HAPPINESS WON'T BE LUBBOCK IN REARVIEW MIRROR

by Larry Carlson ( lc13@txstate.edu)

The very possibility that Sept. 24, 2022 will be the last time the Texas Longhorns head 'em up and move 'em out on the cattle drive to Lubbock for a South Plains pigskin duel against Texas Tech has me a tad uneasy. It's enough to make the late, great Buddy Holly, Lubbock's greatest export, turn over in his grave. Had you suggested a few years ago that the UT-TTU rivalry was nearing an end, I would've quoted the rock'n'roll savant from one of his greatest songs: "That'll be the day."

But with UT's impending move to the SEC likely coming sooner, not later, the chance is real. A year ago the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal reported that officials from both schools "agreed in principal" that the rivalry would continue as a non-conference deal following UT's exit from the Big XII. Tech wants and needs the home-and-home interest and money that comes with the rivalry. Athletic Director Kirby Hocutt of Texas Tech this month reiterated the school's desire to continue playing UT. Texas AD Chris Del Conte has stated that he's not in position to schedule non-conference games because nobody yet knows how many conference games will be played when the Horns and arch-rival Oklahoma join SEC warfare.

Scan the all-time Longhorns-Red Raiders ledger and it wouldn't appear to be much of a rivalry. Texas leads it, 54-17. But hard numbers don't tell the full story. The teams have been duking it out yearly since the Raiders first began Southwest Conference play in 1960. I was in the Memorial Stadium house as a seven-year-old that September for a 17-0 Longhorn win, and again the next year (before scheduling began to rotate Lubbock and Austin for play) for a 42-14 pasting of the guys represented by the cool masked rider who galloped around the track on a midnight-black horse.

My Dad told me that I didn't need to hate Tech the way we hated all other foes. He told me the Raiders' coach, JT KIng, had played for the Longhorns and had been an assistant coach at UT, and that Tech was really no threat to the Steers. Fair enough.

I learned to hate 'em soon enough. The pesky Red Raiders beat the Horns in conference openers in '67 and '68, the latter a shocking gut punch in Lubbock. That loss at least had a silver lining. It turned into a wake-up call that put James Street in as operator of the newfangled Texas wishbone, launching thirty straight victories.

Tech has dished the pain to Texas periodically on the Caprock, with particularly crushing wins in '74, '86, '98, and '02 but most notably in 2008.

Coach Mike Leach's swashbucklers, ranked sixth, utilized Michael Crabtree's last-grab heroics for a 39-33 outcome that might well have cost the top-ranked burnt orange boys a national title. Memories of that night-after-Halloween calamity haunt Longhorns still.

Read Larry Carlson's look back at the wild 2008 game at this link.

https://www.texaslsn.org/larry-carlson-texas-tech-2008

That wound that won't heal aside, I have long savored game trips to Lubbock. My first was in 1978, as KVET Radio sports director and Longhorn Locker Room host. Texas got a W.

But my personal tradition and affinity for the long, lonesome West Texas highways really took off in '04 when I began making the every-other-year football road trip to cover games with my friend Kirk Bohls, the Austin American-Statesman's oft-honored columnist who is hated by some but respected by most fans, players and coaches because of his penchant for straight-up honesty, rather than partisanship.

Kirk and I -- guys who played as doubles partners in a particular mid-summer Texas tennis classic for 22 straight years -- like traditions. So the road northwest has plenty of 'em. Me waving at my Mom's beloved but now forlorn little hometown of Lometa, us both feeling the subtle drop in humidity by about Goldthwaite, a Diet Coke stop in Brownwood and a Coleman visit with Kirk's stepmom-in-law, Helen, for a slice of her matchless homemade pie. Later, we get jerky at a stand out past Winters (home of the Blizzards and UT historian emeritus, Bill Little) and roll past miles and miles of cotton and blaring blue sky. Then we shout out to Norm Cash at the baseball field in Post named for the 1961 American League batting champ and stop at Holly's Drive-In for burgers, fries and a gander at the latest posters honoring Post's Bold Gold Antelope football squad. From there, it's just 41 miles to Lubbock. We've been counting down the days until this next road trip chapter.

You know, some folks don't "get" Lubbock. Or the simple pleasures of West Texas in general. The wind you actually hear most of the time. The parfait-like blazes of sunset that last for hours. People who wear cowboy hats and do not do so ironically, as they might on South Congress. Folks who are pure-dee friendly unless you want to stake a claim of superiority for your visiting football team. Lubbock or leave it.

Not all Texas followers understand my appreciation for the place called home by raucous, tortilla-tossing fanatics. One friend said he and his wife were verbally abused and even threatened by hooligans who appeared to be liquoured up and spoiling for any opportunity to aim real violence toward anyone wearing burnt orange. Other UT fans forgive even overzealous Red Radicals because of the success the West Texans enjoyed against A&M. In one decade-long stretch shortly before the Ags hotfooted it east for the SEC, flinty teams coached first by Spike Dykes, then Mike Leach, spanked A&M in six straight Jones AT&T bouts between 1997-2007. Quarterbacks Kliff Kingsbury, BJ Symons, Sonny Cumbie, Cody Hodges and Graham Harrell rolled off the assembly line, born ready to torch the Aggies.

Gameday mornings out west, you can feel the energy. Couples and families, young and old but all sporting natty red and black duds, line up early for a feed at Pancake House on Avenue Q, a classic eatery straight out of a 1960s "Route 66" episode. Kirk and I used to eagerly anticipate a visit to the marvelous "50 Yard Line Steakhouse" that closed in 2019. Texas Tech's terrific Athletics Communication office was the last such entity to always treat the football media to steak dinners and all the trimmings, the night before home games.

It was a Texas-sized touch of hospitality and goodwill that lasted longer in Lubbock than anywhere.

That gesture seemed representative of The Hub City, overall. It's been said that, if you're gonna have a flat tire, better in Lubbock than anywhere else. Somebody is gonna stop immediately to help.

Native son Mac Davis, a smiling, curly-headed troubadour known for his hit songs and for writing classic songs for Elvis and others, penned and sang a tune called "Lubbock, Texas In My Rearview Mirror." Some mistakenly took the song to be a poison dart aimed at the kind of quintessentially dry, straight-arrow, strict and unforgiving Texas town often portrayed by Hollywood and authors who have never ventured west of Mo-Pac in Austin.

Au contraire, Davis was writing tenderly about his hometown. Having initially found happiness with leaving home in the dust, he later longed for the warm local folks and genuine good in the modest city of his youth. As the song neared its finish, Mac's lyrics took a U-turn to "...but now happiness is Lubbock, Texas getting nearer and nearer."

He closed, after a dramatic pause, with "And when I die, you can bury me in Lubbock, Texas, in my jeans."

Davis, like Holly a graduate of Lubbock High, was indeed laid to rest in his hometown after passing away at 78, two Septembers ago.

And now yet another rivalry -- to go along with UT's Southwest Conference and Big XII life and times among Baylor, TCU, SMU and Rice -- is on the ropes, perhaps to be counted out in the very near future.

The memories are safe. They will "Not Fade Away," in Buddy Holly's words.

But will UT choose to retain a Texas tradition during a time in which the winds of change howl and blow like November tumbleweeds across U.S. 84? Let's go back to Buddy just one more time.

"Maybe, Baby."

FeedBack from A fan 9/27/2022

Larry,I stumbled upon your writeup on the Texas Tech/Texas football game this morning and wanted to reach out to let you know I thought it hit on a lot of points I have personally had trouble articulating in the past with fellow Longhorns regarding this matchup. I appreciate you taking the time to write that. Although I only graduated from Texas in 2019, your writeup definitely created a sense of nostalgia for me and brought back fond memories of traveling to Lubbock multiple times as a student for football games. Some of my best friends from high school attended Texas Tech so this game has always been somewhat of a nuisance for me (they love to talk), but I can't help but feel I will miss this going forward. It is unpopular to admit these days, but I'm sure many of us Longhorns have personal relationships with folks in West Texas that make this game somewhat unique and I'll be sad to see it go. The game epitomizes some aspects of college football that I feel are being left behind as we move into the next era of the sport (regional matchups with historic implications beyond the gridiron between fanbases who interact every day). I am excited to be playing the Aggies, Arkansas, and OU every year but I am not naïve enough to think that games against Mississippi State, Vanderbilt, and South Carolina will be as fun for me, personally, as this matchup. I guess all I'm saying is if we were to maintain one game with any of our current conference foes, this would be the one I'd pick.
Best,Reed--
Reed Giesinger