It's a fun time to be a Red Raider, but with that success in football and basketball sometimes comes uncertainty for other Texas Tech sports.
LUBBOCK, Texas - Before Texas Tech football and basketball were mainstays at the national championhip-levels of collegiate athletics, it was track and field where the Red Raiders thrived most.
Under legendary head coach Wes Kittley, Texas Tech track has garned incredible recognition in the last couple decades, with the men's team winning 10 total conference championships (indoors and outdoors) and the women adding two - both in 2025 in an indoor/outdoor sweep. The men's team has an indoor team national championship in 2024 and an outdoor one from 2019.
But now that Joey McGuire has built the football team into a oil-fueled powerhouse, and hoops coach Grant McCasland returned the Red Raiders' two best players from an Elite Eight berth, track has taken more a backseat than even before with other programs in the spotlight.
That's because those sports being revenue drivers, and Kittley understands that.
He provided some insight to the Tech student newspaper, The Daily Toreador, about how scholarships are determined amid this wide-spread departmental success.
Kittley said his team did not receive many scholarships at all this academic year, but that this upcoming fall should be different.
It's a testament to Kittley's staff and Texas Tech's track and field reputation to still garner as much success as they have against better-funded institutions like Texas and Texas A&M.
Kittley is excited for the growth, but he remembers which programs get taken care of first in this revolutionary time in college sports.
"All the NCAA rulings and the House [of Representatives] rulings ... one thing we wanted to make sure of - and I think all of us Olympic sports are behind - we gotta make sure football got the maximum and basketball got the maximum [number of scholarships]," Kittley said to reporter Austin Jackson.
"They are the ones that are a bread and butter for our programs as far as financial. Getting in this new territory, we wanted to make sure we funded those well, and I think you've seen its made a big difference in football and all that."
And as McGuire's program took home its first Big 12 title and received a bid to the College Football Playoff, Kittley says the success has already begun making more of an impact to support smaller, Olympic sports such as track and field.
As football moves into the offseason and basketball swings into the thick of conference play, track is just getting their season started indoors.
Though there is expected to be a brutal winter storm blowing into Lubbock this weekend, Kittley believes Texas Tech will still host the annual Wes Kittley High School Classic on Jan. 23-24 and the Stan Scott Meet on Jan. 23 as scheduled at the Sports Performance Center in Lubbock.
