MIAMI, Fla. – John Curry was taking a social studies exam in the fall of his junior year at Lubbock Coronado when his phone started blowing up. He paused to take a quick look at who was calling and it was a combination of Joey McGuire and D.J. Mann. Mann was his head coach and McGuire was the recently hired new head coach of the Red Raiders. 

Curry sent both to voicemail multiple times and kept working on his social studies test. He says it was his hardest class as a junior, which is saying something for a guy who could’ve gone to an Ivy League school. Since Mann and McGuire couldn’t get Curry to pick up the phone, they turned their attention to his social studies teacher, who interrupted the exam and told Curry to pick up his phone and take those calls out in the hallway. 

Thirty minutes before this happened, Mann had just parked at the Texas Tech facilities and was planning on watching McGuire’s introductory press conference from the back of the room. Mann, who was a former assistant coach at Cedar Hill, was walking toward the press conference room when he spotted McGuire and general manager James Blanchard pulling up. McGuire jumped out of the car, ran over to Mann, gave him his signature hug, and then said, “tell John Curry he has an offer at Texas Tech.” 

For Curry, it was the culmination of a lifelong dream. He grew up tailgating before Texas Tech football games with his parents and playing football with all the other kids who were in attendance. He’d head into the stadium early in hopes of talking a player or two into handing over some equipment or signing the program. He was too young to remember the Crabtree Catch or that magical 2008 season. His first Tech memories are teams led by Davis Webb and Baker Mayfield. 

“I’d go to the game and tell myself that one day I would be running out of these tunnels,” Curry said of his visits to Jones AT&T Stadium as a youth. “Dylan Cantrell and Jakeem Grant both gave me gloves in the same season and I remember that being one of the biggest things that had ever happened in my life at the time.” 

Football was always king in the Curry household. His dad, Ryan, was a member of the Texas Tech football and track programs from 1999-2001. His grandfather, John Ayers, starred at West Texas A&M before embarking on an 11-year career in the NFL with the San Francisco 49ers and the Denver Broncos, winning two Super Bowls as an offensive lineman. 

But football wasn’t Curry’s first love. That was baseball. Until around his sophomore year of high school, Curry figured his path was on the baseball diamond where he dreamed of becoming the next great MLB prospect out of West Texas. He was an excellent outfielder and could touch the low 90s on the mound on occasion. There was one thing baseball lacked that Curry, one of five siblings, craved. He grew up fighting and wrestling with his older and younger brothers and that ingrained the physicality that was celebrated on the gridiron. 

“Football fit for me because I could go hit someone as hard as I possibly can and it’s allowed,” he said. “I couldn’t do that playing baseball. In football, I can and that made me fall in love with it.”

All that was missing was an opportunity. McGuire stayed in contact with Curry after stopping by Coronado and talking to Mann about the ultra-talented and uber-competitive middle linebacker. McGuire wanted to offer him before Curry’s junior season, but that wasn’t completely McGuire’s call to make as an assistant coach at Baylor under Matt Rhule. When he became the head coach at Texas Tech, McGuire no longer needed to run his opinion up the totem pole, which is why he made sure Curry was offered the same day he was introduced as the head coach of the Red Raiders. 

The Oregon game in 2023 was the first time Curry lived out his childhood dream and dressed out as a member of the Red Raiders football team. Instead of playing outside with the kids near the tailgates next to the baseball field, he was running out of the tunnel just like he told himself he would. It is a day he’ll never forget. 

“I remember walking down the tunnel and my legs were literally shaking,” Curry said with a laugh. “Like, I wasn’t even playing that game and I was still so nervous seeing the packed out stadium. It was a crazy experience.”

Curry worked his way into playing time as a redshirt freshman in 2024, mostly on special teams, and then became a full-time starter in 2025. A self-described “long-suffering Texas Tech fan” is now one of the key pieces to a Texas Tech defense that led the Red Raiders to their first outright conference championship since the 1950s and into the College Football Playoff for the first time. 

Curry was too young to remember the Mike Leach era. He cut his teeth watching Tommy Tuberville, Kliff Kingsbury, and Matt Wells fail to post a winning record in conference play from 2010-2021. He arrived as a new standard was being set in Lubbock, and he’s now helping set that standard even higher. 

“My entire life I’ve been the guy in the stands thinking, ‘man, is Tech going to be any good this year? Are we ever going to be good in my lifetime?’ So, to be part of the team that got us to a Big 12 championship and to the playoffs, is amazing.”

Curry is the starter at the Star position, which is a hybrid of a linebacker and a safety. He could become a full-time starter at linebacker, where he played in high school, once Jacob Rodriguez moves on. He says the current linebacker room, which also includes Ben Roberts, reminds him of growing up with a house full of brothers. Mann says that Curry is only scratching the surface of his abilities and that he’ll follow his grandfather’s footsteps into the NFL when he’s done living out his childhood dream as a star player for the Red Raiders. 

“If there was a blueprint of a Texas Tech football player, it is John Curry,” Mann said. “West Texas tough, man. It just fits. I’m not surprised he’s having this type of success because Coach McGuire told me after his freshman year there that John was going to the NFL."