On the last Sunday in November, Texas Tech athletic director Kirby Hocutt stepped to a lectern in Lubbock, his design to both praise and bury Kliff Kingsbury.
The eulogy went something like this: A first-class guy and alum with the very best of intentions for the university he loved like no other. Oh, and “he did things right.” But being consistently mediocre in football in Texas and in a Power 5 conference, unsustainable in the new world order, trumps all that.
Losing your job around the holidays is never a good thing, but the $4-million buyout, along with perhaps a state unemployment insurance subsidy, should tide the out-of-work coach over until the first of the year.
Kingsbury was likely years ahead of his time – not in the good way — too young at 33 and with no executive coaching experience, when Hocutt, with both the soil of Tommy Tuberville taint and rose-colored glasses obscuring his view, called Texas Tech’s favorite football son home in 2013.
And Kliff, the offensive coordinator at Texas A&M, came riding in on Johnny Manziel’s white magic carpet and Heisman Trophy. His three years of coaching experience only one less than his time as a player with the Cologne Centurions of NFL Europe and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.
Yet, Kliff achieved in Lubbock, sending into the world quarterbacks Case Keenum of the University of Houston, Davis Webb and Patrick Mahomes. He was the step-father of Baker Mayfield, and, yes, he was as much the maker of Manziel as the other way around.
He has left the program with another good one, Grapevine’s Alan Bowman, who will have to decide if he wants to stay for the new regime.
Clouding that class of quarterback, however, were teams with a lack of discipline and sloppiness that manifested in penalties, missed assignments and mediocrity. For much of his six seasons, the Red Raiders were as likely to give up 50 points as score 50. In fact, over the course of the 2015 and ’16 seasons, Tech indeed lost four games in which the offense produced 50 points.
He was also unlucky, losing all three of his quarterbacks this season, which ended in disappointment with five straight losses in a 5-7 campaign that doubled as a 5×7 coaching burial plot.
Kliff will land on his feet with enough in savings until he gets there.
His legacy at Texas Tech, however, will ultimately be as a bridge builder: The bridge from Mike Leach to … what exactly?
Hocutt’s task is no less important than Moses and Aaron trying to find their way.
As successful as Leach was – and make no mistake he was, both on and off the field in terms of national exposure – he was a mercurial lose cannon whose ambition left the football program destabilized year after year.
Every year, he went looking for a new job or a raise. That is what led to his collision with athletic director Gerald Myers and the board of trustees. The Adam James saga was merely the best salve Myers found to cure his Leach rash.
And Leach is doing it again — with this job.
Leach has said he is open to returning. Sure, he is.
A year ago, a couple of big-spending boosters in Fort Worth were said to be pushing for Leach’s return. A letter from these guys to the board even surfaced, though its authenticity was never confirmed.
It could have just been a Russian bot.
Nevertheless, the Adam James episode and remedy – Leach’s termination – left the Tech masses enraged and estranged.
Contempt is to Tuberville, Leach’s replacement, what Santa Claus is to Christmas.
He steps foot in country, he’s likely to get a tour of the Louis XVI memorial guillotine.
Tuberville wanted out so badly that the moment he received another job offer – from Cincinnati, no less – he up and left. Literally.
At a dinner with prospective recruits, he said he needed to take a call and never came back.
That’s what you call a major-league SOB. (Disclosure: The writer is a Texas Tech graduate.)
With the 2018 season complete, the Red Raiders haven’t had a winning record in the Big 12 since Leach’s firing, a string of nine seasons.
Tech also hasn’t been bowl eligible in back-to-back seasons since 2012-13, the Tuberville-Kingsbury overlap.
Home attendance has reflected the downturn.
While attendance conference-wide has declined over the last few years, nowhere has it been down like at Texas Tech, which suffered the biggest decline in the Big 12 between the 2016 and ’17 seasons.
This year, Tech enjoyed an average of 56,033 at home football games. That’s up from an average of 55,065 a year ago, but still down from 2016’s average football crowd of 58,250.
Saturday’s game at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, a fire-Kliff-clinching loss to Baylor, drew an embarrassing 27,000-plus. Granted, most of those were Tech fans.
Hocutt was adamant that this is not a bridge to nowhere.
“We will be elite in football again,” Hocutt said. “I guarantee you, we will be elite in football again. This program has been there before and will get there again. We will bring back our edge.”
Hocutt has the best idea on which leader he believes has all requisite ingredients. Hocutt, who has found the perfect fit for just about every other sport at the school, desperately needs to get this hire right.
Jim Leavitt, Hocutt’s position coach at Kansas State in the early 1990s, and Matt Wells, who has had success at Utah State, a mid-major, are said to be at the front of the line for interview preferences.
Leavitt comes with some baggage. He was fired at South Florida, where he had a very successful run, after he was found to have grabbed one of his players by the throat and slapped him into next year, or perhaps a safe space. I don’t know.
Tech has had experience with the controversial and volatile, and it hasn’t stopped them. See: Bob Knight. If they were to bring Leavitt in, hopefully he doesn’t have a son – make that sons — who comes with the deal.
Dana Holgorsen, sap off the Leach tree, is another high on the list. He will most likely merely use the interest to get a raise at West Virginia.
The Tech search committee’s binoculars are also set on Clemson defensive coordinator Brent Venables.
Even if Leach really wanted a second stint, isn’t that just a Pandora’s box, though without the unexpected troubles? More like expected troubles. This is a guy who tried to sue the university and dragged its name through the mud at every opportunity.
No … no … no.
Reportedly not on any list is Seth Littrell, the North Texas coach. There is also no Neal Brown, an offensive coordinator at Texas Tech under Tuberville, a fact that might work against him, despite being well-liked in Lubbock.
Neither is Lane Kiffin, his reputation preceding him by miles and miles, though he is now a remade man of God.
Some say that’s what it will take at Texas Tech.
That brings us to Memphis coach Mike Norvell, who should be given as thorough a vetting as anybody. The 37-year-old is 26-12 in three seasons with the Tigers (8-4), who will play No. 9 and 10-0 Central Florida in the American Athletic Conference championship on Saturday.
Norvell was raised in Irving and Arlington to a single mother.
He went to Irving MacArthur for a year before transferring to Arlington Grace Prep, where he played under Mike Barber, the former Houston Oilers tight end, who, along with another assistant, became a father figure. Norvell graduated at 16 and decided to stay for an extra year of high school, hoping to mature both physically and emotionally for a college career.
He couldn’t play a fifth year, of course, so Barber made him offensive coordinator and wide receivers coach – his playing position – for the junior high team. Norvell’s first coaching job was at 17.
After an aborted stay at Louisiana Tech, Norvell went off to Central Arkansas to play. There, he became the school’s all-time leader in receptions. He never missed a game as a senior, despite a torn labrum and rotator cuff and a torn meniscus in his knee.
Norvell stayed at Central Arkansas as a graduate assistant. At 24, he was offered a full-time job at Delta State, one of the top FCS programs in the state. Instead, he chose another grad assistant job, this one at Tulsa under Todd Graham.
While his wife remained in Conway, Ark., Norvell lived in the coaches’ locker room – that’s where he slept – because the couple couldn’t afford two homes on her salary and the pittance, $500, he was bringing in every month.
From July to January, he worked from 6 a.m. to midnight, but Tulsa was his springboard and Graham was his sensei. Before being hired at Memphis in 2016, following former TCU offensive coordinator Justin Fuente as head coach, Norvell followed Graham to Pittsburgh and then Arizona State.
Last year, he was the runner-up to Chad Morris for the Arkansas job.
That was OK, though.
Days before his first game as a head coach, Norvell reminisced about those days at Tulsa, the days with no home and no real salary. Each day at lunchtime, one of his only breaks during football season, Norvell would take a lap around the football field.
A time to reflect, he recalled.
“Just the healthy respect of being grateful for the position that you have,” he told a reporter.
Hocutt went with Kliff six years ago because of his familiarity with the school and West Texas, and an understanding of the concept of faithfulness.
It sounds as if Norvell has that, too, along with the perspective that comes with scrapping and clawing his way through life.