TTU and Oregon

 

Texas Tech’s football team had a very good season, winning the Big 12 twelve conference championship and being seeded as one of the top four teams in the country for the playoffs. Then it lost to Oregon 23-0. Some people took the loss as a sign that the program was not ready for prime time and unable to compete against the top teams in the country. I think they were wrong. TTU’s defense performed very well in the game. The offense failed completely from play calling, to line play, to the running backs, receivers, and especially the quarterback, but I do not think this indicated Tech being completely over matched. Oregon had a good team, but its defense had given up 34 points to James Madison, 24 points to a Penn State team so bad that its coach got fired in the middle of the season, and , of course, got humiliated against Indiana in the next round of the playoffs. Experts say offenses need to get in a rhythm. TTU’s got off to a bad start, and things just went downhill. I have seen similar things in super bowls where it is safe to assume both teams were ready for prime time. To me it seems better to write the game off as one where the offense picked a bad time for its worst performance and not to relapse into the old TTU inferiority complex.