Texas Tech drops Colorado State, adds Kent State to 2025 football schedule

By Kevin Kelley -

The Texas Tech Red Raiders have made a change to their 2025 football schedule, replacing a previously scheduled road contest with a home game, the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal has reported.

Texas Tech was previously scheduled to travel to face the Colorado State Rams of the Mountain West Conference on Sept. 6, 2025. The game was set to be the first of a home-and-home series that is slated to conclude at Jones AT&T Stadium in Lubbock, Texas, on Sept. 19, 2026.

According to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal report, the Red Raiders have bought out of the road game at Colorado State in 2025 and will pay the Rams $1 million for the cancellation. The status of the 2026 game in Lubbock is unknown, but it has been removed from CSU’s official website.

To replace the Colorado State contest, Texas Tech has added a home game against the Kent State Golden Flashes of the Mid-American Conference (MAC) on the same date in 2025. Texas Tech will pay Kent State a $1.5 million guarantee for the contest, per the report.

Citing Texas Tech director of athletics Kirby Hocutt in November, the report states that the Red Raiders want to guarantee themselves at least seven home games per season moving forward. There has been some discussion about buying out of the 2027 game at North Texas, but that matchup remains as scheduled for now.

Texas Tech is scheduled to open the 2025 season at home against the Arkansas-Pine Bluff Golden Lions on Aug. 30. Kent State is then slated for Sept. 6 before the Oregon State Beavers visit Lubbock the following week on Sept. 13.

The Big 12 slate of opponents for Texas Tech in 2025 is also set. Texas Tech will host BYU, Kansas, Oklahoma State, and UCF and will travel to Arizona State, Houston, Kansas State, Utah, and West Virginia.

Football Schedules

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Comments (9)

But they moved from a road game to a home game, but the message they are putting out is clear. Wanting 7 home games a year; Texas Tech will probably rarely if ever sign home and home with non-power schools now.

Texas Tech is a terrible middle of the road program…..they ain’t nothing special. Fact is they are probably nervous nervous playing at Colorado State at this point. Paying 2.5 millions for a lay-up against Kent State….that’s weak.

I fully support Texas Tech hosting Kent State in 2025 & eliminating Colorado State series.

Exactly Nick.

The ACC has told it teams to stop playing home and home with G5 teams too. Pretty soon a P4 at G5 road game will be extremely rare as P4 teams look to have 7 home games as many years as possible and as the separation between P4 and G5 continues to widen. It is unlikely that we ever again will see a year like this upcoming one where 7 out of 12 Mountain West teams hosted a G5 team.

-SMU @ Nevada
-UCLA @ Hawaii
-Colorado @ Colorado State
-Utah @ Utah State
-BYU @ Wyoming
-Syracuse @UNLV
-Stanford @ San Jose State.

The only other P4 @ G5 games in 2024 are

Kansas State @ Tulane
Oklahoma St. @ Tulsa
Miami (FL) @ USF

Duke @ Middle Tennessee

Missouri @ UMass
Wake Forest @ UConn

Cincinnati @ Miami (OH)

Arizona State @ Texas State
Virginia Tech @ Old Dominion
Vanderbilt @ Georgia State
Virginia @ Coastal Carolina

Interesting that most of the P4 schools involved are from the Big 12 & ACC.