How a televised putdown led to one of the craziest traditions in college football
Deep in the vast expanse of West Texas — a place known for tumbleweeds, oil fields, livestock, and outlaws — sits the “Hub City” of Lubbock. Home to Texas Tech University, the town is known to experience a fairly rare weather phenomenon called a haboob, an intense dust storm often created by a thunderstorm stirring up the dry West Texas landscape.
But on Saturdays in Texas Tech’s Jones AT&T Stadium, it’s not dust that fills the air.
It’s tortillas. Hundreds and hundreds of tortillas.
And it all starts with a televised insult more than 30 years ago.
In 1992, during the midweek buildup to Texas Tech’s then-annual showdown with rival Texas A&M, an ESPN announcer joked that all Lubbock had to its name was Texas Tech football and a tortilla factory. As a sardonic response, students snuck tortillas into the stadium and tossed them high into the air (and many on to the field) at kickoff, in clear view of the TV cameras broadcasting the game.
Or so the story goes. Others insist that the tortilla tossing began a few years earlier, in defiance of the school banning soda cup lids, which students had developed a propensity for throwing on to the field during games.
Regardless of the exact origin, seeing hundreds of tortillas flying through the air on kickoffs and after touchdowns is one of the silliest and most purely college football traditions in the entire country. I absolutely love it.
Check out this video of the kickoff tortilla toss from Texas Tech’s 2023 game against Oregon:
While you’re at it, check out my review of Jimenez Tortilleria y Taqueria, a small Lubbock joint serving some of the best food that can be wrapped inside a tortilla.
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