Texas Tech Football Video: Watch the Red Raiders' Embarrassing Intro Reel

It's not easy to inspire people. Especially, of course, if you just so happen to really suck at inspiring people.

For example, direct your attention to the above video. My sources (i.e. the internet) tell me it's the video that the Texas Tech Red Raiders used to introduce themselves at Jones AT&T Stadium on Saturday night.

Let's start with what this video does well, and that's its premise. Because cowboys and cowboy lore play a big part in the culture of Texas Tech athletics, it makes sense that the university would come up with the idea to take key members of the football program and put them in the old west. It's really not a bad idea for a promotional video.

The university simply failed to execute the idea. The video makes a point of mocking the "romanticized cowboy culture that Hollywood loves," and then proceeds to employ every single convention established by old Hollywood westerns. It's as if they got out a book of Hollywood clichés and used every single one of them.

It could have worked, but the production values are laughable. I could have made those costumes, and I could have edited the video itself and done all the special effects. If I did, I wouldn't have come up with the idea of projecting a bunch of old images on the side of a shed.

Seriously, what the hell's up with that? And for that matter, who came up with the catchphrase, "It's bushwhacking time!" What does that even mean?

My guess is that none of this matters to Texas Tech fans. They were probably sold as soon as Tommy Tuberville said "Guns up" into the camera. Why the video didn't consist of just that is beyond me.

As far as the rest of us are concerned, this video is a colossal failure on just about every level. It may have been conjured up as some kind of grand spectacle, but it fell well short.

Funny. That actually sounds like a fitting way to characterize the football program these days.