Throwback Thursday: Crabtree's touchdown lifts Tech past No. 1 Texas - Red Raiders Wire

Texas Tech, ranked seventh and undefeated, hosted Colt McCoy's top-ranked Longhorns at what was then Jones AT&T Stadium. Fans camping outside began lining up the Sunday before kickoff. The game carried Big 12 South title implications and national championship weight, the kind of matchup that shuts down 19th Street and fills every bar in the Depot District hours before kickoff.

Crabtree's catch happened in front of a crowd that had been building toward that night for days, turning Tech from a ranked contender into a national story. For people who were in Lubbock that fall, the game marks a before-and-after point, the kind of story that gets retold at tailgates and passed down to kids who weren't even born yet. It put Texas Tech football on a national stage most fans never expected to see, and it gave a campus obsessed with basketball and spring football something bigger to hold onto.

Seventeen years later, folks in Lubbock still measure other big wins against that one night under the lights.