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Texas Tech football: Best debut seasons by a Red Raider head coach

By Matthew Conner

SAN DIEGO, CA - DECEMBER 30: Head Coach Kliff Kingsbury of the Texas Tech Red Raiders gets the Gatorade dump after his teams' 37-23 win over the Arizona State Sun Devils during their National University Holiday Bowl Game on December 30, 2013 at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego, California. (Photo by Donald Miralle/Getty Images)
SAN DIEGO, CA - DECEMBER 30: Head Coach Kliff Kingsbury of the Texas Tech Red Raiders gets the Gatorade dump after his teams' 37-23 win over the Arizona State Sun Devils during their National University Holiday Bowl Game on December 30, 2013 at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego, California. (Photo by Donald Miralle/Getty Images) /
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(Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
(Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images) /

Kliff Kingsbury 2013: 8-5

In what ultimately proved to be fool’s gold, Kliff Kingsbury turned in an 8-5 season in his first year as Texas Tech head coach back in 2013.   It was such a promising start to his head coaching career that he was given a contract extension in the offseason.

Kingsbury became the first coach in Big 12 history to begin his career 7-0 after reeling off wins over SUM, Stephen F. Austin, No. 24 TCU, Texas State, Kansas, Iowa State, and West Virginia.  As a result, the Red Raiders climbed to No. 10 in the polls.

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But five-consecutive losses to No. 17 Oklahoma, No. 18 Oklahoma State, Kansas State, No. 4 Baylor, and Texas to close the regular season took the shine off of what was once an exciting season.  However, an upset over No. 16 Arizona State in the Holiday Bowl had most believing that Kingsbury was a star in the making.

As we know now, he never reached eight wins again at Tech.  And three-straight losing seasons brought the ax down on his head in what was a disappointing end to a tenure that began so promisingly.

Perhaps what we should learn from Kingsbury’s first year is that we should not make a judgment about Matt Wells after his first season, regardless of how positive or negative it turns out to be.   After all, doing so with Kingsbury has been arguably AD Kirby Hocutt’s biggest mistake while at Tech.

2019 is going to be a transition year.  Wells and his staff have a ton of work ahead of them if they are to get Tech football back to where it was a decade ago.

Instilling a new culture and attitude in the program will take longer than installing new schemes on either side of the ball.  As a result, we need to take this season for what it is, Matt Well’s first run through a Power 5 conference schedule.

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Fortunately, Wells has more experience at building a program than Kingsbury did when he took over after being in the coaching profession for just five years at any level.  Wells has been through the ups and downs as a head coach and has said that the process made him a better coach and leader.  Only time will tell but we must keep in mind that we will not know anything for certain after this year, just as we didn’t know how the Kingsbury experiment would turn out after a debut season that exceeded most expectations.

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