Texas Tech sports: Bold predictions for the Red Raiders in the 2020s

Kirby Hocutt’s time in Lubbock will end

It doesn’t seem like this university is going to go another full decade with Kirby Hocutt remaining the athletic director.  After all, if he is still calling the shots at the end of 2029, he will have been on the job for 18 years.

It just doesn’t seem like a guy like Hocutt will stay put at a program like Texas Tech for two decades.  Though he’s currently one of the top 5 ADs in the nation in terms of salary at $1.5 million and his current contract runs through 2027, it is not hard to envision two scenarios in which he leaves Lubbock and both center around the success (or lack thereof) of Matt Wells.

If Wells proves to be a home run hire and he gets Texas Tech football to the level of the basketball and baseball programs, Hocutt will be the target of any high-profile school in need of a new leader in the athletic department.

It isn’t too difficult to envision Hocutt being coveted by Oklahoma, where he was associate AD from 1999-2005.  He considers current OU AD Joe Castiglione a mentor and if the 62-year-old leaves his post in Norman, you can bet Hocutt will be mentioned as a possible replacement.

There are also those who believe that Hocutt covets a position as a conference commissioner or in the upper echelons of the NCAA administration.  In other words, he has his sights set beyond Texas Tech.

But what if Matt Wells proves to be a failure?  If in three years, the football program remains one of the worst in any Power 5 league, Hocutt’s seat will begin to grow uncomfortably warm.

We already know that he has not endeared himself to some rather high-profile boosters with the way he handled the hiring of Wells and if that decision proves to be misguided, those currently disgruntled influencers will have some serious ammunition to use in their vendettas against the man who hasn’t yet proven to be able to build a successful football program in his career.

Were that to happen, I think Hocutt would pull a Tommy Tuberville and jump ship before being fired in order to save his reputation.  After all, he essentially did the same thing at Miami in 2011 when he came to Lubbock as the heat was turning up in Coral Gables.

Either way, it feels more likely that this decade ends with a new face in the AD’s office.  How that change comes about and what the state of the athletic department will be at that time is what the greatest variable will be.