Kingsbury Was Football Pioneer Long Before Hall Of Fame Induction

Texas Tech football head coach Kliff Kingsbury was inducted into the Texas Sports High School Football Hall of Fame Saturday night for being a pioneer in the spread offense.

Kliff Kingsbury is known around the college football world as a trendsetter.  His stylish custom suits and designer sunglasses have made him the closest thing the game has to a fashion icon.  However, long before he was a sex-symbol with a play sheet, he was setting a different type of trend, running the spread offense to perfection.

Saturday, Kliff Kingsbury was honored for his remarkable high school football career by being inducted into the Texas High School Football Hall of Fame in Waco.  Before Kingsbury was setting records in Lubbock, he was the most prominent of the early wave of high school quarterbacks that helped revolutionize the game of football at all levels making him a no-brainer addition to the Hall of Fame.

Playing in the late 1990’s, when most of the football world, especially in high school, was still trying to build their offenses around the traditional concepts of running the ball, only mixing in play-action passes on occasion, Kingsbury was at the forefront of a new style of play.

Kingsbury’s head coach, his father Tim, knew that his New Braunfels Unicorns lacked the personnel to go toe-to-toe with the traditional powers in Texas so he turned to a new concept, the spread offense.  That move paid huge dividends

In 1997, Kliff Kingsbury led his team to a 13-2 record just one season after posting a 4-8 mark.  That year, he threw for 3,009 yards and 34 touchdowns, totals almost unheard of in high school football at the time.

And though no one knew it, they were witnessing a football trendsetter at work.  Kingsbury would go on to a legendary career at Texas Tech where he set 39 school and seven NCAA passing records.

Thus, it is safe to say that Kingsbury has been at the cutting edge of football for two decades.  Admittedly, he was not the first quarterback to put up astronomical passing numbers in college and others have thrown for more touchdowns and yards but he was the first to bring the spread offense to the mainstream of the sport by utilizing it to have success in one of the toughest conferences in existence.

Along the way, his play inspired a revolution in the game.

Kingsbury sits 28th on the all-time college passing yards list but of the 27 players ahead of him, only one, Ty Detmer of BYU, was a predecessor of the the spread offense era.  The rest of the players ahead of him, except for two contemporaries, can trace their college success to the trail blazed by Kingsbury and his head coach Mike Leach at Texas Tech.  The duo proved that the spread offense could be one of the game’s great equalizers and their success sent the game in a new direction.

When schools around the country saw Kingsbury and the Red Raiders taking down traditional powers like Nebraska, Texas A&M and Texas with a four-receiver offense, coaches took notice.  By the end of the decade, the spread would revolutionize college football and be the preferred offense of the vast majority of teams in the nation.

More from Wreck'Em Red

• Texas Tech football: Red Raider fans need to know about these Mountaineers
• Texas Tech football: Red Raiders land first commit for class of 2025
• Texas Tech football: Why have the Red Raiders struggled on the road under McGuire?
• Texas Tech football: Why the Red Raiders can compete for a Big 12 title
• Texas Tech football: Plenty of questions remain as conference play arrives

Naturally, that trend has become the norm for high schools as well.  Teams across the nation are still employing the same offensive concepts Kingsbury used to change the game twenty years ago.

Now, virtually every high school team in Texas sends its quarterbacks and receivers to participate in summer 7-on-7 passing competitions.  Those events were created as a way for players to get extra conditioning in the summer but have grown to be essential portions of the high school football calendar.  It would be almost unthinkable for a serious high school team to skip the 7-on-7 tournaments and taking home the state 7-on-7 title has become prestigious and noteworthy.

But what is most remarkable is the influence the spread has had on the NFL game revolutionizing football at the highest level.  Of the nine 5,000-yard passing seasons in NFL history, eight have come in the last decade as spread offense concepts have become the norm on Sundays.

Furthermore, diminutive slot receivers like Texas Tech alums Wes Welker and Danny Amendola have become some of the most productive offensive players of their generation.  Prior to the spread passing attack, it would have been impossible for players of their size and speed to get a second glance from NFL teams but because of the success of the spread offense, NFL teams now must have those types of players on their roster to succeed.

And the line of football evolution runs directly through a gangly central Texas quarterback with an acumen for operating the modern passing game with precision in a time when most still viewed the games as their fathers and grandfathers had.

Next: Texas Tech Football Hands Out Numerous Offers

It is fitting that Kingsbury played for the Unicorns in high school.  Like the mythical horned creatures, prior to 1997 no one had seen a player do what Kliff Kingsbury did in New Braunfels, at least not at that level of competition.  So while he has been labeled as a pop-culture phenomenon for his off-field persona, long before the stylish stubble and social media fame, Kliff Kingsbury was first a revolutionary player that helped usher in the modern era of football as we know it.