Pat Forde: One Boast Made Texas Tech’s Loss to Cincinnati Even More Embarrassing

CINCINNATI — Billionaire booster Cody Campbell has written a lot of checks that helped Texas Tech make something of itself in football. But his mouth wrote one during the offseason that the Red Raiders fell embarrassingly short of cashing here Saturday. 

In a four-part documentary on Paramount+ about the up-from-the-bootstraps Texas Tech program, Campbell offered a retrospective on the Brendan Sorsby saga that—at least in theory—pitted Cincinnati (the quarterback’s former school) against Tech (where he transferred). Sorsby, of course, was declared ineligible in Lubbock for breaking every gambling rule in the NCAA manual. Tech fans accused Cincinnati of turning Sorsby into the NCAA and ignoring his gambling problem when he was a Bearcat.

Tech shamelessly supported his attempts to sue his way into uniform—an attempt that ended when the Big 12 filed a checkmate lawsuit of its own. Sorsby dropped the fight, and that was that. But cocky Cody vowed vengeance on the documentary.

“Looking back on it, I know that Texas Tech and I handled everything with integrity, and we did things the right way,” said Campbell, who also chairs the school’s Board of Regents. “I think this is something that could have been handled much more privately. We’re not going to forget about that, and I don’t think they’ll forget about it either when we’re up by 40 and still throwing the ball in the fourth quarter. That’s where the retribution will come.”

Whoopsie.

Retribution looked more like a boot to Tech’s backside.

Contrary to Campbell’s vision, here’s what actually transpired when the two teams met: After leading by at least two scores for the last 31 minutes and 37 seconds, Cincinnati took it easy on Tech in the end. The Bearcats took a knee twice to run out the clock on a 37–24 victory, then watched the Nippert Stadium stands empty as fans rushed the field to celebrate beating down the No. 8 team in the nation.

Cincinnati’s primary athletic X account had a fairly straightforward post—but made sure to tag Campbell in it.

Campbell’s rather terse postgame message on X: “There is no excuse or reason to lose a game like this. We have to be better.”

Campbell did not appear to be in attendance at Nippert Stadium. School president Lawrence Schovanec and athletic director Kirby Hocutt were, stone-faced and somber, occasionally looking at their phones during coach Joey McGuire’s postgame news conference. (Were they checking to see whether Campbell had fired them yet? Who knows.) 

Big booster talk turned into a massive flop by Texas Tech, one that could be a disqualifying disaster in terms of the College Football Playoff. If the Red Raiders don’t make the Big 12 championship game, they could be left out of the playoff at 11–1. If they make the title game and lose, they could be left out at 11–2. The only sure path at this point is to run the table between now and Selection Sunday, finishing 12–1.

They did that last year, bouncing back from a similar midseason loss at Arizona State to win six straight and claim the Big 12’s automatic playoff bid. But this path is by no means identical. 

“It seems like this happened to us last year at this time and we didn’t play well, but this was totally different from that loss,” McGuire said. “We talk about it all the time—bad football, this was bad football.”

The Red Raiders would have made the playoff at 11–2 in 2025, powered in large part by regular-season wins over BYU and Utah. This year, Tech has zero ranked opponents remaining on the regular-season schedule, after playing zero power-conference teams in nonleague play. It plays neither one-loss BYU (which did Tech a favor by losing at Central Florida) nor undefeated Utah. The tiebreakers might not be the Red Raiders’ favor in terms of playing in Arlington, Texas.

But that scenario assumes a lot of things—including that the Tech team that was trucked here can actually win out. The Red Raiders look like a big-payroll paper tiger.

“We played about as bad as we could play,” McGuire said. “I’m telling you guys, I’ve been doing this a long time and I can’t think of a game that was as frustrating as what I was just a part of. … I’m as frustrated as I think I’ve ever been in my 32 years of coaching [because] of what we did today.”

Cincinnati is certainly not without talent, and coach Scott Satterfield has an uncanny penchant for pulling out wins nobody sees coming. This one would certainly qualify, with the Bearcats entering on a two-game losing streak and Tech having won 12 straight non-playoff games. While this game puts upcoming ranked Cincy opponents Utah, Houston and BYU on notice, it also sets off warning sirens about Tech.

Its talent-laden defense was shredded to a degree not seen since before the program’s NIL war chest was fully stocked. Cincinnati’s 37 points were the most Tech has allowed since the 2024 Liberty Bowl, and its 252 rushing yards were the most against Tech since Oct. 19, 2024. Offensively, the Red Raiders turned the ball over three times and had season highs of 12 penalties for 80 yards. (That total doesn’t include at least two holding penalties that Cincinnati declined.) 

Tech was 3 of 15 converting third downs and scored just one touchdown in four red zone trips, rekindling concerns about quarterback Will Hammond. Of course, he was supposed to be the backup to Sorsby this year, until that grand (and expensive) plan fell apart. Texas Tech did bring in the well-traveled Tommy Castellanos as a backup quarterback, but he was viewed more as a change-of-pace guy who might be useful in the red zone. Castellanos never got on the field Saturday while the Red Raiders bogged down repeatedly in scoring territory.

All things considered, it was a full-system failure by a team plenty of college football fans wanted to see fail, especially Big 12 fans, and especially-especially Cincinnati fans, after the crossfire they took from Lubbock.

With victory assured, the stadium loudspeakers played “All My Ex’s Live In Texas”—that wouldn’t be a Sorsby reference, would it? The student section’s “F--- you, Sorsby” chant late in the game was misguided—if he’d stayed at Cincy and gotten busted here in the spring for gambling, it would have been a disaster for the Bearcats. As it is, the Red Raiders were the team left scrambling.

But once that chant died out, the Cincinnati fans perched themselves on the walls ringing Nippert and watched the clock tick down. When it hit zero, here they came. The goalposts stayed up, but Texas Tech was knocked out. And Cody Campbell had to shut up and take it.

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