Texas Tech football: Hocutt cashes in all equity by hiring Matt Wells

In deciding to hire Matt Wells as Texas Tech football head coach, AD Kirby Hocutt is cashing in all of the equity he has accrued during his time in Lubbock on a hire that could hardly be more unpopular with the fan base.

Kirby Hocutt is going all-in on former Utah State head coach Matt Wells as the new Texas Tech football coach. He’s taken all of the chips he’s accumulated in his seven-plus years on the job and pushed them to the middle of the table to bet on a hire that is wildly unpopular with the fan base.

It is a strange move for an athletic director that just fired one of the most popular figures in program history, Kliff Kingsbury. Yes, a huge portion of the Texas Tech fan base wanted a change after Kingsbury led the team to a 5-7 record this year, his third losing season in-a-row. But none of those calling for a new coach envisioned Hocutt settling for a replacement who is coming off three losing seasons in the last four years in the Mountain West Conference.

To many, Wells doesn’t appear to be a significant upgrade from Kingsbury. He’s won as many conference titles (0) and he has had as many losing seasons (3) in his six years in Logan, Utah as Kingsbury had in his six years in Lubbock.

This is a hiring that might pan out in the long term but Texas Tech football fans might never give Wells a real shot. Fan apathy is at an alarming point already as evidenced by the program’s attendance issues this year.

Now, Hocutt has decided that the best way to move forward is with a coach who has just a 44-34 overall record at a Mountain West school and who is 34-32 outside of this year’s 10-2 mark, which many fear is an anomaly. It will be difficult for Hocutt and the athletic department to sell season tickets next year with a schedule that does not feature any marquee games and with a new coach that does not move the needle for most.

Still, Kirby Hocutt is making the hire he wants not the hire the fans want. Which in all honestly, is probably what a responsible athletic director should do. College administrators can’t afford to bend to the whims of big money boosters and rabid emotional fans when making multi-million dollar decisions.

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But what Hocutt has done is take all of the equity he had built up in his time at Texas Tech and gambled it on a coach that is far from being considered a slam dunk. In hiring Tim Tadlock, Chris Beard and Tubby Smith while overseeing an athletic department that had five teams reach the final eight of their respective postseasons last year, Hocutt became the most trusted man at Texas Tech.

Even when he fired native son Kingsbury, fans were generally supportive because they trusted their AD to turn the football program around with his next hire. Following Sunday’s passionate press conference in which Hocutt declared that Texas Tech football would be “elite” again, the fan base was as excited about the possibilities for Red Raider football as it has been in years.

But now, Hocutt’s unpopular decision has turned fan excitement into anger and cynicism. And unfortunately, that is something we have seen in the all-to-recent Texas Tech past.

From 2009-12, the world of Texas Tech athletics was a battlefield after the controversial firing of Mike Leach and the tumultuous tenure of Tommy Tuberville. Infighting between then chancellor Kent Hance and Leach set the tone for what would become an ugly civil war that would envelop the Texas Tech football program from December of 2009 until December of 2012 when Kliff Kignsbury was hired in as much of an attempt to broker peace as to win football games.

But now, Hocutt risks turning the fan base against him the way many turned against Hance. There will almost certainly be some rough spots during the transition to the Wells era and given that the fan base is already squarely cynical of new coach, any and every perceived mistake or negative development will be magnified.

The first time a recruit decommits or a current player transfers, the masses are certain to do their best Chicken Little impression. And God help us when Matt Wells has his first loss…or losing streak.

Perhaps Hocutt is taking a stand with this hire after giving the fans what he knew they wanted when he hired Kingsbury. That did not work out on the field though it did help to put an end to one of the uglier chapters in program history.

This is a career-defining hire for a man that is one of the most well-respected athletic directors in the nation but who has yet to hire a successful football coach in his career. His two previous hires, Al Golden at Miami and Kingsbury, were heavily influenced by the circumstances surrounding both programs at the time and now Hocutt appears to be hell-bent on hiring the man he wants; popular opinion be damned.

If Matt Wells proves to be as successful as Kirby Hocutt believes, it will be the ultimate feather in the cap for an athletic director that has seen his stock skyrocket during his time in Lubbock. But he is treading on very thin ice by bringing in a coach that his constituency is not in favor of at a time when the program has lost virtually all of the momentum and identity it built in the 2000’s and is teetering on the edge of irrelevance.

Kingsbury was a low-risk, high-reward hire. Because of his popularity with Texas Tech football fans, there was never a question that he would be given all the time he needed to figure out how to win in Lubbock. When it became obvious that he was not going to do that, he was not run out of town by the National Guard but was lovingly sent on his way in the most positive and genteel divorce in college football history.

That will not be a luxury afforded Matt Wells. His honeymoon ended before he was even hired. And if he fails, Kirby Hocutt’s honeymoon in Lubbock will be over too.