BYU vs Texas Tech Football Game History: A Short Rivalry With Big Swings
Four games, three decades, and one Big 12 title on the line
These two schools have only played four times. Four. And somehow that includes a one-point nail-biter from the WWII years, a road upset nobody expected, and a conference championship game. That’s the whole byu vs texas tech story, packed into a series most fans didn’t even know existed until a couple years ago.
Most rivalries take generations to build up any real stakes. This one skipped that part entirely. There was no proximity pushing these two together, no shared recruiting territory, none of that. Compare it to something like Georgia vs Georgia Tech, where in-state pride has been simmering for over a hundred years and every kickoff carries decades of baggage. BYU and Texas Tech skipped all of that buildup. They just happened to land in the same conference, and within two seasons they were somehow playing for a championship. I still think that’s a little strange, honestly. But it’s also exactly what makes digging into this short, weird series worth doing.
1940: a one-point game and then… nothing
Lubbock, October 18, 1940. Texas Tech won 21-20. One point. If you want to picture the era, Europe was already at war and the U.S. would join within a year, so college football wasn’t exactly the center of anyone’s world that fall. BYU’s coach, Eddie Kimball, finished that season 2-4-2. Middling year for the Cougars, but that single game against Texas Tech became the entire history book between these two programs for the next eighty-three years.
No rematch. No follow-up series. The schools just went their separate ways until conference realignment threw them back together in 2023.
2023: BYU’s first shot, and it’s a good one
October 21, Provo. This was BYU’s first home game against Texas Tech as Big 12 members, and ESPN slotted it into “Big 12 After Dark,” which turned out to be the right call. BYU won 27-14. Kedon Slovis threw for 127 yards and two scores (one pick mixed in there too), finding Chase Roberts and Darius Lassiter for touchdowns. LJ Martin ground out 93 yards on the ground, and Will Ferrin knocked through two field goals.
Oh, and there was a spitting incident. Texas Tech tight end Jayden York got tossed in the first half for allegedly spitting on BYU’s Tyler Batty. Every single recap of this game mentions it, mostly because a four-game series doesn’t leave much else to talk about. It’s the kind of odd footnote that sticks around when there isn’t a decade of other games competing for attention. BYU’s Eddie Heckard grabbed an interception and picked up Big 12 Defensive Player of the Week for it, which is a nice consolation prize buried under a much weirder headline.
2025: Texas Tech wins twice, and the second one really hurts
Jump to November 8, 2025. BYU showed up at Lubbock ranked No. 8, but Texas Tech had been rolling, coming off wins over Oklahoma State and Kansas State by a combined 85-20 after their only loss of the season (a close one to Arizona State, 26-22). This time Texas Tech won, 29-7. Different game entirely from 2023.
Then things got weird. Exactly one month later, on December 6 in Arlington, these two teams met again. This time it was for the Big 12 Conference championship. Nobody in 1940 could have guessed a byu vs texas tech game would ever carry that kind of weight, and I doubt anyone in 2023 saw a title game coming either. Texas Tech didn’t just win it, they blew it open: 34-7. Two meetings, one season, 63-14 combined. Not close, and not the outcome BYU fans were hoping for after that Big 12 championship berth felt within reach earlier in the year.
So where does that leave things
Texas Tech leads 3-1 all-time now. BYU’s only win still stands, that 2023 game in Provo, but two seasons later it looks more like a fluke than a foundation. I keep coming back to how weirdly this series is shaped: eighty-three years of silence, then three games crammed into three seasons, with the last two turning into the most lopsided stretch of the whole thing.
Part of that probably comes down to timing on the coaching side. Joey McGuire’s Texas Tech teams have a habit of getting stronger as seasons go on, and both 2025 wins fit that mold pretty neatly. Kalani Sitake’s BYU teams, meanwhile, tend to play their best ball earlier in the year, before Big 12 play grinds everyone down a bit. That timing lines up with why Provo 2023, a game played in October rather than a championship weekend in December, is still the high point of this series for the Cougars.
What sticks with me isn’t even the record. It’s the pace. Two programs went from “have they ever even played” to “conference title game” faster than most schools manage a home-and-home. I don’t know if the Big 12 schedule keeps pairing these two often enough for byu vs texas tech to turn into a real rivalry with staying power, or if it fades the way the 1940 game did for eighty-three years. Right now, though, it’s the newest matchup in the conference actually worth circling on the calendar.
