Joey McGuire led Texas Tech to 12 wins, a Big 12 title and the playoff, yet Kalani Sitake still claimed the conference’s top coaching spot.
Joey McGuire just delivered the best season Texas Tech football has seen in years, and apparently that still wasn’t enough to earn him the No. 1 spot among Big 12 coaches.
The Red Raiders are coming off a 12-2 season, a conference championship and a College Football Playoff appearance.
Texas Tech enters 2026 as one of the favorites to control the Big 12 again, but USA TODAY Network ranked BYU coach Kalani Sitake ahead of McGuire.
That’s where the argument gets spicy.
Sitake has built a strong program in Provo and deserves plenty of credit for keeping BYU nationally relevant. He’s respected, experienced and clearly belongs near the top of any Big 12 coaching list.
But resume against resume, McGuire clearly has the stronger recent case.
Texas Tech didn’t just win games last season; the Red Raiders reached the playoff, captured the Big 12 crown and established themselves as the team everyone else in the conference is chasing.
McGuire has paired elite recruiting with aggressive transfer portal work and turned Lubbock into one of college football’s toughest destinations.
That matters more than reputation.
Sitake has yet to win a Big 12 championship or guide BYU into the College Football Playoff.
McGuire has already checked both boxes, and he did it while raising expectations around a Texas Tech program that spent years searching for consistency.
The ranking won’t change anything on the field, but it adds fuel to what could become one of the defining coaching battles of the 2026 season.
Texas Tech and BYU are expected to sit near the top of the Big 12 race, and both programs have legitimate playoff ambitions. If the Red Raiders repeat as champions, the debate should be over.
McGuire doesn’t need a preseason list to validate what he’s built. His team’s record, trophy case and postseason résumé already do that.
Still, ranking him behind a coach who hasn’t matched those accomplishments feels less like analysis and more like an invitation.
Now McGuire gets another season to answer it.
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