MORGANTOWN — Imagine, for a moment, a world where Dairy Queen has no milkshakes or showing up at Disneyland and it has no roller coasters.
Along those lines, we ask one simple question: What kind of college football world would it be if Texas Tech didn’t throw the football?
The two have gone hand and hand for the last 22 years, which is when Mike Leach first took over as head coach of the Red Raiders.
He brought a high-flying, pass-first, and second, offense to a school that was desperate to find a niche in college football.
The stats became video-game like and the points on the scoreboard resembled a basketball game rather than football.
“I don’t know, maybe the fans fell in love with it with Leach, because it was different,” said WVU offensive coordinator Graham Harrell, a former Texas Tech quarterback under Leach from 2004-08. “At the time, it was real different, because no one was throwing the ball like that. That’s kind of the brand of football those fans expect and the administration wants.”
The names have changed over the years at the school. Leach left in 2009. School presidents and athletic directors have come and gone at Texas Tech.
The passing game, though, did not.
“More than anything, I think it’s a brand of football that’s worked there before and you try to duplicate success,” Harrell said. “It gives the fans a fun product to watch.”
It’s a way of life that not only helped Harrell set eight NCAA passing records at the school, it also helped propel the coaching careers of Kliff Kingsbury and Dana Holgorsen, while producing an NFL star quarterback in Patrick Mahomes.
West Virginia (3-3, 1-2 Big 12) travels to the land of the pass on Saturday, where the Red Raiders will be armed again with the conference’s top throwing game.
Texas Tech (3-3, 1-2), under first-year coach Joey McGuire, is the only team in the Big 12 averaging more than 300 passing yards per game (365), and it does not matter who is doing the passing.
McGuire was down to his third quarterback two weeks ago — redshirt freshman Behren Morton — but Morton still threw 62 times in a loss against Oklahoma State.
Most coaches wouldn’t want their third quarterback to throw 62 times in a season, yet that is the devotion Texas Tech has with throwing the football.
“A lot of it is, if you feel good about your guys, you plug them in,” WVU head coach Neal Brown said. “If you have faith, and if your teammates have faith, then you run what you normally do. I think that’s the approach they’ve taken.”
Morton could start for Texas Tech again on Saturday, but only because Tyler Shough and Donovan Smith are both nursing shoulder injuries.
Shough’s been out since getting hurt in the season opener against Murray State. Smith got hurt early in the Oklahoma State game.
Shough dressed for the Oklahoma State game and the Red Raiders are coming off a bye week, so who plays quarterback is a mystery.
As for Morton, he isn’t your normal third-string guy. He was a top 20-ranked quarterback nationally in high school, where he starred for Eastland (Texas) High School.
He’s the highest-ranked quarterback recruit to ever sign at Texas Tech.
“They’ve played three quarterbacks and all three are really good,” Brown said. “They spread you out and cause a lot of difficulties.”
Much of that difficulty comes in the pace that Texas Tech plays. Communication is wild and rapid and sometimes it takes longer to tie your shoes than it does for the Red Raiders to snap the football.
Texas Tech beat WVU last season 23-20, in a game where Brown said his players were wearing down by the fourth quarter.
“The thing is how you practice,” Brown said. “We’re going to do some things differently, because we’ve had some issues with tempo in the past. You can’t continue to do the same things and expect different results.”
TWEET @bigjax3211
