Texas Tech turns NIL power, transfer portal wins into College Football Playoff buzz

The hype train is continuing to pick up steam for the Red Raiders ahead of the 2025 college football season. In addition to some key players returning, Texas Tech also went all-in on the transfer portal in an effort to achieve a breakthrough season in Lubbock. With the addition of 21 incoming transfers, many of which are blue chip recruits, the discussion surrounding the football program in Lubbock is now about a conference championship and a spot in the College Football Playoff.

247Sports’ Josh Pate recently paid a visit to Lubbock to take in the Texas Tech football program, and he walked away thinking that the Red Raiders are a legitimate threat in 2025.

“They looked at the landscape and they said, ‘well we print money here, and the rules are what they are for at least one more cycle, so let’s just go all-in. We haven’t had a double-digit win season since 2008, let’s just go all-in.’

“And all-in they went. They took 20 kids, they took 13 blue chip kids. I was out there about three weeks ago and, I’ll tell you this and you can take it for what it is, when you walk around the building there, they look physically… when you watch the players walk around… it looks like you’re in Ann Arbor or Athens.”

Given the way this current roster has been assembled, there’s a growing sense that it’s ‘championship-or-bust’ for the Red Raiders in 2025. The pieces are there, the schedule is favorable, and the expectations are high.

“So I am morbidly fascinated to see how this plays out this fall because there’s a really unique dynamic there. On one hand, they haven’t won 10 or more games since 2008. So you would not classically think of Texas Tech as this pressure cooker of a job. So therefore, you would not think of Joey McGuire as being under disproportionate amounts of pressure this fall. But he is. They don’t care about what their history is, because they’ve never gone all-in on a season like they are now in the past.”

You can watch Pate’s full assessment HERE.

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