Remembering Joe Hornaday, Texas Tech football SID from a throwback era - Yahoo Sports

John Klein, who covered the Southwest Conference for the Houston Post from 1985 to 1990, said Tech games were his favorite assignments on the beat. Klein picked the best SWC matchup to cover most weeks, which usually meant Texas A&M, Texas, Arkansas or Baylor, but he checked the schedule hoping Tech would be worth the trip to Lubbock. Now retired in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Klein said he looked forward to those road trips "like nobody's business."

Klein's account points to Hornaday as the reason those visits stood out. As Tech's SID, Hornaday would have been the point of contact for visiting reporters like Klein, shaping how the program got covered outside Lubbock during a stretch when the Southwest Conference still ran through Texas Tech football.

For people here who remember that era, this is a reminder of how much a single behind the scenes job shaped Tech's reputation with the traveling press. A beat writer with his pick of any Southwest Conference game most weekends kept angling to get back to Lubbock instead.