Texas Tech enters 2026 with major expectations after a Big 12 title, earning a No. 8 preseason ranking and the top spot among conference teams.
Texas Tech football isn’t sneaking up on anybody anymore.
After winning the Big 12 in 2025, the Texas Tech Red Raiders enter the 2026 college football season carrying legitimate national expectations, and the latest preseason rankings only turn up the pressure.
CBS Sports’ Chip Patterson placed Texas Tech at No. 8 nationally in his ranking of all 138 FBS programs, making the Red Raiders his highest-ranked team from the Big 12.
That’s rare air for a program that’s spent much of its recent history trying to crash the national conversation rather than living in it.
Texas Tech finished the 2025 season ranked No. 7 in Patterson’s rankings, so dropping just one spot despite the annual roster turnover is a pretty strong statement about how the Red Raiders are viewed heading into September.
Not everyone is quite as bullish. The US LBM preseason coaches poll has Texas Tech at No. 12, but the larger message is the same: expectations in Lubbock have changed.
Winning the Big 12 is no longer some dream scenario.
Now the challenge is doing it again.
Patterson’s rankings also make Texas Tech the clear preseason standard-bearer for the conference. BYU checks in at No. 16, while Utah sits at No. 24.
Houston, which could provide Texas Tech’s first meaningful measuring stick of the season, comes in at No. 26.
That Week 3 matchup could tell us quickly whether the Red Raiders deserve all the preseason hype.
Before that happens, Texas Tech gets a chance to ease into the schedule.
The Red Raiders open the 2026 season on Sept. 5 against Abilene Christian at Galaxy Stadium, with kickoff scheduled for 6 p.m. CT on FS1.
Anything short of a comfortable opening-night victory will probably set off alarms around Lubbock. That’s what happens when you’re no longer being treated as an underdog.
Texas Tech spent years trying to convince the college football world it belonged among the sport’s bigger programs. A Big 12 championship helped settle that argument.
Now comes the harder part.
The Red Raiders have to prove 2025 wasn’t the ceiling and that a No. 8 preseason ranking isn’t hype, but a warning.
