Hero of the day: Texas Tech backup QB Will Hammond buoys Red Raiders to dominant win over Utah

SALT LAKE CITY — On Friday afternoon, as the Texas Tech team plane circled downward toward this place, Will Hammond peered out of the window.

There, thousands of feet below him, stacked on the horizon, the Wasatch mountain range rose to meet the blue sky.

Advertisement

He felt right at home.

“Mannnnn,” he said to himself from the plane, “the mountains!”

If Hammond seemed especially comfortable here on Saturday morning as his Texas Tech Red Raiders beat Utah, 34-10, if he looked unbothered by the rocking crowd, if he appeared calm and in command despite the pressures of a one-score fourth-quarter game, perhaps it is because he knows this place better than most.

Hammond — the hero backup quarterback on this day — spent each summer among these mountains, where his parents were born and where his extended family still resides.

In fact, Hammond is a practicing Mormon.

Advertisement

“It was a perfect opportunity,” Hammond said with a smile.

Hammond misfired on just three passes out of 16 on Saturday (one of those was a dropped touchdown). He threw for 169 yards, two touchdowns and ran for a 32-yarder in a second-half outburst that saw one of the offseason’s most talked-about programs (the big-spending Red Raiders and their rich roster) turn a 10-3 halftime lead into a walloping win.

Afterward, coach Joey McGuire — brazenly honest about his team’s spending — gestured verbally to those who funded the roster. It was easy. After all, the donors were all present here, scattered across the room where he held his news conference: Cody Campbell, Gordon and Joyce Davis, and Clay Cash.

“We have the best boosters in the country by far,” McGuire says. “We have some incredible guys who went all in. My job was and is — we’ve got a long way — to create this team and get them to care and love each other. We use what everybody else is saying to prove them wrong.”

Advertisement

Texas Tech, its coach, administrators and donors have made no secret about it: They spent tens of millions in the spring and this fall on a roster full of four- and five-star Texas high school talent and a group of college all-stars plucked from other programs.

In fact, during the on-field celebration seconds after the victory, Campbell, the most front-facing of those donors, raised his arms to an adoring Tech cheering section in the southwest corner of Rice-Eccles Stadium.

“Thank you, Cody!” a man from the stands yelled down.

Do you think this is weird or awkward? Well, welcome to the NIL Era of college athletics, where donors are (legally) funding rosters after decades of repression, where athletes are earning compensation, where coaching tenures hinge on such resourcing.

Advertisement

Texas Tech is all in, to the tune of as much as $40 million over this full calendar year to all of their athletes (that includes front-loaded cash last spring and revenue-share this fall).

The Red Raiders, despite their openness about the cash flow, are using the media coverage as motivation. They know teams across the country, even their opponents, will point toward their roster payroll and their big boosters as the reason for victories.

Instead, they point to a tightly knit locker room that, McGuire says, showed up Saturday.

It makes no difference why players signed with Texas Tech, says the team’s tackle leader, Jacob Rodriguez, a quarterback-turned-linebacker. Whether it’s “Coach McGuire or money, it doesn’t matter now,” he said. “It’s about love.”

Love, heart, strength, endurance — use whatever term. The bottom line: The most hated team in the Big 12 out-muscled one of college football’s historically tough programs. Texas Tech’s starting defense has now allowed one touchdown in four games.

Advertisement

“We showed the world what we are capable of,” defensive tackle Lee Hunter said. “We take pride in somebody trying to run over us. We work hard to stop the run. You want to beat us — change your game plan.”

McGuire’s team outrushed Utah 173-101, intercepted dynamic quarterback Devon Dampier twice and got a dazzling day from a quartet of receivers and two quarterbacks.

Yes, two quarterbacks.

One minute into the second half, starting quarterback Behren Morton sustained a hit to the head and neck area, was taken to the locker room and didn’t return. After the game, McGuire suggested that his quarterback would be fine. Morton celebrated with coaches and players in the locker room, in fact.

Advertisement

In a one-score game, in came Hammond, a redshirt freshman from Austin, Texas, who had more than 30 family members in the stands here. In fact, one of his relatives is holding a baby shower here this weekend — the family event coinciding with Hammond’s return to this place.

He seemed awfully comfortable in the shadow of those mountains.

A third-and-long pass with the play clock nearly expiring? Not a problem.

A spinning, tackle-breaking run for a first down? Absolutely.

A rocking road environment, a tight fourth-quarter game, a stifling defense before him? So what, who cares, no sweat.

After all, this is his home away from home, his summer escape and his family’s origins. He stepped off the podium after a brief news conference to take a call in the hallway. It was another media request.

Advertisement

Good luck to the interviewer — Hammond is a man of few words, not necessarily shy but short with his answers. He’s loud in his actions. He wakes up every morning before 5 a.m. and heads straight to the football facility for work. At night, he meditates — something, he says, that helps with his focus and confidence.

Says McGuire on his backup QB: “He’s a dude.”

A mountain dude? Yes.

A Mormon man? That too.

And, on this day, a Texas Tech hero.

Click here to read article