Texas Tech football: Hocutt must hire best coach, not biggest name

Texas Tech football fans continue to await word on who Kirby Hocutt will hire as the next Red Raider head football coach. Though it seems most fans want a flashy hire, Hocutt must find the best coach rather than simply trying to land the biggest name.

There is nothing in sports quite like a college football head coaching search and that is what the Texas Tech football program finds itself in the midst of after firing Kliff Kingsbury. Collegiate coaching searches can often turn into a circus if school administrators, big-money boosters, influential alumni and hoards of rabid fans are able to exert too much influence like we saw in 2017 with Tennessee’s 25-day reality show after firing Butch Jones.

That isn’t going to happen at Texas Tech. Kirby Hocutt is too entrenched as the leader of the athletic department to let outside forces influence his decision and he has the confidence of virtually every interested observer, from university president Lawrence Schovanec down to the everyday fan. This coaching search is not going to play out like the plot of House of Cards.

Still, fans are apt to weigh in on which coaches we want, and it makes for fun discussions on message boards. Most are becoming obsessed with the idea that Hocutt needs to land a big-name head coach to make a splash on the national scene and excite the fan base. But in reality, the key is to find the best coach, not the flashiest.

Texas Tech is a unique university. Its status as the third fiddle in the state (in terms of funding from the legislature) and its geographic isolation far from major population centers has bread an independent spirit that permeates through everything the university does.

The football program is no exception. Texas Tech has never been a program built on the backs of blue-chip recruits. Many of the most legendary players in Red Raider history like Zach Thomas, E.J. Holub, Kingsbury, Wes Welker and even Pat Mahomes to some extent, were under-the-radar prospects who grew into stars because of the way they developed in Lubbock. That is why coaching is so critical at Texas Tech.

Not surprisingly, the two most successful coaches in program history were not celebrities when they came to West Texas. When Mike Leach was hired in 1999 he had no experience as a collegiate head coach. Nor was he the hottest assistant coach available (keep in mind that Oklahoma won the national title the year after Leach left). In fact, you would have been hard-pressed to find even 100 people in Lubbock who knew his name before he arrived.

But Leach brought with him something Texas Tech desperately needed, innovation. His unique and revolutionary offensive scheme helped the Red Raiders make up for their talent deficit by giving them a strategic advantage that they rode to the upper-echelon of the Big 12.

And Leach’s predecessor, Spike Dykes was far from a national darling when he took over in 1986. Just three years removed from being the head coach at Midland Lee High School, Dykes was a perfect fit for West Texas and Texas Tech, even if no one knew it at the time.

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His extensive background as a high school coach helped refine his ability to coach players of varying talent levels and his familiarity with the area (he was born in Lubbock and raised in Ballinger, near San Angelo) allowed him to have unprecedented success at Tech. (He was a three-time Southwest Conference and the 1996 Big 12 Coach of the Year. ) His best asset was his ability to take marginally talented high school prospects that big-time programs did not want and turn them into better-than-average collegiate players.

Dykes retired as the winningest head coach in program history with 82 victories. Mike Leach surpassed him in his final season at Tech showing that the two most successful head coaches in program history arrived in relative obscurity and were not celebrity hires.

Now, consider the difference in the last two Texas Tech head coaches, who were both flashy, big-name hires. Neither Tommy Tuberville nor Kliff Kingsbury were able to have the kind of results that many expected despite the fact that both were considered marquee hires.

Tuberville arrived in 2010 with as many career accolades as any coach in program history and a SEC title to his name. But he proved to be a fraud when it came to his ability to coach talent that was not at the level he had grown accustomed to having at Auburn. When he escaped out of the bathroom window of a Lubbock steakhouse to take the Cincinnati job in 2012 he took with him just a 9-17 Big 12 record.

Kingsbury, on the other hand, was a brilliant tactician but lacked the overall coaching skills needed to field a team that was disciplined and fundamentally sound. As a result, he was just 19-35 in Big 12 play and 35-40 overall which is far below what many expected of him when he was the nation’s most beloved offensive coordinator after guiding Johnny Manziel to the Heisman Trophy.

Still, it seems like most Texas Tech fans want this hire to make a significant splash. Fans have become obsessed with rumors that celebrity coaches like Bob Stoops, Dana Holgorsen or even Leach could be the next Red Raider head coach. There’s even a faction that want disgraced former Baylor coach Art Briles.

Meanwhile, many are discounting some of the best up-and-coming coaches in the country like Matt Wells at Utah State, Neal Brown at Troy, Mike Norvell at Memphis or Seth Littrell at North Texas. Those coaches may better fit the mold of what Dykes and Leach were when they climbed the Caprock. But it is hard not to get the sense that the fan base would be disappointed if Hocutt went with a coach on the rise rather than an established name.

Related Story. 5 jobs that would make sense for Kingsbury. light

Here’s hoping Hocutt remains isolated from the whims and wants of the uninformed fan base as much as he can. We have had the celebrity coach who is a magazine photoshoot darling and we have had the coach who built his reputation by winning at a blue-blood program and neither were able to have success at Texas Tech. In West Texas, substance has always been paramount to style and that rings true when it comes to the Texas Tech football program as well.

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