History
Texas Tech (then known as Texas Technological College) fielded its first intercollegiate football team during the 1925 season. The team was known as the "Matadors" from 1925 to 1936, a name suggested by the wife of E. Y. Freeland, the first football coach, to reflect the influence of the Spanish Renaissance architecture on campus. In 1932, Texas Tech joined the Border Intercollegiate Athletic Association, also known as the Border Conference. The school's short-lived Matadors moniker was replaced officially in 1937 with "Red Raiders", a nickname bestowed upon them by a sportswriter impressed by their bright Scarlet uniforms that remains to this day. That same year, the team won its first conference championship and was invited to the Sun Bowl. The game was played on January 1, 1938, and resulted in a 7–6 loss to the West Virginia Mountaineers. Texas Tech suffered four more bowl losses before their first postseason win in the 1952 Sun Bowl. Before withdrawing from the Border Conference in 1956, the Red Raiders won eight conference championships and one co-championship, the most held by a Border Conference member.
In 1956, Texas Tech was admitted to the Southwest Conference (SWC) but was ineligible for any title during a four-year probationary period. It gained full SWC membership and began official conference play in 1960. The Red Raiders won conference co-championships in 1976 and 1994. The team remained in the SWC until the conference dissolved in 1996. The university was invited and became a charter member in the South Division of the Big 12 Conference. Texas Tech was the only member in the history of the Big 12 to boast a winning record every year since the conference's formation, until suffering their first losing season in 2011. In 2008, the Red Raiders were one of three football teams involved in the first three way conference division tie.
Read more about this topic: Texas Tech Red Raiders Football
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“It may be well to remember that the highest level of moral aspiration recorded in history was reached by a few ancient Jews—Micah, Isaiah, and the rest—who took no count whatever of what might not happen to them after death. It is not obvious to me why the same point should not by and by be reached by the Gentiles.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“It would be naive to think that peace and justice can be achieved easily. No set of rules or study of history will automatically resolve the problems.... However, with faith and perseverance,... complex problems in the past have been resolved in our search for justice and peace. They can be resolved in the future, provided, of course, that we can think of five new ways to measure the height of a tall building by using a barometer.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)