Texas Tech football: Beating Baylor should not save Kingsbury

The result of today’s game between the Texas Tech football team and Baylor should have absolutely no bearing on whether or not Kliff Kingsbury is retained as head coach.

Today, the Texas Tech football team takes on Baylor in a game that will send the winning team to a bowl. That should be the only matter of significance to come as a result of what happens at AT&T Stadium this afternoon. Certainly, there is no reason for the fate of Kliff Kingsbury to be decided by the outcome of a pillow fight between two teams with losing records.

This decision is far too important. Whatever Kirby Hocutt decides to do with the leadership of his football team, it will determine the path of the program for the foreseeable future.

Bring in a new coaching staff and a multi-year rebuild is underway. Stay the course with Kingsbury (which would have to include a contract extension for the purposes of recruiting) and continue to fight the same battles the program has fought for the last handful of years hoping that the switch finally flips.

But either way Kirby, don’t make a rash decision immediately following this game. A man who has been steadfastly patient in Kingsbury’s favor, to the point that it has felt like he’s been content to sit by and fiddle while Rome burns, must not allow himself to become swept up in the emotion of the moment today like he was last year.

Within minutes of the 27-24 comeback road win over Texas in game twelve last season, Hocutt told the media that Kingsbury would return. He has since said that he had already come to that decision prior to the game but if you believe that, you probably think that the toy elf in your house jumped from the bookshelf to the mantle last night all by itself.

Football is the most emotionally intense sport in the world. Every game feels like a war and the residual emotions, win or lose, put most fans in a state that should render us unfit to operate a motor vehicle, much less make a multi-million-dollar program-altering decision.

Most believe, myself included, that Hocutt has made his decision. And most believe that the logical decision is to make a change.

But when it comes to Kingsbury, Hocutt continually plays the part of the hopeless romantic ignoring the transgressions of his unfaithful lover in the hopes that the situation will improve but knowing his lover will never change.

In business, romance or football one’s emotions must not be stronger than one’s common sense. We know that Kirby Hocutt likes Kliff Kingsbury as a person and respects him as an employee. But how can he trust him to do any better moving forward than he has done in the six previous seasons? After all, even a win today will not get the program to the point of showing any improvement over last year’s 6-6 regular season.

Baylor is not a good football team. Winning today should will not be a statement by this coaching staff that they are any more prepared to lead this program forward than they were when the Red Raiders sulked off the field last week in Manhattan, Kansas having scored just six points and gained only 180 yards against a 4-6 KSU team.

It is understandable to see how notching a win over Texas on national television last year could have given Kirby Hocutt reason to hope that Kingsbury was primed to turn the corner. Beating the Longhorns always has, and always will, carry more weight within the Texas Tech football program than beating any other team.

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But beating Baylor is something that Texas Tech should do with regularity. Tech won 15-consecutive games against the Bears from 1996-2010 during which time the saying “I’d rather be on probation than loose to Baylor” was a perfect summation of how most in West Texas felt.

And now that the scandalous Art Briles era in Waco has come and gone, Baylor has returned to being just another fledgling program that elicits as much animosity as a fruit fly that buzzes around your face during a summer cookout.

Texas Tech should aspire to more than beating Baylor. And regardless of who plays quarterback today, Tech should beat Baylor for the third-straight time.

Should that happen, the players will be celebratory because they have earned bowl eligibility and they may even hoist their embattled head coach onto their shoulders or douse him with Gatorade believing that they have granted him yet another stay of execution. But Hocutt must not allow himself to be swept up in the exuberance of the moment.

Today’s game should not be about Kliff Kignsbury. It should be about the 2018 seniors, like Jah’Shawn Johnson and Dakota Allen, who are fighting for one last opportunity to represent the Double-T.

Texas Tech is not looking for a coach that can consistently beat Baylor. The inanimate corpse of Pop Warner could accomplish that with regularity.

Rather, we are looking for a coach that can take Texas Tech football back to national relevance. We are looking for someone to finally be able to overcome the challenges of the job rise above the seemingly endless built-in excuses that so many associated with the program are simply willing to accept as gospel.

In the last ten years, Texas Tech has made a greater financial investment in the football program than ever before. But the time that the proposed $100 million south end zone renovation is complete in the next few years, over $200 million will have been poured into the football program’s facilities. Such a level of investment should net more than six wins a season and perpetual dominance over Baylor.

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The Kliff Kignsbury experiment did not go south in one week or one season. It has been six long frustrating years in the making. Therefore, a win today against a team only slightly better than the Cavazos Jr. High “A” team should have no bearing on whether Kliff Kingsbury keeps his job. In stead, the past 74 games have told us everything we need to know.

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