University grounds
So yesterday was September 7, and my alma mater Texas Tech was on the road and lost a game to Washington State University. It was Tech's second game of the season and that makes them 1 and 1 overall. They have a tough schedule and an unusual one given the shakeup in the Big 12. In addition to the usual suspects over the last several years, they have Colorado, Arizona, and Arizona State on their schedule. Only time will tell how the season will go. But the game and the date had me thinking. I remembered that I had been on campus on September 7, 1996. It stands out to me because that was the semester I began my doctoral studies and despite the fact that the Red Raiders played their second game of the season that Saturday, neither of them had been on campus. We lost our first game that year on the road at Kansas State. The second game had been at a neutral stadium. We beat Oklahoma State that morning at Texas Stadium, the then home to the Dallas Cowboys, 31 to 3. I didn't have cable at the time, but I listened to the game on the radio. That afternoon, I went to a friend's house and watched my other alma mater Tennessee beat UCLA at home. I had to run by campus to pick something up and walked across campus to the Jones Stadium and took some photos along the way. To say that it doesn't look the same these days is an understatement. It doesn't have the exact same name either. Although commonly called "Jones Stadium" in those days, it opened as the Clifford B. and Audrey Jones Stadium. Jones was on the then-named Texas Technological College board when it opened in 1923. He would became chair of the board in 1927. Twelve years later, he was chosen as Tech's third president. It was during his tenure in that role that the Texas Tech Foundation was established. He didn't stay president for long, especially given the time most presidents stayed in office during that era. He stepped down in 1944 due to health concerns. He was named President Emeritus and stayed active in his support for Tech. He and Audrey gave $100,000 (about $1.6 million in 2024 value) to aid in the construction of the stadium. The stadium opened in 1947 and the first game there took place on November 29th. The Red Raiders won that game, beating the Hardin-Simmons Cowboys 14 to 6. The official dedication took place at half time during the game. The stadium had a capacity of 27,000 when it opened. It has been enlarged numerous time Back then, Tech's athletic teams were known as the Matadors, not the Red Raiders. They had that name from 1925 to 1936. The football team donned new red uniforms on a road trip to Los Angeles on October 26, 1934 where they beat heavily favored Loyola Marymount. A local sports reporter in LA referred to them as a "red raiding team" and the description stuck. Below is a view looking northwest inside Jones Stadium that day twenty-eight years ago. Jones has been enlarged a lot since then. In fact, it really doesn't look the same at all from the outside. It has also seen its named changed. A licensing agreement with SBC Communications (Southwestern Bell Corporation) saw it renamed Jones SBC Stadium in 2000. AT&T bought out SBC so in 2006 it was renamed again to Jones AT&T Stadium. It still carries that moniker. I don't know for certain what Jones' capacity was in 1996. It was somewhere around 53,000. I know this because I remember thinking it was just about half or so of Neyland Stadium at the University of Tennessee at the time. Below are some photos I took along the way to Jones Stadium. Back then, not all statistical software was available on desktop computers. Personal computers of that era were just beginning to be able to cope with the size and processing demands of such things, so anything of substance was still frequently ran on a main frame. My major professor had ran some analyses the previous day and asked me to swing by and pick up the results. The main frame was in the Computer Science Building and I was on my way to pick up the print outs from her stats run. The first photo below is looking southward across Memorial Circle toward the Administration Building. The second and third photos are of the Mechanical Engineering Building, taken on opposite sides of a quad known as the Engineering Key. It sits on the northern edge of the Key. The arches are really cool and I love the look of them. Arches like that are seen all across campus. The fourth photo is the since razed English and Philosophy Building. When I was on campus in the late 90's, the people I knew who were interested in campus architecture did not like the English and Philosophy Building. Well, that's not quite correct. They didn't like it where it was. The Engineering Key, as you can see from these photos, pretty much carries the Spanish architecture them in a traditional sense. English-Philosophy carried the blonde brick theme, but that was it. Otherwise, it was a mid-century piece that had nothing much in common with that part of campus. I understood that complaint, but it was not the only mid-century on campus, and it was not at all the least attractive. There were and are a number of mid-rise buildings on campus that have nothing in common with the Spanish theme except they too are clad in the same brick. Several of those buildings are simply plain; a couple of them are, in my opinion, rather ugly. They would be acceptable and not terrible on another campus, but given the beauty of the Spanish-styled structures on Tech's campus they really stand out and not in a good way. None the less, I always liked the building. Photos five and six are the Electrical Engineering Building. I love the archways on that building as well. You can just see the Computer Science Building in the background of the first photo. I don't remember why I did not take a photo of that building. It may have been that since I was going inside of it I didn't think to take a photo. It is also a modern style building and not too attractive so I may have deliberately chosen not to take a photo of it.
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AboutUniversity Grounds is a blog about college and university campuses, their buildings and grounds, and the people who live and work on them. Australia
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January 2025
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