Faith is a slippery concept for a lot of people, myself included. Not to go all Bible-thumping, but I am literally a walking, talking example of “once was lost, but now I’m found.”
That’s on a very personal and spiritual level, of course. But being a sports fan often requires some of that same high-level faith as well.
As a young die-hard fan, you likely start with a baseline of healthy blind faith in the team you love – even if it’s just the laundry you are rooting for, as a Seinfeld episode made famous.
From there, your faith can diverge in a lot of different directions, sort of like those spaghetti models you see on The Weather Channel when a hurricane is headed up the guts of the Gulf of Mexico.
For a while now, it’s been a not-so-fun rollercoaster ride for Texas Tech football fans – their faith tested, lifted, dashed and dumped on the side of the road. But there is an admirable quality with the Red Raiders fanbase that regenerates faith in the offseason and makes every new season seem like the one when Texas Tech turns the corner.
So far, the 2021 campaign has been a microcosm of that with wins that were supposed to be wins interspersed with two black-eye losses against teams that in retrospect were simply more talented, executed better, smelled blood in the water and pounced.
Those outcomes left the Red Raiders at 4-2 before a road trip to Kansas, which was a chance to do something else you can do with faith: Restore it.
Tech did so with a 41-14 triumph against the overmatched, undermanned Jayhawks. Might seem like a small step, but it’s the step that the Red Raiders absolutely had to take, and it was a solid one.
Regardless of the team on the other side, the fact that Texas Tech rolled up 393 yards and limited KU to 151 through three quarters on the way to a 38-0 lead should be a much-needed confidence boost.
This wasn’t a bells-and-whistles game. Far from it. Instead, it was more like a hangover cure with a lot of greasy food and water consumed without anything fancy.
Run the ball, run it again and throw it when absolutely necessary. Henry Colombi and Donovan Smith combined to put the ball up only 25 times and teamed up for 194 yards, but the ground game ground out 244 yards.
As happened to them against Texas and TCU, the Red Raiders simply imposed their will on Saturday, and it worked. That won’t be the case the rest of the season, but the Kansas game came at a perfect time to get back to basics and figure out who can help the most and where – which made even the fourth quarter acceptable, considering that the coaches were able to get a look at younger players in the heat of battle.
Whether or not your faith is moderately restored in Texas Tech after the win is entirely up to you, of course. Some will choose to give the Red Raiders little or no credit for demolishing a bad team. Fair enough.
Without a dog in the hunt, I understand how tough it can be to have your faith dashed – and then be expected to rev back up the enthusiasm after an expected victory. Hell, I have been a Kansas City Chiefs fan since the 1970s, so I endured a lot until the Super Bowl victory. Now … after the first six weeks of the 2021 NFL season, suffice to say (in my best Bill Clinton voice) “I feel your pain.”
Things got better for the Red Raiders on Saturday, and that’s a fact. Whether that carries over into another winnable game at home vs. Kansas State remains to be seen.
But for a few days, there should be a little more faith in where Texas Tech could be headed.
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Randy Rosetta is the Managing Editor of RedRaiderSports.com
Contact him at (806) 407-0188 or RandyRosetta67@gmail.com
Follow on Twitter | @RandyRosetta or @RedRaiderSports
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