Kingsbury’s in a similar boat to the one he was in last year, but more time’s passed and he’s gotten cheaper to fire.
For the second year in a row, Texas Tech coach Kliff Kingsbury appears squarely in the hot seat heading into his team’s last game of the season. A few reports have Kingsbury at risk of being fired after TTU’s Week 13 meeting with Baylor on Saturday.
Kingsbury’s used to being hot-seated. He’s been there intermittently for years, with fans and media at turns speculating he’d get fired. But this time, a combination of reports about his status, his boss’s public comments about his team’s performance, and his contract situation have aligned to strongly suggest a firing is possible.
Kingsbury hasn’t been one of the year’s most talked-about potential firings, but speculation about his future has ratcheted up lately.
That happens when a team goes on a four-game losing streak, as this one has. Tech started the year 5-2, and while injuries to quarterback to Alan Bowman have hurt, they probably wouldn’t give Kingsbury a job-saving excuse if his team missed a bowl.
Longtime Austin American-Statesman columnist Kirk Bohls reports the school (or people connected to the school, anyway) are already identifying potential replacements:
I'll be very surprised if Kliff Kingsbury survives this season at Texas Tech. Source tells me if he's fired, Tech will look seriously at Clemson defensive coordinator Brent Venables.
— Kirk Bohls (@kbohls) November 22, 2018
The Dallas Morning News says players “realize they may be playing for the coaching staff” at Baylor. The paper quotes linebacker Riko Jeffers:
“We definitely want to show them that we care and that we will fight for them.”
Kingsbury’s boss didn’t exactly jump to his defense after a 21-6 loss to a bad Kansas State in Week 12.
Athletic director Kirby Hocutt, the guy who hired Kingsbury at the end of 2012, mentioned “lapses in focus” and the team falling short of expectations:
“We’ve talked on this show about our expectations and where we aspire to be and wanting to be relevant. But you are what your record says you are, and we’re not where we expect to be. You know, football is the ultimate team sport. You have 11 men on the field and you’re only going to be as successful as each individual executes their responsibility. Unfortunately, we just seem to continue to have lapses in focus, lack of discipline at certain times. Those mistakes, those penalties continue to affect us and the success we’re not experiencing right now.”
Compare that to what Hocutt said after a Week 13 win at Texas in 2017, which got the Red Raiders to bowl eligibility and more than likely stopped a Kingsbury firing:
“Kliff has led this program the right way,” Hocutt said then. “We’re not where we want to be, but we’re not far off.”
AD comments on their coaches are tricky sometimes. A boss might give his coach an effusive Vote of Confidence in public, and that might not mean anything at all. But an AD sounding that despondent about his team at the end of a coach’s sixth season, after reportedly coming really close to firing him the year before? It’s never a good sign.
Also, Kingsbury’s buyout is small enough that it probably wouldn’t save him.
It would cost about $4.2 million for Tech to can him now. That’s not nothing, but several coaches have gotten fired already this year with bigger buyouts. In the scheme of college coaching buyouts, it’s not much at all. He’s under contract for 2019 and 2020, and the school would have to pay him 75 percent of the money that remains in his 2018 contract year, plus 50 percent of what he’s owed the next two.
Power 5 teams that intend to keep their coaches around usually try to extend their deals by the time there are two years left on them. Otherwise, the coach leaves some way or another, because it’s difficult to recruit when your contract tells people you’re a lame duck. Would Kingsbury really get an extension right now?
His teams haven’t been able to get everything together at once, and that’s kept them from moving up in the Big 12 pecking order.
Tech’s had some of the country’s better offenses under Kingsbury, often showing up in the top 20 in yards per play and using pace and general Big 12ness to run up huge point totals. They’ve paired that with routinely horrific defenses, which have gotten better the last couple of seasons but remain far from good.
They’ve had an especially hard time finishing seasons. They’ve repeatedly tanked in November and have again this year, with their last win coming against Kansas on Oct. 20.
Red Raiders blog Viva the Matadors writes about that:
Whatever you think of it, one thing is clear: Kingsbury just can’t finish seasons. He won the one bowl game in his first season as a Head Coach and hasn’t in any year since. It’s been rough year after year coming into November with high hopes for this team and those hopes being dashed upon whatever playing field the team happens to take that month. Does that mean we should fire him? Keep him and hope he gets better? You tell me, but this team has gone from a shining ray of hope in October to what looks like a dumpster fire less than one month later.
Kingsbury’s continual inability to break through, despite whatever signs of optimism Tech might give early in the year, could unquestionably cost him his job.