Texas Tech football: Kirby Hocutt discusses whether he’s seen progress

On his weekly radio show, Athletic Director Kirby Hocutt discussed whether he has seen progress from the Texas Tech football program, as he said he needed to see prior to the season.

The story of the 2018 Texas Tech football season can not be told without acknowledging that everything that happens this season will be looked at in how it impacts the job status head coach Kliff Kingsbury.  Prior to the season, Texas Tech Athletic Director Kirby Hocutt said that he needed to see progress from Kingsbury and the football program this year coming off losing seasons.

On his weekly radio show Wednesday, Hocutt was asked whether or not he has seen any progress thus far in 2018.  Not surprisingly, his answer was very measured.

"“We’ve got three games left to play.” Hocutt said.  “We talked about areas of improvement we wanted to see going into this season.  We talked about needing to be better in the special teams area.  I think we’ve made significant improvements there.  We talked about needing to be better in the red zone area on the offensive side of the ball.  We’ve been better, much better in the red zone area this year.“We’ve continued to make improvements on the defensive side of the ball but as I said in the beginning of the show, we’re not where we want to be.  But there’s still three very, very important football games in front of us.  If these young men come out and play the way they have played in the first nine games of the season, I think we’re going to feel very good about ourselves at the end of the 12-game season.”"

Certainly, no one expected Hocutt to say anything revelatory in regards to his thoughts on the status of Kliff Kingsbury.  He went out of his way to point out the areas of progress that he’s seen as he should while the season is still in progress.

But the most telling aspect of his comments could be the way he classified the final three games of the season as “very, very important”.  After nine games, Texas Tech needs one win in the final three games to qualify for bowl eligibility.  But reaching six wins would not signify progress because that is exactly the same win total as the 2017 team had.

If you take Hocutt literally, Kingsbury needs to find a way to win two of his final three games in order to be able to point to progress.  Certainly, you can point to different areas of the team such as the defense, the red zone offense and the special teams and find progress but at the same time, you can point to the offensive line, the running game and the secondary as being no better this year than they were last year, which was not good enough.

The only way to measure true progress is in wins.  It is what makes sports so great.  We have a definitive measure of evaluation handed to us every week.

Unlike in political debates, in sports there is an indisputable truth that helps us measure success.  Thus far, the 2018 football team has shown a bit of progress in the win column.  After nine games last year, Tech was 4-5 overall and coming off a 4-game losing streak.

Tech sat at just 1-5 in the Big 12 at this point a year ago with its only win coming against Kansas.  Tech would beat Baylor in the 10th game before falling to TCU and beating Texas to get to 6-6.

This year, Tech sits at 5-4 after nine games including a 3-3 record in Big 12 play.  Certainly, Kingsbury’s team has put itself in position to be able to show indisputable progress in 2018.

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Winning two of the next three games would give Tech a 7-5 regular season, equalling the most wins Kingsbury has had in any regular season at Texas Tech.  But perhaps more importantly, it would give the Red Raiders five Big 12 wins which would ensure the program its first winning record in Big 12 play since Mike Leach’s final season, 2009.

Getting to that mark will be far more difficult than it already looked to be if starting quarterback Alan Bowman is unable to return from his second collapsed lung of the season suffered against Oklahoma.  Additionally, Dakota Allen is questionable with a knee injury and right guard Jacob Hines is out for the season after tearing a ligament in his knee in the second half against the Sooners.

Still, Kingsbury has an opportunity to show real progress.  Unfortunately, one can envision a scenario where Hocutt (who many believe is personally invested in Kingsbury’s success being as Kingsbury’s hiring remains his marquee move as an athletic director) could give his head coach the benefit of the doubt if Tech does not get to seven wins.

With Alan Bowman’s injury, it would not be surprising to see Hocutt retain Kingsbury next season based on the premise that he deserves a full season with a healthy quarterback and that the team will return all but seven starters on both sides of the ball.

But that would be a very hard sell to a fan base that is beyond restless.  Given the fact that next year’s home schedule lacks any marquee opponents, Hocutt and his athletic department will be hard-pressed to find a way to excite a fan base after two 6-6 regular seasons.

That is why the next three games are “very, very important.”  In fact, they are the most important of Kliff Kingsbury and Kirby Hocutt’s careers.  The entire Texas Tech fan base has been looking for progress from the football team for quite some time and time is running out for the current staff to show us, and most importantly Kirby Hocutt, what we’ve been looking for.