The knife was discovered early in the fourth quarter of an eventual 42-17 win for the Red Raiders after Cameron Dickey scored a 55-yard touchdown. The athletics department is working with the Big 12 to review game footage to see if it can find an answer for how it ended up there.
It's unclear at this point how the knife ended up there, but Red Raider fans were throwing items on the field all game. It was primarily tortillas, which is a Texas Tech tradition, but it's certainly possible that a fan is also responsible for the pocketknife.
The Red Raiders received a 15-yard penalty on two separate instances for their fans throwing tortillas on the field Saturday. The school issued a warning to fans on the jumbotron stating not to throw any item on the field, but the crowd continued nonetheless.
Jayhawks coach Lance Leipold got into a heated exchange with Texas Tech coach Joey McGuire during their postgame handshake. It seemed that the throwing items on the field was a big reason why. Leipold appeared to say "That's bullsh*t" about something, to which McGuire responded, "Coach, I can't do anything about that. You want me to do something f***ing about it?"
Big 12 officials voted 15-1 this offseason to implement a new rule where a team can be penalized for fans throwing items on the field if they continue to do so after two warnings. Texas Tech athletic director Kirby Hocutt was the only one who voted against the measure.
The decision was seen by many as a way to preserve the Red Raiders' longstanding tradition of throwing tortillas onto the field. Hocutt suggested to fans before this season that they keep the tortilla throwing to the opening kickoff only and otherwise refrain.
Clearly that didn't happen Saturday and the team is now under plenty of scrutiny for it. McGuire addressed his confrontation with Leipold in his postgame press conference and urged fans to heed warnings in the future.
"It's frustrating," he said. "I'm frustrated. I know (Leipold) was frustrated. We've got a new rule in this league and we know the rule and we didn't follow it and we got penalized for it tonight two 15-yard penalties. He was frustrated on that side. We've got to be better. We've got to find a way to do a better job as a whole, all of us, and we will. ...It's frustrating because it's kind of like, whenever I talk to the guys, make it about the football. So if you get any kind of extracirricular penalties, you made it about you.
"If you're throwing tortillas more than once, now it becomes all about you. What really are you? Is that a Red Raider? If you came to the game and you love this team and you're passionate about this team, but yet you're gonna throw another tortilla and you know it's against the rules? So we've got to do a better job and I've got to do a better job of expressing to the fans how important they are."