Texas Tech’s bank account is the college football storyline that keeps on giving.

In February, the team released a glitzy video tour of its new, $242 million football facility, including “a spot for our Big 12 trophy.” That came on the heels of a lavish transfer-portal haul bought with top-dollar name, image and likeness deals, much of it funded by ambitious, oil-rich megadonors. The Red Raiders spent north of $25 million on their football roster this season, and — unlike most other programs when it comes to talking money — weren’t shy about it.

Coming from a program that has never appeared in the Big 12 Championship Game (held 23 times), nor won a Big 12 title (across 29 seasons), the big-budget bravado elicited plenty of eye rolls across the sport. Some of it stemmed from jealousy, sure, but some of it raised valid skepticism about the Tech hype train.

“They’ve built the best team money can buy,” one Big 12 head coach told The Athletic this offseason. “But if they don’t win the Big 12, holy cow.”

No. 8 Texas Tech hasn’t brought home any hardware yet, but at 9-1 and fresh off a blowout victory Saturday over No. 7 BYU, that offseason spree is looking like money well spent.

The Red Raiders bullied BYU in Lubbock, 29-7, delivering the Cougars’ first loss of the season and establishing a clear Big 12 favorite. Tech’s top-10 defense continued its form, limiting BYU to 255 total yards and just 67 on the ground, well below BYU’s season average of 216.6 rushing yards per game. The Cougars turned the ball over three times and didn’t score until midway through the fourth quarter. With ESPN’s “College GameDay” on campus for the first time since 2008 and Patrick Mahomes in attendance, Texas Tech put its guns up.

Head coach Joey McGuire said he spent the week talking to his players about the outsized opportunity against BYU in the context of Texas Tech’s history.

“And I thought they thrived,” McGuire told reporters after the win.

Made a statement. pic.twitter.com/LAu6JCaEnP

— Texas Tech Football (@TexasTechFB) November 10, 2025

The story of Tech’s oil-dipped transformation is well-trodden territory. The school’s NIL collective, led by billionaire oil booster and university board chair Cody Campbell, saw an opportunity to go all in this past offseason ahead of the House v. NCAA settlement. Money was no object, allowing McGuire, general manager James Blanchard and the rest of Tech’s staff to essentially double-dip when building its roster, pairing frontloaded collective payments with the incoming revenue share pool.

Texas Tech was not the only program to employ this method, nor was it the first to splash a bunch of cash in the transfer portal. But the school isn’t a traditional power, either, so the new kid on the block putting its money where its mouth is quickly became the poster child for teams trying to buy its way to a conference title and College Football Playoff spot.

Regardless of how you feel about that approach, the plan is working. Following the win over BYU, Texas Tech is atop the Big 12 standings at 6-1 with only two regular-season games remaining: home Saturday for UCF (4-5), then a bye week, then at West Virginia (4-6) in the finale. The nonconference slate was a cakewalk, but the Red Raiders do have league wins over Utah (No. 13 in last week’s CFP rankings) and Houston, in addition to BYU, and a lone loss suffered at reigning Big 12 champion Arizona State with quarterback Behren Morton sidelined due to injury.

Tech will at least move up into BYU’s No. 7 spot in Tuesday night’s new batch of CFP rankings, with the possibility that a top-10 victory could nudge it ahead of Ole Miss and even Georgia into the top five. Either way, if Tech wins out, it’s in the Big 12 Championship Game, and may even be a lock for the CFP by that point, win or lose. The Athletic’s projection model gives Texas Tech a 79 percent chance to make the Playoff.

To quote Don Draper, “That’s what the money is for!” But we’ve seen plenty of teams in this new era burn through stacks of NIL dollars with little to show for it. The key for Texas Tech is that it identified and invested in the right mix of players, whether they were added via the portal or homegrown recruits Tech ponied up to retain. McGuire, Blanchard, Campbell and company deserve credit for combining scouting evaluations with advanced analytics assessments. And McGuire has the ability to charm all that money and personality into a cohesive, winning locker room.

Defensive backs Cole Wisniewski (North Dakota State) and Brice Pollock (Mississippi State) have locked down the back end. Receiver Reggie Virgil (Miami Ohio) and tight end Terrance Carter Jr. (Louisiana) have bolstered the passing attack alongside leading receiver Caleb Douglas, who transferred in from Florida before the 2024 season.

The Red Raiders also retained Morton at quarterback and have leaned on a pair of homegrown sophomore running backs in Cameron Dickey and J’Koby Williams after losing USC transfer Quinten Joyner to a preseason knee injury. Leading tackler Jacob Rodriguez feels homegrown at this point, too. The Texas native transferred back home from Virginia in 2022, and Tech converted him from gadget QB to linebacker, where he’s developed into a no-doubt All-American, leading the FBS with seven forced fumbles.

“You can’t say that Jacob Rodriguez, at his position, is not playing at (a Heisman Trophy) level, an elite level,” McGuire said Saturday.

But the biggest reason for the team’s success — and the reason it might have the horses to contend for more than just a Big 12 championship — is how Texas Tech invested in the trenches.

The transfer fab five of edge rushers David Bailey (Stanford) and Romello Height (Georgia Tech) and interior linemen Lee Hunter (UCF), Skyler Gill-Howard (Northern Illinois) and A.J. Holmes Jr. (Houston) have haunted opposing offenses. Bailey, a potential first-round NFL Draft pick, arrived in spring after Stanford fired coach Troy Taylor and leads the FBS in sacks at 11.5. Height, his 6-foot-3 running mate, has six sacks on the opposite side, with blistering speed and vice-grip hands. Hunter is a 330-pound brick house in the center that demands double teams.

They anchor a defensive unit with an FBS-best 162 pressures this season, according to TruMedia statistics, and get pressure on 39.2 percent of opponents’ dropbacks, which is seventh-best in the FBS, according to Pro Football Focus. They also create that pressure without having to bring extra rushers: Tech’s blitz rate is only 18.7 percent, seventh-lowest among power conference teams. It also has the second-best rush defense in the FBS, allowing just 2.4 yards per carry.

A group worth more than $7 million, according to ESPN, looks like a bargain and is the type of nightmare no opposing team wants to game plan against.

“Winning a (championship),” Height said this offseason. “That’s the main objective.”

The starting offensive line has more than held its own as well, featuring three transfers, two from this offseason. Texas Tech has allowed a pressure rate of 23.5 percent, according to PFF, which is ninth-lowest — meaning ninth-best — in the FBS.

Newcomers have helped elevate Tech to one of only two schools that currently rate top five in both scoring offense and defense; the other is Indiana. Yet the most consequential piece of roster building may have been the position the Red Raiders did not shop for.

Morton, a lifelong Tech fan who was born in Lubbock, played well enough as the full-time starter in 2024 that Texas Tech didn’t feel the need to upgrade the position this offseason. The program did its due diligence, but didn’t evaluate a quarterback in the portal it felt was a better investment. Morton has largely backed that up, completing 65.7 percent of his passes for nearly 2,000 yards with 16 touchdowns and four interceptions; his 9.1 yards per attempt and 163.05 QB rating both rank top 10 in the FBS.

But Morton’s health has been the issue, as it has been his entire college career. He battled through a shoulder injury in 2023 that lingered into 2024, leading to surgery that forced him to miss last year’s bowl game. This season, he’s missed portions of two games and sat out two others — including the loss to ASU — with a right leg injury, which ESPN sideline reporter Holly Rowe reported Saturday is a hairline fracture to Morton’s fibula. He’s been wearing a special protective plate inside his sock.

Morton is managing the pain, as evidenced by his limping and grimacing against BYU, but it’s not an injury that’s likely to fully heal before the season ends. Second-string quarterback Will Hammond tore his ACL while starting in place of Morton against Oklahoma State and is out for the year, removing a serviceable backup plan.

The loss to Arizona State proved that even with all those expensive reinforcements up and down the depth chart, the Red Raiders need to keep Morton upright to keep their Big 12 and Playoff aspirations intact. If they can, aided by some of that prime angus beef Tech imported up front, the potential is there.

“Dreaming of this moment, this is huge. But expecting this moment — this is what we expected,” said McGuire. “There is so much more in front of this team if we stay focused and keep coming to work every day.”

Texas Tech is dressing for the job it wants in 2025, with the receipts to prove it. So far, it’s been good business.