Texas Tech Football Showing Signs of Improvement in Recruiting

The Texas Tech football program has a weird history with recruiting rankings. The Red Raiders have never been prolific recruiters. In fact, Tommy Tuberville was the best recruiter in Texas Tech history according to the rankings that gained notoriety early in the Leach era. It was Tuberville that signed the only top 20 recruiting class in Texas Tech history according to 247sports.com.

The reason I bring this up is that the ESPN recruiting rankings have been making the rounds and Texas Tech is firmly in the top 25. That's after missing bowls in two straight seasons, a coaching change, and being a 60th plus ranked class in 19 and 20.

If you just take the ranking at face value it seems like a huge jump and that Matt Wells is all of a sudden putting Texas Tech on the right track. That's not the case. Yet.

The class is still at just 8 players. There's a long way to go.

The 2021 class is also rated highly on 247sports.com with a 32nd ranking, that's 5th in the Big 12. Compared to 7th, 8th, and 10th in the previous three years. To give some context on the 2021 class, Oklahoma is 7th right now and Kansas has the 3rd highest rated group. Things will change.

Even with the caution flag of these rankings being meaningless in May when signing day is in December and the sense that there might not be a full football season in 2020, it's obvious Texas Tech is pursuing and signing a higher caliber player than Kingsbury was in his final two seasons. Behren Morton, the 4-star headliner in the class, will be the highest-rated quarterback to sign with Texas Tech since Graham Harrell in 2004.

Yes, Morton is rated higher than Patrick Mahomes. No, that doesn't guarantee Morton will be better than Patrick Mahomes.

The bottom line here is that Mike Leach and Kliff Kingsbury both averaged the same national ranking in recruiting and had wildly different results. The development when a kid gets on campus is much more important than the stars beside a kid's name when they arrive.

Matt Wells is behind the eightball in that respect without being able to develop anyone during spring football, but his time at Utah State showed a nack for developing stars.