For the first time this season, Texas Tech football heads on the road to the University of Utah and will face a fan environment unlike its own.

The Red Raiders have played their first three games this season in Lubbock in front of a sold-out crowd of 60,229. Now heading to Utah, which averaged a total attendance of 52,962 per game in the 2024 season, Tech will be on the other end of a rowdy environment.

In order to prepare for the opposing environment, head coach Joey McGuire said the offense will prepare in Tech’s indoor facility this week to simulate Utah’s crowd noise.

“We’ll really crank it up,” McGuire said. “Whenever you’re in the indoor and you’re doing the crowd noise part of it, it’s really loud, so we’ll keep the offense in the indoor all week long.”

Tech starting quarterback Behren Morton has been a part of the Red Raider program for five seasons and has experienced several intense road environments during his tenure.

The senior said his advice to players who haven’t experienced an away environment of this volume is to embrace it and make the impact of their play dampen the stadium noise.

“It’s fun to just walk into the place and to shut their fans up and play our brand of football,” Morton said. “The juices are flowing. Anxiety is going. It’s a lot of fun.”

As an example of players who haven’t experienced a large, noisy away environment, Morton brought up junior tight end Terrence Carter, who spent the last two seasons at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

Carter said the anticipation of the Utah fans’ noise, as well as the overall game, marks one of the largest matchups that he’s been a part of in his college football career.

“This is probably going to be my biggest game I’ve played in my career,” Carter said. “I’m excited for it — just ready to see how that goes.”

While this is the first time the Red Raiders and Utes have faced off since 1973, Tech’s edge rusher David Bailey has experienced Utah’s environment before.

As a member of the PAC-12 at Stanford in 2022, then-freshman Bailey traveled to Salt Lake City to take on No. 13 Utah. Bailey said the Utah fans’ impact stuck with him to this point and said their chirps can’t affect the team during the game.

“I remember those fans vividly and the things that they were saying to us on the sideline,” Bailey said. “Making sure those types of things just don’t get to us and keeping the main thing the main thing, going out there and playing football.”

The Red Raiders face the Utes at 11 a.m. Saturday at Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City, Utah on FOX following the Big Noon Kickoff.