Texas Tech dismisses Kliff Kingsbury after six seasons
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Texas Tech has dismissed head football coach Kliff Kingsbury after six years, one day after the Red Raiders lost their fifth-straight game, a 35-24 decision to Baylor, to close the season 5-7.
The Athletic's Bruce Feldman was the first to report the news.
According to the terms of his contract. Kingsbury will be paid a buyout of approximately $4 million.
Kingsbury finishes his career on the South Plains with a 35-40 overall record, 19-35 in Big 12 play.
The former Texas Tech quarterback was never able to duplicate his success as a player and coordinator as a head coach. Kingsbury’s tenure got off to a promising start as the Red Raiders won their first seven games in 2013 and climbed as high as No. 10 in the AP Top 25, but the team closed out the regular season with five consecutive losses.
That first campaign proved to be Kingsbury’s most successful at the helm of the program. Texas Tech went 4-8 in 2014 – the most losses in a Red Raider season since the 1981 team went 1-9-1 – but rebounded with a 7-6 record in 2015 behind the offensive production of future NFL draft picks Patrick Mahomes, DeAndre Washington, Le’Raven Clark and Jakeem Grant. Kingsbury failed to build on that success, however, and Texas Tech athletics director Kirby Hocutt had to address his coach's job status after the 2016 and 2017 seasons.
Kingsbury entered the 2018 season on the hot seat but looked to have erased questions about his future after the Red Raiders got off to a 5-2 start with important road victories over No. 15 Oklahoma State and TCU. The season hit the skids in late October, due in part to injuries to quarterback Alan Bowman and linebacker Dakota Allen, and as the losses mounted, so did speculation that Kingsbury's job was once again in jeopardy. Those discussions reached a crescendo following the team's 21-6 loss to Kansas State.
Hocutt expressed frustration with the loss the following Wednesday on his weekly radio show.
"It's a situation, it's a game that you left feeling disappointed in the outcome and the performance and frustrated in the position that we find ourselves to be in," he said on Double T 97.3 FM in Lubbock. "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 say you are, and we're not where we expect to be."
Hocutt continued, identifying the team's poor performance in "fundamental areas" this season as a source of concern.
"It's discipline, it's penalties," he said. "That's a fundamental aspect of football, is the discipline and eliminating penalties. You've got to be able to run the football. You've got to be able to establish the running game, to be balanced there. We've struggled with that."
Texas Tech finished the regular season ranked last in the Big 12 in penalties per game (8.0), penalty yards per game (74.2) and second-to-last in rushing yards per game (132.58) and yards per carry (3.64).