Texas Tech football: Kingsbury was the right man to help Tech heal

Six years ago, the Texas Tech football program was in an awful situation after the Mike Leach controversy and the Tommy Tuberville era. That’s why Kliff Kingsbury was the perfect hire because he was able to help the program and its fans heal like no other coach in the country could have.

Assessing Kliff Kingsbury’s legacy at Texas Tech will be complicated. Because of the presence of the scoreboard, sports fans generally operate in a very black and white mindset. Win more than you lose and you are a success. But in some situations, the scoreboard does not tell the entire story and that is certainly the case with Kingsbury.

We must not forget the awful state of Texas Tech football in December 2012. Just the three years prior to Kingsbury’s hiring, Tech had fired its most successful coach in program history, Mike Leach, because of an ugly off-field scandal that involved player mistreatment and a public war with the university’s chancellor Kent Hance. In fact, the remnants of that dispute are still present nearly a decade later though neither Leach nor Hance are still at Texas Tech.

Enter Tommy Tuberville, a carpet-bagging snake oil salesman looking for one last cushy job to pad his bank account before being put out to pasture as another coach that the game had passed by. But many were fooled by Tuberville’s faux sincerity, especially those who took the side of Hance in the civil war of 2009.

However, it quickly became evident that Tuberville did not have the stomach for the fight that it takes to build a winner in Lubbock. He openly complained about the wind, the facilities and even the fans.

What’s more, he was less than angelic in his actions. In 2012, he slapped an assistant on the sidelines in his most public misstep while in Lubbock. But earlier that year, he was also sued by investors who claimed he had defrauded them out of nearly $2 million dollars.

And his abrupt departure that allegedly involved leaving in the middle of a recruiting dinner to field a call from Cincinnati’s athletic director was a final embarrassment towards Texas Tech as the head coach of a Big 12 school was so eager to leave that he did not even have the decency to finish a dinner with recruits before he bolted for a non-Power 5 job.

So when Kliff Kingsbury agreed to take the Texas Tech job, the fan base was not only embarrassed by the Tuberville debacle but still bickering over the Leach firing. There was very little unity in Lubbock and even less positivity.

That is why Kingsbury was the perfect man for the job. Certainly he had his shortcomings as a candidate, namely the fact that he’d been a coach for only five years and had just one season of experience as an offensive coordinator at a Power 5 school.

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But at a time when the Texas Tech football brand was at its lowest value since the mid 1980’s, no coach could have united the fan base and put an end to the family feud like Kingsbury did. When his hiring was announced, fans spontaneously made their way to Memorial Circle to celebrate while the Victory Bells overhead rang out signaling a West Texas armistice.

Kingsbury helped us all restore our pride in Texas Tech football. Thats why his image took over Lubbock and his trademark sunglasses temporarily replaced Buddy Holly’s black framed spectacles as the most fashionable eye wear statement in the Hub City.

For Texas Tech fans, it was less about the fact that Kignsbury had Hollywood good looks or Madison Avenue style. It was that he was a commodity valued by everyone around the country and he chose to come home when he certainly did not have to.

By coming home, Kingsbury gave Texas Tech football fans something positive to believe in again. He was something that we could all agree upon for the first time in three years.

And thankfully, he never gave us a reason not to believe in him as a person, even though many of us (myself included) stopped believing in him as a head coach. He never mistreated players (despite what the Mayfield family claims), he always respected opponents (except Bret Bielema) and he always gave 100% to our university (unlike Tuberville).

The marriage between Kliff Kingsbury and Texas Tech would have been perfect if not for the little matter of the scoreboard. For whatever reason (and there are too many to discuss here), it just never worked like we hoped it would.

But the fact that Kingsbury never won a Big 12 title or took the Red Raiders back to prominence will not distort his legacy as an alum of Texas Tech. It may mean that he will not be regarded as the greatest head coach but it does not change the fact that he was able to help his university heal in a way the only he could have.

As an alum, I am appreciative of what he did for our school and I only hope that some day, I will have an opportunity to serve Texas Tech in a similar way (though I have virtually nothing to offer on such a grand scale). Whether you wanted Kingsbury to be dismissed or you wanted him to stay, we can all agree that he deserves our respect and appreciation for a job well-done.

Some day, Kliff Kingsbury’s name deserves to be in the Jones Stadium Ring of Honor based on his playing career alone. But more than that, the honor and pride that he helped Texas Tech University rediscover in itself will be his biggest contribution to our school. And that goes beyond the scoreboard.