LUBBOCK, Texas — In February, during the grand opening of Texas Tech’s 300,000-square foot, $242 million football facility, athletic director Kirby Hocutt, delivering a speech from behind a pulpit within this goliath of a structure, gestures into the audience before him.
He identifies those responsible for not only this lavish building but the talented new roster that trains within it.
In the room of dignitaries and donors, among the more than 200 people here to celebrate what the school believes is its informal arrival as one of college football’s havenots now-turned haves, there is gobs of money: at least a half-dozen billionaires and 30 more families worth at least nine figures.
“We couldn’t have done it without you,” Hocutt says to them.
But, in a way, the responsible party lies well below this facility, deep within the Earth’s rock: a well of oil the size of the state of Florida. The Permian Basin, the largest oil field in the United States, produces more than 6 million barrels of oil per day and generates 40% of the country’s oil supply.
It fuels something else: the Texas Tech football team.
more: Texas, oil and football: How Texas Tech has raised a football monster in no time at all - Yahoo Sports
He identifies those responsible for not only this lavish building but the talented new roster that trains within it.
In the room of dignitaries and donors, among the more than 200 people here to celebrate what the school believes is its informal arrival as one of college football’s havenots now-turned haves, there is gobs of money: at least a half-dozen billionaires and 30 more families worth at least nine figures.
“We couldn’t have done it without you,” Hocutt says to them.
But, in a way, the responsible party lies well below this facility, deep within the Earth’s rock: a well of oil the size of the state of Florida. The Permian Basin, the largest oil field in the United States, produces more than 6 million barrels of oil per day and generates 40% of the country’s oil supply.
It fuels something else: the Texas Tech football team.
more: Texas, oil and football: How Texas Tech has raised a football monster in no time at all - Yahoo Sports
) to see a public “university” pay a former football coach $50 MM to not work when the same “university” has professors actually changing the world for the better through teaching and research for normal money.
