Walking into the Dustin R. Womble Football Center isn’t like walking into a typical college football facility. It’s more like entering a five-star resort disguised as a football cathedral. First comes the trophy room, where Texas Tech’s past glories are encased like museum relics. Then it’s the spa—where players unwind before heading to a weight room packed with custom plates, pristine dumbbells, and any other gear you’d expect at an NFL-level compound. The aesthetics hit you first. Then the realization: Joey McGuire is building a football team with optics. $242 million worth of optics.

So, is Lubbock the place to be? Joey McGuire, this time, got receipts to go with the rhetoric. “Man, it is crazy,” he said on the Dave Campbell’s Texas Football show, nearly laughing at how far the program has come. “I think I hired two of the best coordinators in the nation…to be able to get Shiel Wood to be our defensive coordinator and to be able to get Mack Leftwich, I think they’re absolutely incredible.” That’s momentum off the field, and McGuire didn’t stop there. “We signed the number one portal class in the country, depending on who you read, we’re one or two.”

But the real play—the one turning heads in boardrooms and living rooms—isn’t just about recruits. It’s about ‘great men’, as Joey McGuire proudly noted, who are “grown men that went to class and made great grades.” He added, “This is the third consecutive semester that our team GPA has been over a 3.0. We hold every GPA record in the 100-year history of Texas Tech.” That, he argues, is the backbone of Tech’s culture.

And culture, not cash, is what finishes the deal. “Whenever you’re ending those conversations, it’s the last thing we talk about, not the first thing we talk about in recruiting.” Make no mistake: McGuire knows the revenue-sharing era has shifted the balance of power. “The things that you could recruit against us in the past, we’re eliminating. We have one more to eliminate, and we need to do it this fall on the football field.”

That mission starts inside the $242 million Womble Football Center, a full-blown recruiting weapon dressed up as a player development palace. The coach said, “I work in a football resort. It is absolutely incredible. Players that we’re recruiting when they walk in, they’re absolutely blown away. And so we’ve upped the game whenever it comes to what we’re doing at Texas Tech.” Nutrition zone? Check. Recovery lounge with water pressure beds? Absolutely. Custom barbershop? Of course—gotta look sharp on and off the field.

Upstairs is a flex of epic proportions: the Patrick Mahomes Walkthrough Room, the largest indoor walkthrough space in all of college and pro football, stretching 25-by-20 yards. That’s not a facility—that’s a statement. As RB coach Garret McGuire put it, “This is the best place I’ve ever been around…That walkthrough room is absolutely insane. I think that’s a total game changer for us as a program.”

And when those prized portal additions or blue-chip recruits walk through the door, they’re not just impressed—they’re stunned. “Then when they get here, and these guys have been everywhere,” McGuire said, “they walk in and go, ‘Coach, this isn’t comparable, this is the best facility in the country.’” No flash-in-the-pan hype. These are elite players who’ve seen Georgia, Alabama, and Oregon up close. Texas Tech didn’t just match the standard—it raised it.

The new team meeting room seats over 200. Each position group gets its own dedicated space. There’s even a podcast studio built into the player lounge. Everything about the building is intentional—every hallway a recruiting tool, every screen a development aid. And for Joey McGuire, it’s about more than just glittering architecture. “I work in a football resort,” he said with a grin. “It is absolutely incredible. Players that we’re recruiting when they walk in, they’re absolutely blown away.”

Joey McGuire’s Big 12 and SEC warning shot

Texas Tech Red Raiders isn’t sneaking up on anyone this fall—and Joey McGuire is just fine with that. After a monster offseason that saw the Red Raiders reel in the nation’s top transfer portal class and build momentum with top-rated high school recruits, folks around the country are raising eyebrows at the price tag. But McGuire? He’s not flinching. “Honestly, I kind of laugh. Because I don’t know of any coach who wouldn’t want the support that their university and their boosters put behind Texas Tech,” he said Monday at the Texas High School Coaches Association Coaching Convention.

The critics don’t bother him—what bothers him is the double standard. “Some of it, I go, ‘man, that’s kind of hypocritical.’ I’ve been doing this a long time. A high school coach for 23 years, I coached 98 Division I football players. I’ve seen all the good, the bad, the ugly in recruiting. I don’t know what Texas’ payroll was last year or Ohio State’s payroll was last year, but nobody was surprised when they were doing it at that level. All of a sudden, Texas Tech decides that we’re going to be extremely aggressive in the two worlds and do it the right way, that it shouldn’t be done at Texas Tech.”

Because Tech isn’t a blue blood program like Texas or Ohio State, and the fact that they haven’t won a whole lot over the years, there are more skeptical because the Red Raiders want to join the party. He knows the target’s painted on their backs this fall—and welcomes the pressure. “I understand that there are going to be a lot of people excited to play us to prove us wrong… this is what your team looks like.”