Texas Tech shocked the country in 2025 by earning a playoff berth. However, a gallant run was cut short with a loss to Oregon in the second round. As he tries to build on the momentum from that season in 2026, he is planning to take a leaf out of the book of the coach who seems to have done it all.

“Indiana is the only team in the last two years that have been able to handle the 25-day layoff when the other team did not have a 25-day layoff,” McGuire said on the Andy & Ari podcast on February 20. “And so we’re trying to dig into, like, how could we practice different?

“Because if you do win the conference again, there’s a good chance you get a bye and you have a 25-day layoff. And that can’t be the excuse. You’ve got to find a way to overcome that. And Coach Cignetti is the only guy that’s been able to do that so far.”

Indiana learned from its own loss in the 2024 playoffs. Their playoff game against Notre Dame was held exactly 20 days after the regular season finale. The delay slows down the momentum in teams, regardless of how they’ve fared in the season. While discussing the pros and cons of these playoff games, this gap is often flagged as a concern. The format remains unchanged in the 2026-27 season.

The playoff schedule by itself is much longer than needed. The NFL playoffs run in tandem with college football, which is why some time has to be given to the league to split competition. This season, the NFL wild-card and divisional playoffs were all held in the gap between the Fiesta Bowl and the National Championship. This is a big reason why the season ends so late. This also messes up recruiting, which has become the force that drives Texas Tech football.

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Along with this problem, McGuire also shared in the podcast that he plans to attack Texas Tech’s penalty problems the way Cignetti, the $105 million head coach, did at Bloomington. Texas Tech racked up flags throughout the season and was getting 6.77 every game. Pre-snap penalties in particular troubled McGuire. Indiana, on the other hand, was averaging only 28.46 penalty yards per game.

It’s understandable why the Red Raiders’ head coach wants to learn from Indiana, because the two teams ran parallel in terms of success. Like the Hoosiers, TTU was also at a level unlike anything the program had seen before. Both programs, heavily resourced by donors in the recent past, were on track to pull off the impossible. But their roads parted in the first round, as Texas Tech lost to Oregon in the first round. That long delay between the Big 12 Championship game and the playoffs was flagged as a concern in TTU’s odds.

McGuire already has some suggestions for the NCAA and the CFP committee to ease the pressure of the playoff calendar.

Joey McGuire wants the season to be done by January 1

Coaches who have found it difficult to manage their duties during the postseason period want some change. Not just for the football side of things, but also for the students and their academics. Joey McGuire wants it all to be wrapped up before the new year by starting the season ahead of the current norms.

“What I would do is I would move zero week so that this last year everyone would play on August 23rd, we would play it out like that, the conference championships would be played on Thanksgiving, and you start playing the playoffs the next week. So if you have a bye, you have a true bye just like in the regular season.

“If you did it that way this year, you actually would have had the National Championship on January 1st, then the issues with the portal wouldn’t come into effect.”

CFP executive director Rich Clark told NBC Sports that the idea of moving up the first round of playoffs by one week wasn’t “off the table.” All the participants of the 4 games in this level can play on this one Saturday without entering into a conflict with the NFL. But Clark said that the reason behind that extra gap is “players’ health and safety reasons.”

Texas Tech is one team that could definitely return to the playoffs this season, thanks to the recruiting efforts that paid off for McGuire. This time, hopefully, armed with the tips from Indiana’s success, the Red Raiders can get past this first major hurdle.