Texas Tech football: 3 Reasons Kingsbury will not be fired

Kirby Hocutt is personally invested in Kingsbury’s success

The biggest factor woking in Kingsbury’s favor is the unwavering support of his boss, athletic director Kirby Hocutt.  And it is because of Hocutt’s personal stake in Kingsbury’s success that a firing is not likely.

Despite the fact that Hocutt has presided over what has arguably been the most successful period in Texas Tech athletics history, there is still a glaring flaw on his resume, his inability to get the Texas Tech football program on par with the basketball, baseball, track, soccer, golf and tennis programs.

Hocutt has made a number of quality hires at Texas Tech but he has made only one nationally significant hire, Kliff Kingsbury.  When he hired a 33-year-old with no head coaching experience to lead the Red Raiders, the nation took notice and it has been watching intently since.

If Hocutt’s experiment proves to be unsuccessful, it will negate in the minds of the national media and those outside of Lubbock all of the fantastic work he has done in the other sports and in helping build the infrastructure of the athletic department.  Football is the most high-profile and largest revenue generating college sport and most athletic directors are judged primarily on their ability to build winning football programs.

For example, Arkansas fired its AD Jeff Long (who, like Hocutt, had been the college football playoff committee chair) last year because of his bungling of the Razorback football program where he hired Bobby Petrino and then Bret Bielema.  Despite the rise of the Arkansas baseball program (which came within one out of a national title in 2018) and the success of the basketball team (which has made it to the NCAA Tournament in three of the last four seasons), Long was let go because he could not find the right football coach to build a competitive program in the SEC.

Elsewhere, even at a basketball school, futility in the football program cost former Kansas AD Sheahon Zenger his job in May.

"“Zenger has been criticized the past few years in large part because of the performance of the Jayhawks’ football team, which has been among the worst in the Football Bowl Subdivision.” wrote the USA Today."

So Kirby Hocutt’s patience with Kliff Kingsbury makes sense, he needs his guy to succeed.  He was far less patient with Tommy Tuberville who he did not hire despite the fact that Tuberville had better results than Kingsbury.

Make no mistake, Hocutt wants to see Kingsbury succeed and will give him every opportunity to do so.  Hocutt already has one disastrous football hire in Al Golden whom he hired to coach the Miami Hurricanes in 2010 and he desperately wants to avoid having a similar failure added to his ledger.