Lubbock, Texas — Texas Tech fans’ decades-old tradition of throwing tortillas on the field during kickoffs at Jones AT&T Stadium cost their team 27 yards on the field on Saturday night.
That was a result of a recent Big 12 rule on thrown objects — one that reportedly features a “three-strikes policy,” as the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal put it — which prompted a pair of unsportsmanlike conduct penalties against the Red Raiders.
The tradition also, however, drew the ire of KU coach Lance Leipold, who said that during the Jayhawks’ 42-17 loss to Tech, a member of KU’s staff got hit by a thrown pocketknife from the stands.
“It’s ridiculous,” Leipold said. “It’s supposed to be for safety and things like that. It’s a culture that’s been accepted to a point and it hasn’t changed. And eventually somebody’s going to be seriously hurt, unfortunately.”
Leipold said that the thrown pocketknife hit the KU sideline during the third quarter. A KU spokesperson said that the second penalty incurred by the Tech fans — which was assessed prior to the Jayhawks’ first drive of the fourth quarter — was a direct result of the thrown pocketknife, which was a Swiss Army-style knife.
The previous penalty had occurred at the start of a Tech drive in the second quarter, backing the Red Raiders up from their 25-yard line half the distance to the goal.
Over the course of the game, a warning that told fans “Don’t throw items on the field” and “Cease throwing tortillas on the field” popped up on three separate occasions. Texas Tech coach Joey McGuire had issued his own sort of warning earlier in the week, in the lead-up to the game, when during a weekly press conference he encouraged fans to create an intense atmosphere for the matchup without “being defiant” of the Big 12’s new rule.
“It’s not about the tortillas this week,” he said.
But it became somewhat about the tortillas all the same, and after the game, a reporter asked McGuire about a “heated exchange” he had with Leipold following the conclusion of the game. McGuire said he and Leipold were both frustrated by the thrown objects. (Leipold, for his part, said he felt officials were frustrated during the game too.)
“We’ve got a new rule in this league and we know the rule, and we didn’t follow it, and we got penalized tonight, two 15-yard penalties, and he was frustrated on that side,” McGuire said. “We got to be better. We got to do a better job. We got to find a way to do a better job as a whole, all of us, and we will. We’ve got two weeks to have a better plan and get the point across of what the rule is. Because it’s going to catch up with us.”
He said that any fan who throws tortillas more than once is making it “all about you.”
“Is that a Red Raider?” he asked. “If you came to the game and you love this team and you’re passionate about this team, but yet you’re going to throw another tortilla and you know it’s against the rules?”
On the whole, Leipold said he felt the new rule — which was approved in August by a 15-1 vote, with Texas Tech athletic director Kirby Hocutt the lone dissenter — was handled “very poorly” on Saturday.
“Our conference office, and you can ask (Big 12 chief football officer) Scott Draper and them, (was) very poor at handling it,” Leipold said. “One of the officials almost got hit and tried to throw a flag, and it got picked up, so that was disappointing. We have a policy put in that wasn’t followed through, so I was very disappointed on how that was.”
Texas Tech head coach Joey McGuire, center, speaks to Kansas head coach Lance Leipold, left, after the end of the NCAA college football game, Saturday, Oct. 11, 2025, in Lubbock, Texas.
AP Photo/Annie Rice