The lead-up to the Texas Tech–Colorado game quickly took an unusual turn — and it all started with a T-shirt.
For each Red Raiders home game, Texas Tech celebrates with a unique theme and gameday shirt, sold exclusively by Red Raider Outfitter. The “Celebrate America” shirt was meant to feature patriotic imagery and both schools’ logos, but Colorado declined to license its logo for the shirt, leading to some surprising backlash.
According to Red Raider Outfitter owner Stephen Spiegelberg, the design process began months in advance, and Texas Tech’s athletic department approved it without hesitation. But when they reached out to Colorado, the Buffs had a different response.
“We were told they won’t be licensing a product that had an American flag on it,” he said via KCBD News Channel 11 Lubbock.
The decision led him to pull Colorado-branded merchandise from his store altogether, saying, “We refuse to do that because Colorado would receive financial benefit from those shirts. And we don’t think that anybody has the right to limit the use of the American flag in this great nation.”
Except, according to Colorado, that’s not what happened.
“We get requests to use our marks and often decline for any number of reasons,” a Colorado spokesperson told KCBD. “Our standards are consistently applied and are based on widely accepted licensing and trademark best practices used by national and global brands.”
Colorado AD Rick George shared a similar sentiment:
And after a 41-27 win, in which Shedeur Sanders completed 30-43 passes (69.8 percent) for 291 yards with three touchdowns and zero interceptions, the son of Deion Sanders had some words about a certain narrative that was taking place.
“The CU don’t like the flag or something? Like, come on, brother, that’s sick at this point,” Shedeur said. “Y’all just fishing for content at this point. That was very disturbing, because what I feel bad for is there’s genuine people out there who read the media that don’t know us, you know, and they believe the type of lies and the type of things — the narrative. And some people may just not have a chance to really understand what’s going on in the situation.
“But everybody that’s around the team understands that it’s week by week they’re gonna figure out something to talk about. I don’t know, but it’s just weird. And I just feel bad for those people that don’t know us; you know they’re judging us off based on somebody’s hate toward Dad.”
And as Shedeur Sanders and the Buffs proved on the field Saturday, they’re more focused on silencing the noise with their performance than engaging in debates off of it.
[Shedeur Sanders press conference, KCBD]