No. 7: Kliff Kingsbury
Kliff Kingsbury’s failings as a head coach are still hard to stomach for Red Raiders. There has never been a coach in school history that was more beloved when he arrived nor has there been one given more slack by both the fans and his bosses. We all wanted the Kingsbury experiment to work out but building a mid-tier program into a winner in the Big 12 proved to be just too difficult for a man who took over the program at the tender age of 33.
Kingsbury had never been a head coach at any level of the game and had only been in the coaching profession for five seasons when he was handed the keys to the Kingdom in Lubbock. So growing pains were expected but whereas most coaches have their on-the-job training at the lower levels of the sport, Kignsbury’s were on display for the entire nation to leer at.
In all, he led his alma mater to just a 35-40 record. That’s just a .466 winning percentage, fouth-worst in program history and second-worst of any coach to have spent at least two years in charge.
What killed Kingsbury was the fact that he struggled so mightily in Big 12 play. Going 19-35 in league play, he struggled to be competitive against any conference team not named Kansas.
Kingsbury made a ton of mistakes during his time. He hired too many of his friends and contemporaries as assistants, he didn’t put enough effort into recruiting, and he let the opinions of the talking heads around the country influence his personality.
But what he did do well was to help heal the fan base after the tumultuous tenure of his predecessor, which we will discuss shortly. But while he brought us together and gave us a unifying figure to rally around, he simply didn’t win enough games to stay on the job despite having a QB named Pat Mahomes for two years. But because he was able to bring the Texas Tech fandom back together after years of infighting, he won’t be held in nearly as poor regard as the next man on this list despite having worse results on the field.