MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — Before Texas Tech’s historic season thudded to the ground at Hard Rock Stadium, and before the team’s credibility and worthiness underwent wholesale examination, Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark acknowledged that the conference does need “outlier schools to separate themselves” as chief flagbearers of the league.
The Red Raiders, he believes, are on the precipice of that role.
Playoff win or no playoff win.
“There’s got to be a first,” Texas Tech head coach Joey McGuire said after a 23-0 loss to Oregon in the Orange Bowl quarterfinals, “and this was the first group that was able to do that.”
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The same could’ve been said after TCU stormed to the national championship game three years ago. The Horned Frogs failed to capitalize on that momentum, though, and in turn failed to sustain themselves as the conference’s king. Ditto for Arizona State, which, after a College Football Playoff run last season, won just seven regular-season games this season and placed sixth within the league.
It is by no means easy to sustain success in college football’s transactional era. The team that knocked Tech from the playoffs, though, are an example of what money well spent can look like. The team that they should aspire to be, top-ranked Indiana, is proof that one-year wonders can be built into multi-year winners with the right man in charge.
The Red Raiders have both.
It’s time to capitalize.
Oregon head coach Dan Lanning, center right, talks with Texas Tech head coach Joey McGuire at the end of the Orange Bowl College Football Playoff quarterfinal game, Thursday, Jan. 1, 2026, in Miami Gardens, Fla. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
Rebecca Blackwell / AP
“This shouldn’t discredit them,” Oregon head coach Dan Lanning said of the Red Raiders. “I remember this feeling last year when you have a really good team, you play really good football all year, and then it comes to an end.”
The Ducks earned a first-round bye in last year’s postseason but were bounced by eventual champion Ohio State in the quarterfinal. They then spent a reported sum of more than $20 million in name, image and likeness funds to rebuild one of college football’s most talented rosters, signed a top-five transfer class and ensured that quarterback Dante Moore had ample weapons at his disposal for a deeper postseason run.
Cody Campbell, Tech’s billionaire booster and college football disruptor, promised to “double down” on resources in a social media post after Thursday’s loss. The Red Raiders, like the Ducks, were already among the sport’s biggest spenders and built a championship-caliber defense because of that. They’ve already been linked to two of the portal’s best available defenders in Oklahoma State edge Wendell Gregory and Kansas State linebacker Austin Romaine to help fortify a defense that’ll lose its top playmakers to the NFL draft.
Their offense — which became the first team in nearly a decade to be shut out in the playoffs — could use a few dollars thrown toward it. The Red Raiders reportedly hosted former Cincinnati quarterback Brendan Sorsby on a visit Friday afternoon.
Sorsby, a Lake Dallas alum, is the second-ranked quarterback available in the transfer portal per 247Sports.com. He passed for 7,208 and 60 touchdowns in three combined seasons at Cincinnati and Indiana and earned All-Big 12 second-team honors this year. Sorsby’s reported price tag of $4 million is a worthwhile investment if he can have any impact close to the one that Heisman Trophy winner and California transfer Fernando Mendoza had on the Hoosiers in his first season with the upstart program.
Thursday’s loss should not dissuade the Red Raiders from further commitment. The current College Football Playoff structure — and, if Yormark has his way, any potential expansion models — should guarantee the Big 12’s top team entry into the dance. The leveled field, made possible by the portal and direct university-to-athlete payments, has narrowed the gap between college football’s blue bloods and everyone else.
Ole Miss, new head coach and all, knocked off Georgia in the Sugar Bowl Thursday night. The Hoosiers — who, like Tech, lose their first-ever playoff game last season and might’ve been expected to fizzle — beat Ohio State in the Big 10 championship game to clinch the bracket’s top seed and throttled Alabama in the Rose Bowl to make the playoff committee look smart for the decision. Miami, the controversial last-at-large-team-in, dismantled the Buckeyes in the Cotton Bowl two weeks after it eked out a win at Kyle Field.
Those, possibly, are outliers.
The Red Raiders should strive to be classified as one.
“You know how the transfer portal works now,” Tech wide receiver Coy Eakin said Tuesday. “We’ve brought in a lot of great players. I think what’s really sustained us is our culture. We do have a lot of transfers coming in and all of the portal buzz and all of that, but every time a transfer comes in, they buy into this program. It’s not like it’s just a lot of talented players coming together — which it is — but we’re fighting as one.”
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Horn started 14 games in his three-year career, with the bulk of them coming in 2024.
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Sorsby, who has also scheduled a trip to LSU, is the No. 1-ranked quarterback in the transfer portal, according to On3 and ESPN.
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The Red Raiders’ season ended Thursday in heartbreak fashion at the hands of Oregon in the CFP quarterfinals.
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