's donor group had raised $63.3 million since early 2022, Hocutt compared Tech's goal to that of athletic revolutionaries.
He mentioned Dick Fosbury, the high-jumping innovator of the Fosbury Flop.
He mentioned Steph Curry, the long-range artist who supercharged a 3-point-shooting takeover of the NBA.
They did not wait for permission," Hocutt said, according to the Avalanche-Journal. "They changed the game, and in doing so, they changed the future. And that is what we are doing at Texas Tech today.
That might sound like a funny way to describe the act of paying college football players a lot of money to play college football, but Hocutt isn't wrong when he describes the impact the Red Raiders might have if they are successful.
Part of this is because of the program's history. Tech has enjoyed its share of great moments and outstanding players, but has not been ranked in the final Top 25 of any season in 16 years. The Red RaidersneverHave finished a season in the final Associated Press Top 10.
They're supposed to be fun. They're supposed to occasionally be good enough to make things difficult for the traditional powers, or to provide an all-time highlight like when Graham Harrell and Michael Crabtree beat UT in 2008.
But they're not supposed to compete for championships. Or they weren't supposed to, anyway.
Campbell, a 43-year-old businessman who played offensive line for coach Mike Leach at Tech in the early 2000s, decided to question that conventional wisdom. He made billions of dollars in the oil and gas industry, and helped start a donor group that has invested more than $300 million in facilities upgrades at Tech.
But lots of other schools have big donors, and lots of other programs have fancy new weight rooms. The novelty at Tech is that Campbell and his group are spending huge amounts of money to attract players.
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His donor group is reported to have $55 million in NIL contracts across all sports at Tech this season. And in football, specifically, the Red Raiders just added the highest-rated transfer class in the country - one featuring 22 players who attended different schools last year.
In other words, they're trying to prove that a program without a track record of high-end success can catch up to the big boys simply by buying its way there. And it just might work.
Last year, the Red Raiders finished 8-5, marking the 15thThey have failed to win at least nine games in a row. Next week, they will open their season at home against Arkansas-Pine Bluff as the No. 23 team in the country, with a chance to climb much higher.
Iowa State and Kansas State, two teams supposedly top contenders for the Big 12 title, didn't exactly look ready to set the world on fire in their opening game in Ireland on Saturday. And if Tech emerges as the best team in that conference, earning a ticket to the College Football Playoff in the process?
The Red Raiders might find themselves on the same field as the Aggies, or the Longhorns.
Ready to disrupt more than one playoff game.
Without having waited for permission.
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