Kirby Hocutt: The busiest AD in America since 2011
In what feels like it has become an annual right of passage for Texas Tech athletic director Kirby Hocutt, the man in charge of the Red Raider sports program had to make another high-profile hire this week. In his five years at Texas Tech, Hocutt has had anything but an easy job yet through all of the twists and turns he continues to guide Texas Tech by building a successful athletic department.
Let’s take a look at the eventful tenure of the current Texas Tech athletic director.
March 20, 2011 – Kirby Hocutt Hires Billy Gillispie as men’s basketball coach
Only a month after arriving in Lubbock following three years in the same position at the University of Miami (FL), Hocutt had to make his first significant hire as Texas Tech AD. Unfortunately, he did not get off to a good start.
Hocutt tabbed former Kentucky and Texas A&M head coach Billy Gillispie to replace the recently fired Pat Knight. Though the vast majority of Texas Tech fans were supportive of this hire, it was risky and controversial nonetheless.
Gillispie, the native of Graford, Texas was out of coaching after a turbulent stint as the head coach of perhaps the most high-profile college basketball program in the NCAA, the University of Kentucky. After only two years with the Wildcats, Gillispie was fired in 2009 for his inability to get along with the big time Kentucky boosters.
Then, one year later he was arrested and charged with a DUI in Kentucky. But desperate to save the basketball program, Hocutt took a chance hoping that Gillispie had come to a better place in his life.
That turned out to be far from the case.
A year and a half out of coaching did not seem to be the remedy for Gillispie. At Texas Tech he went only 8-23 in his initial season. But more troubling was how he carried himself when the television cameras were not around.
Gillispie never made it to his second season. Prior to the 2012-13 season, numerous allegations of player mistreatment were leveled against the Texas Tech coach. The players themselves delivered many of those accusations directly to Hocutt.
After a hospitalization for heart-attack symptoms, Gillispie took an indefinite leave of absence from his position to check himself into the Mayo Clinic just over a month before the upcoming 2012-13 season. Two weeks later, Gillispie resigned citing health concerns but there were indications that the school also wished to sever ties with the troubled coach for various reasons stemming from his treatment of players and staff members.
Though Gillispie had at one time been the hottest coaching name in the game, his hiring at Texas Tech was an abject disaster that was part of the Texas Tech basketball program’s slide to the depths of the Big 12. Needless to say, the Hocutt era was off to a rocky start. Little did he know that the Gillespie mess was just the beginning of the circus.
Next: Hocutt's most successful move