Oklahoma football: Primer on Oklahoma-Texas Tech series history
By Chip Rouse
The Oklahoma football Sooners close out the 2022 regular season on the plains of West Texas Saturday night against the Texas Tech Red Raiders.
One thing you can generally count on when these two Big 12 foes get together, there should be quite an aerial show and plenty of points put on the scoreboard.
This will be Oklahoma’s 10th trip to Lubbock, Texas, since 2001. The Sooners have won the last 10 games in the series with Texas Tech and are 7-3 in the last games in Lubbock. The average score in the last 10 Oklahoma visits to Texas Tech has been 40.9 to 31.9 in favor of the Sooners.
Overall, Oklahoma owns a 23-6 record against Texas Tech. The two teams didn’t meet for the first time until 1992. That game was played at Texas Tech with OU winning 34-9. The Sooners and Red Raiders met again the following season in the John Hancock Bowl (also known as the Sun Bowl) in El Paso, Texas. Oklahoma controlled the clock and the scoreboard in the postseason bowl matchup, winning 41-14. Sooner quarterback Cale Gundy was named most valuable player in the game.
Oklahoma and Texas Tech played one more time, in 1995, before the Red Raiders became members of the Big 12 beginning in the 1996 season. In an atypical low-scoring game played in Norman, OU prevailed 17-11. The two teams have played every season since 1996. The Sooners’ Big 12 record versus the Red Raiders is 20-6. Four of those six losses have been in Lubbock.
The most memorable of the 29 total games between OU and Texas Tech was in 2016 in Lubbock, featuring opposing quarterbacks Baker Mayfield of Oklahoma and Patrick Mahomes of Texas Tech. The two teams combined for an NCAA record 1,708 yards of offense (854 by each team) in what ended up in a 66-59 shootout won by Oklahoma.
Mayfield accounted for 564 yards of total offence, completing 27 of 36 passes for 545 yards and seven touchdowns. Joe Mixon had 263 rushing yards and two touchdowns, and wide receiver Dede Westbrook caught nine of Mayfield’s passes for 202 yards and a pair of touchdowns.
Mahomes had a lead part in practically all of the Texas Tech offense in the game. Now, of course, the quarterback of the NFL Kansas City Chiefs, Mahomes threw the ball an extraordinary 88 times, completing 55 of them, for an NCAA record-tying 734 yards and five touchdowns. The Red Raider quarterback also used his legs, running for 85 more yards and a couple of touchdowns.
That 2016 game was not only the greatest game in the relatively short series history between the Sooners and Red Raiders, but one of the greatest offensive displays in the history of college football.