Rivalry Renewed: How NIL Rekindled Texas Tech’s Hatred of TCU

To say the last 24 hours have been a whirlwind would be an understatement. The Texas Tech fan base is truly the best in the nation and they showed out yesterday when a certain TCU Football Staff member called out the mega-NIL Texas Tech just offered to all of their football players. This staff member also mocked Lubbock, calling it a desert and using the 🌵 emoji as a dig.

Texas Tech Twitter responded in a huge way, embracing the 🌵 emoji as a calling card for West Texas. This effectively began a day that can only be described as insane. By the end of the night, the entire timeline was filled with cacti.

I’ve got to give TCU credit, if getting Texas Tech fans to buy more tickets to other games, kudos to you. This entire rivalry began a week or so ago when the TCU website released single-game tickets for their football season, with one exception.

Their Athletic director doubled down on it earlier this week, saying that single-game tickets against Texas Tech would not be sold just for football, but for basketball as well.

The internet blew up over that comment and we thought the beef was over at that time. Wow, we were wrong. When The Matador Club announced they were offering 100 Texas Tech Football players $25,000/ year contracts, the internet blew up again. This included some comments from TCU’s Recruiting Coordinator Bryan Carrington.

This dig at Lubbock sent Texas Tech Twitter into a frenzy, beginning the cactus trend that led Head Coach Joey McGuire to get in the action.

This led the entire football team to tweet out 🌵#WreckEm. From there, everyone began to tweet out the cactus emoji. The event became trending on Twitter.

I hope TCU wanted this rivalry. Up until this point, most of the fan base would have never thought of TCU as a major rival. A 🌵 emoji changed all of that.

Come November 5th, Amon G. Carter Stadium will be red with Red Raider pride. Guns Up!