Is Texas Tech Getting Its Money’s Worth Out Of Kirby Hocutt?
According to an updated report, Texas Tech AD Kirby Hocutt is the fifth-highest paid athletic director in the NCAA making it natural for fans to wonder if the university is getting what it has paid for.
One of the biggest challenges facing the Texas Tech athletics program is the financial constraints under which the department must operate. Annually, Texas Tech struggles to pay its head coaches a salary anywhere in the neighborhood of the top coaches in the country, regardless of sport. That is even more true of what Tech pays its assistant coaches and support staff.
But there is one area where Texas Tech is paying top price, Athletic Director Kirby Hocutt’s salary. According to a new report, the Texas Tech AD is the fifth-highest paid athletic’s director in the NCAA earning $1.45 million in 2017-18.
Furthermore, Hocutt is the most well-compensated AD in the Big 12 just ahead of new Texas AD Chris Del Conte who earned $1.435 million during the most recent school year. While it is great to see Tech show a willingness to pay top dollar for a quality leader at an important position, it is also fair to wonder if the university is getting a full return on its investment.
Those who would argue the affirmative would likely point out two inarguable facts. First, Hocutt has made two home run hires in baseball coach Tim Tadlock and basketball coach Chris Beard.
In 2013, Hocutt promoted Tadlock to head coach of a Texas Tech baseball team that had gone from perennial Big 12 contender to arguably the worst program in the league. In just his second season at the helm, Tadlock took Tech to its first College World series and he would return the team to Omaha in 2016.
In just six seasons on the job, Tadlock has done what many thought was impossible at Texas Tech by transforming the program into an annual top-10 contender and putting the Red Raiders among the elite of the nation. Hocutt has made no better hire in his career and he can point to his hiring of the best coach in the history of one of Texas Tech’s most storied programs as an overwhelming success.
Likewise, Hocutt has worked wonders with the men’s basketball program. In fact, both of the head coaches he has hired for that position have been rousing successes.
Hocutt hired Tubby Smith in 2013 which started the program’s turn-around. Then, after Smith left for Memphis, Hocutt pulled off a magnificent coup when he lured Chris Beard away from UNLV just weeks after Beard had accepted the job in Vegas. Beard rewarded Hocutt with the program’s first ever trip to the Elite 8 this past season and is poised to make Texas Tech an annual force in college basketball.
The second significant success Hocutt has had came when he was named the chairman of the NCAA Football Playoff Committee. In his two years as the spokesman for the committee, Hocutt was able to raise the prominence of his job taking the Texas Tech athletic director position to never-before-seen national recognition as he was the spokesman for the committee each week on national television.
But many Texas Tech fans are unable to see beyond the struggles of two of the school’s most beloved programs. Under Hocutt’s leadership, both the football and Lady Raider basketball programs have been bitter disappointments.
If there is one glaring negative on Hocutt’s resume, it is the tenuous Kliff Kingsbury situation. Hocutt’s marquee hire has gone just 30-33 in five seasons while missing a bowl game twice.
There is no understating the importance of a football program to a university’s overall athletic budget. Football revenue is more important to the Texas Tech athletics bottom line than that of all other sports combined which is concerning given the state of the Red Raider football program.
Fan apathy is arguably higher than it has been since the end of the Spike Dykes era and last season, Texas Tech failed to draw crowds of even 40,000 for its final two home games, including one against rival TCU. Whats more, Hocutt continues to paint himself into a corner where Kingsbury is concerned. After giving Kingsbury a lucrative contract extension after just one year on the job, Hocutt has been held hostage by the massive buyout and commitment he made to an unproven coach.
Hocutt now seems married to the Kingsbury experiment even after a 6-7 season in 2017. The uncertainty brought on by the year-to-year questioning about Kingsbury’s job status has taken its toll on the football program which signed the second-lowest rated recruiting class in the Big 12 in 2018.
While Hocutt should be admired for sticking by his man and giving Kingsbury every opportunity to right the ship, he has to be held responsible for the fact that a program which was the toast of the nation just ten years ago is now a national afterthought relegated to weekly 11 a.m. kickoffs.
Job No. 1 for any Big 12 athletic director (except fro Sheahon Zenger at Kansas) is to ensure the health of the football program but Hocutt certainly has not improved the Red Raider football program in his tenure and a strong case could be made that he has overseen a falloff from even the disastrous Tommy Tuberville run.
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But the football program is in far better shape than the Lady Raider basketball program. Like he did with his hire of Kingsbury, Hocutt gambled on a young and unproven former Red Raider when he hired Candi Whitaker in 2013 and the results were disastrous.
In four-and-a-half seasons, Tech went just 56-85 under Whitaker. Hocutt has seen the only program on campus to bring home a national title become the laughing stock of the sport under his watch which is certainly a scar on his resume.
So has Texas Tech gotten its money out of Hocutt? In a word, no. When an employer pays top-five money, it should expect top-five results. That’s not to suggest that Hocutt has not had a positive impact on the overall health of the program but under his watch, Tech has not won a conference title in a revenue sport (football or basketball). The highest paid athletic director in the conference needs to start delivering greater results on the field not just behind the scenes.
Overall, the coaches Hocutt has hired at Texas Tech have a combined record of 615-547. That is a winning percentage of just 52.9 and if Hocutt had not hit on Tadlock (231-125 overall), Tech would have a losing record from Hocutt’s hires.
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Kirby Hocutt has certainly raised the national profile of his position. Likewise, he has helped oversee numerous facility upgrades that have helped to make Texas Tech more competitive in the college sports arms’ race.
Howeer, his salary is setting a lofty bar that he is yet to clear and he has bungled the most important coaching position on campus. Until the Red Raiders start to win conference titles in the two major revenue sports, it will be hard to argue that the fifth-highest paid AD in America is living up to his salary.