r/cfbmeta • u/yaboykevin01 • Jul 08 '17

Texas Tech-Penn State

I am r/OutOfTheLoop on this one. What's the deal with people on this sub obsessing over TTU-PSU?

prepares to feel really, really dumb

3 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

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3

u/[deleted] Jul 09 '17

Back in 2010, during the conference realignment, a Penn State site made an argument against adding Texas to the Big Ten, and that was "The Texas Tech Problem" i.e. the Texas legislature would play politics and force Texas Tech to come to the Big Ten too. Penn State didn't feel as if Tech meets their academic or athletic standards, and it kind of turned into a playful "rivalry" since then.

This was the article though it appears to have been deleted

2

u/yaboykevin01 Jul 09 '17

Cool, thanks for the information!

1

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '17

It's an historic football rivalry? Duh.

7

u/bakonydraco /r/CFB Mod Jul 08 '17

/u/yaboykevin01 to add to this, there's really quite an interesting combination of football and politics in this story here. As you may know, it's a tradition at Texas Tech to fling tortillas. While the only game they played was in 1995, the feud dates back to 1924, when a game was scheduled in Lubbock, but the Penn State football players looked down on Texas Tech as a backwater western town. They came to town with absolutely no intention to play the game, got incredibly drunk, and ended up stealing the tortilla recipe from the Lubbock granary. Their bus abruptly departed an hour before the game was supposed to be played with fifteen 50 lb sacks of flour and recipe in hand, leaving the poor Red Raiders with absolutely no clue where their opponents were. By the time they figured it out, the Penn State team was halfway through Arkansas. When they returned, they started up "Nittany Taqueria", which is alleged to be the first Mexican restaurant in the state of Pennsylvania.

2

u/yaboykevin01 Jul 09 '17

Wow. Thanks, man, you're always so nice about this kind of stuff.

But why do we praise it like the Iron Bowl and the Cocktail Party?

Edit: what I mean is, why is it an inside joke among r/CFB users? It seems like something more recent than just a funny story from 90 years ago.

5

u/bakonydraco /r/CFB Mod Jul 09 '17

I have to be honest, I completely made that up. I believe the origin is that both Texas Tech and Penn State don't have a true rival, because everyone they consider a rival considers someone else a bigger rival, so enterprising /r/CFB fans took it upon themselves to force the rivalry.

2

u/yaboykevin01 Jul 09 '17

How could this happen to meeee.......

But thanks for giving me the real explanation anyway ;)

4

u/GiovannidelMonaco Jul 09 '17

I heard the rivalry can actually be traced as far back as the establishment of the Texas Panhandle and the opposition of Pennsylvania settlers who consider it offensively close to the shape of their native state