A beloved football tradition at Texas Tech is making its way to the hockey rink with the unveiling of new alternate jerseys for the university’s hockey team.
The hockey team at the Lubbock, Texas-based university rolled out the new jerseys, made by X Jerseys, on their social media channels on Wednesday, September 18. The base of the jersey is sublimated with a texture resembling a tortilla — a nod to Red Raiders football fans tossing tortillas onto the field at home games.
The front of the jersey has the player’s number in between arched “TEXAS” text on top and straight “TECH” text below, all of which is red with black outlines. Red and black stripes run around the waist and stripes, with marrow white stripes in between.
The shoulders are black with a Texas state flag on each side. The back half of the collar is red while the front half is black; white trim runs all the way around. Numbers on the back and sleeves are red with black outlines.
Red Raiders fans have been tossing tortillas on the football field since the late 1980s or early 1990s — it’s hard to pin down exactly when or how it started — and the tradition has even ported over to other sports. Most notably, a tortilla was tossed on the court during the final of the 2019 NCAA men’s basketball tournament at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, which Texas Tech lost to the University of Virginia.
There are two theories on how the tradition started, according to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. One is that Texas Tech students used to remove the plastic lids from their soft drinks and throw them on the field, but when concessions stopped giving out lids, they started tossing tortillas instead.
The other stems from a comment from an ESPN announcer who, during a broadcast of a game between the Red Raiders and their rivals from Texas A&M, allegedly said Lubbock had “nothing but Texas Tech football and a tortilla factory.” Fueled by the slight, fans brought tortillas to the next game and tossed them on the field at kickoff.
Texas Tech’s hockey team plays in Division 3 of the American Collegiate Hockey Association. Their next game is Friday, October 11, against the University of Texas-San Antonio at the Amarillo Ice Ranch in Amarillo, Texas.
The tortilla jerseys will go on sale to the general public starting at 5 p.m. CT on Thursday, Sept. 19. The store link will be posted at that time on the Texas Tech hockey website at TTUhockey.com.