Team: Texas Tech Red Raiders
Stadium: Jones SBC Stadium
Conference: Big 12
Sport: College Football
Background: Texas Tech University is a Tier I research university located in Lubbock, Texas. Formed in 1923 as Texas Technological College, the first classes opened in 1925 with 914 students. A 1921 bill creating an institution of higher education in West Texas had been vetoed, leading newspapers from Ft. Worth to El Paso to call for the secession of West Texas. In a controversial move, the name was changed to Texas Tech University in 1969. Although most Techsans were in agreement that the expanded educational opportunities in the arts and sciences made the school more than just a technological institution, students and faculty supported changing the school's name to Texas State University while alumni and the Board of Directors favored Texas Tech, in part to retain the familiar Double T. After increasingly acrimonious debate (one student even suggested "The University of Moscow at Lubbock" out of frustration at the Board's refusal to listen to student preference), the Texas Legislature formally changed the school's name in 1969. A 1964 bill to change the name was defeated primarily because it would have made Tech a part of the Texas A&M system. Texas Tech enrolls approximately 25,000 students in its ten academic colleges and an additional 2,000 in its School of Law and Health Sciences Center. Consisting of Schools of Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, and Allied Health, and with campuses in Lubbock, Amarillo, El Paso, and Odessa, the Health Sciences Center has an 108 county service area that is larger than all but 4 states.