50 Fun Facts About Texas Tech University

Which Texas Tech quarterback, the son of a Major League pitcher, was named MVP of Super Bowl LIV?

Patrick Mahomes once threw for 734 yards in a single game for Texas Tech, and he also pitched in relief for the Red Raiders baseball team.

Which future folk star studied architecture at Texas Tech before dropping out in 1963 for Los Angeles?

John Denver sang with a campus folk group called the Alpine Trio while at Texas Tech, then left to try his luck in the folk clubs of California.

Texas Tech engineering graduate Rick Husband commanded which Space Shuttle on its final flight in 2003?

Columbia broke apart over Texas during reentry, killing Husband and his crew; he had flown to space once before, as a shuttle pilot.

Which humorist sits on horseback in Riding into the Sunset, the bronze statue at the center of Texas Tech?

Will Rogers was a longtime friend of Amon Carter, who dedicated the statue in 1950 and called Texas Tech the ideal setting for it.

Which Texas Tech hand sign was created in 1971 as an answer to the Longhorns' Hook 'em Horns?

Guns Up was the idea of alumnus Glenn Dippel, who was living in Austin and wanted a reply to the Longhorn sign he saw every day.

Who scored 47 points in the 1993 title game for Texas Tech and later became the WNBA's first signed player?

Sheryl Swoopes set a title-game scoring record in the 84–82 win over Ohio State, two years after joining Texas Tech as a transfer from South Plains College.

Texas Tech's men's basketball team lost the 2019 national championship game in overtime to which school?

Virginia won 85–77 in the first title game since 1979 in which both schools were playing for the championship for the first time.

Which Texas Tech mascot became official at the 1954 Gator Bowl by leading the football team out on horseback?

The Masked Rider began as a 1936 prank, when student George Tate borrowed a horse from the college and led the football team out before a game.

By campus tradition, which students may not sit on Texas Tech's Double T Bench, a gift from the class of 1931?

Freshmen are barred from the bench, which is shaped like the school's logo and sits in the courtyard behind the Administration Building.

Texas Tech holds one of the world's largest archives of material on which 20th-century war?

The Vietnam War archive grew out of a 1989 meeting of West Texas veterans called by a Texas Tech history professor who had served in the Navy.

Which Texas Tech basketball coach set the men's Division I record for career wins on New Year's Day 2007?

Bob Knight took the record with a 70–68 win over New Mexico, and when he stepped down in 2008 his son Pat took over the team.

Which Heisman Trophy winner began his college career as a walk-on quarterback at Texas Tech in 2013?

Baker Mayfield started the season opener as a true freshman walk-on, then transferred to Oklahoma, where he won the Heisman four years later.

Scott Pelley, who studied journalism at Texas Tech, anchored the evening news on which network from 2011 to 2017?

CBS added viewers under Pelley, who had left Texas Tech a few credit hours short of finishing his journalism degree.

Texas Tech engineering graduate Ed Whitacre, a former AT&T chief, became chairman and CEO of which automaker?

General Motors named him chairman as it emerged from bankruptcy in 2009; a year earlier Texas Tech's engineering college had been renamed in his honor.

What were Texas Tech's athletic teams called from 1925 until they became the Red Raiders in 1936?

Matadors was the suggestion of the first football coach's wife, and the name lives on in the school's alma mater, The Matador Song.

Which pair of school colors, made official at a 1926 convocation, do Texas Tech's athletic teams wear?

Scarlet and black were chosen by the first students, and one story says bright new uniforms in that shade of red later inspired the nickname Red Raiders.

Texas Tech became a founding member of which conference when the Southwest Conference broke up in the mid-1990s?

The Big 12 joined four Texas schools with the eight members of another league; Texas Tech's old conference had rejected it eight times before letting it in.

Wind engineers at Texas Tech developed the Enhanced Fujita Scale, which rates the strength of which natural hazard?

Tornadoes became a Texas Tech specialty after a 1970 twister killed 26 people in Lubbock and the university set up a disaster research institute.

Which December tradition sees 13 Texas Tech buildings glow with more than 25,000 red, white and orange bulbs?

The Carol of Lights began with a 1959 display that students never saw, because it was switched on while they were away for Christmas break.

Which Texas Tech receiver caught the winning touchdown with one second left to upset No. 1 Texas in 2008?

Michael Crabtree caught the pass in double coverage and slipped a tackler on the sideline; he won the Biletnikoff Award as the top college receiver in 2007 and 2008.

Which Texas Tech receiver, undrafted in 2004, went on to lead the NFL in receptions three times with New England?

Wes Welker was offered his Texas Tech scholarship only after another recruit backed out, yet he became a five-time Pro Bowl pick with the Patriots.

Texas Tech linebacker Zach Thomas, a Pro Football Hall of Famer, played from 1996 to 2007 for which NFL team?

Miami Dolphins scouts took him only in the fifth round of the draft, yet he led the NFL in tackles twice and made seven Pro Bowls.

Texas Tech's Donny Anderson, nicknamed the Golden Palomino, won the first two Super Bowls with which team?

Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi used him as a punter too, and Anderson pioneered hang time by kicking the ball high rather than far.

Which former Texas Tech quarterback returned as head football coach in 2013 and later led the Arizona Cardinals?

Kliff Kingsbury won the Sammy Baugh Trophy as the nation's top college passer in 2002 and came back to coach his old team just eleven years later.

Which Texas Tech football coach, nicknamed the Pirate, ran the pass-heavy Air Raid offense from 2000 to 2009?

Mike Leach left as the winningest coach in school history, and he lectured his players on the history of eighteenth-century pirates.

Texas Tech ROTC graduate Charles Brown Jr. became in 2020 the first African American to lead which military branch?

The Air Force made Brown its chief of staff in 2020; he had earned a civil engineering degree at Texas Tech and was commissioned through ROTC in 1984.

Campus legend says the horse's rear on the Red Raiders' statue Riding into the Sunset points at which rival school?

Texas A&M is the target in the tale, which says engineers turned the statue 23 degrees; surveys show the rear points between College Station and Austin.

What do Texas Tech students wrap around the statue Riding into the Sunset before every home football game?

Red crepe paper goes on before every home game, and the statue has also been wrapped in dark crepe to mourn national tragedies.

Which Texas Tech spirit organization, founded in 1936, is the oldest student group on campus?

Saddle Tramps founder Arch Lamb took the name in 1936 from hired hands who would tackle any job on a spread and then move on.

Which architectural style defines the oldest buildings on Texas Tech's campus in Lubbock?

Spanish Renaissance details were borrowed from the University of Alcalá in Spain and Mission San José in San Antonio, and the oldest part of campus is now a listed historic district.

What is the name of the horse in Riding into the Sunset, Texas Tech's 3,200-pound bronze dedicated in 1950?

Soapsuds posed for sculptor Electra Waggoner Biggs, who then hired a New York police horse and a veterinarian to help her get the animal's anatomy right.

What is Bangin' Bertha, the Texas Tech spirit-raiser donated by the Santa Fe Railroad and hauled to home games?

A bell mounted on a trailer, Bertha was designed in 1959, and a 2012 conference rule barred such noisemakers while the ball is in play.

Texas Tech's 27-acre museum of relocated bunkhouses, windmills and dugouts preserves the history of which industry?

Ranching is the theme of the National Ranching Heritage Center, which gathered its buildings from across Texas, including an 1855 log dogtrot house from Mason County.

Which crop appears ten times on the Texas Tech seal, once for Lubbock and each of nine surrounding counties?

Cotton bolls honor the area's main industry on a seal that was designed in 1924 yet did not appear on a diploma until 1948.

Texas Tech engineers unveiled a rock said to be part of which Irish landmark on St. Patrick's Day 1939?

The Blarney Stone fragment was said to have been found by petroleum engineers on a field trip, and nobody recorded how its origin was confirmed.

In which sport did Texas Tech win its first men's NCAA team championship, in 2019 under coach Wes Kittley?

Outdoor track delivered the title just two months after the men's basketball team fell one win short of the same milestone.

Former Red Raiders third baseman Josh Jung won the 2023 World Series with which Major League club?

Texas Rangers scouts made him the eighth pick of the 2019 draft, three years after every club had passed on him coming out of high school.

Texas Tech graduate Demetrio Lakas served as president of which Central American country from 1969 to 1978?

Panama's leader was the son of Greek immigrants and was nicknamed Jimmy the Greek; Texas Tech named him a distinguished alumnus in 1970.

Which coach, who led the Lady Raiders to the 1993 national title, has a Lubbock freeway named in her honor?

Marsha Sharp won 572 games in 24 years at Texas Tech without a single losing season, and entered the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in 2003.

Which Lubbock grocery chain bought the naming rights to Texas Tech's basketball arena in 1996, before it opened?

United Supermarkets agreed to pay $10 million over 20 years, and the building was known as the United Spirit Arena until 2014.

Texas Tech theater alumnus Barry Corbin earned two Emmy nominations as a former astronaut on which 1990s TV series?

Northern Exposure cast him as Maurice Minnifield; Corbin had broken off his Texas Tech studies to serve two years in the Marine Corps before returning.

Which Texas Tech graduate, governor of Texas from 1969 to 1973, gives his name to Lubbock's international airport?

Preston Smith stayed in Lubbock after graduating in 1934 and went into the movie theater trade before he entered politics.

Golfer Ludvig Åberg, who turned professional in 2023 after starring for Texas Tech, represents which country?

Sweden's Åberg won on both the PGA Tour and the European Tour within five months of turning professional, and played on a winning Ryder Cup team.

Which carmaker named a model after Electra Waggoner Biggs, sculptor of Texas Tech's Riding into the Sunset?

Buick's Electra was named for her by her brother-in-law Harlow Curtice, a former president of the division.

By school lore, Texas Tech's Goin' Band from Raiderland earned its name as the first college band to do what?

The chance to travel to an away game came in the 1920s, when a famous humorist helped pay for the band's trip to Fort Worth to play at TCU.

Until 1935, Texas Tech students could bring which of their own animals to campus and market the products?

Cows were kept at the Dairy Barn, where students sold milk through their own association; later students raised the money to preserve the building.

The class of 1938 gave Texas Tech's football stadium a Double T that was reputedly the world's largest what?

The neon sign went up on the east side of the stadium, and a second glowing Double T was added to the west side in 1987.

Texas Tech University maintains a satellite campus in Europe in which city in Spain?

Seville is one of two Texas Tech campuses abroad; the other is across the Atlantic in Escazú, Costa Rica.

Which West Texas school joined the Texas Tech system after voters amended the Texas Constitution in 2007?

Angelo State left a rival university system for Texas Tech's after its own alumni association voted to request the switch.

Which Friday Night Lights actor earned his high school diploma through Texas Tech's distance learning program in 2007?

Jesse Plemons was already playing Landry Clarke on the show when he graduated, and he later earned an Oscar nomination for The Power of the Dog.