This should be received well
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Sometimes, however, destruction creates opportunity. As odd as it may seem, Traylor’s decision to remain at UTSA could prove the best thing to happen to Texas Tech’s coaching search.
Throughout the 21st century, Texas Tech’s coaching searches in men’s basketball and football have suffered from severe tunnel vision. Occasionally the myopic approach produced very good results—see Bob Knight and Chris Beard—but most of the time the outcome has been underwhelming, to put it mildly.
The school was willing to allow itself to be locked in to hiring Pat Knight upon the General’s retirement, with the result being one of the most dismal periods in Tech basketball history.
To remedy the Pat Knight fiasco, Texas Tech fixed upon the psychopathic Billy Clyde Gillispie, whose brief tenure only deepened the death spiral.
The search for Gillispie’s replacement was considerably more wide-ranging and produced Tubby Smith who returned Texas Tech basketball to respectability.
After Chris Beard, Smith’s replacement, decamped to the University of Texas, Texas Tech hired Beard’s top assistant, Mark Adams, after considering nobody else seriously. The result of that hire remains to be seen.
On the football side, and with the notable exception of the Leach hire, the tunnel vision has been total. Tommy Tuberville, Kliff Kingsbury and Matt Wells were hired after perfunctory searches, and all three men failed at Texas Tech. Appearing not to have learned from their pitiful track record of hiring coaches without conducting a genuine search, Texas Tech was set to do the exact same thing with Jeff Traylor. Indeed, it is entirely possible that Wells was fired with four games remaining on the schedule precisely so Texas Tech could corral Traylor before anybody else could get to him. Wells’ sacking went off without a hitch; the rest of the plan blew up in the face of Kirby Hocutt and his search committee.
So, now unforeseen developments may be forcing the search committee to do something a search committee is supposed to do, but that this one apparently didn’t want to do—you know, conduct an actual search. And this may be a very good thing.
The search committee will now have to open its eyes and do some bona fide research. It will have to expand its scope, scan the horizon with an open mind, and find the best coach available rather than the one that fits narrow preconceptions of what Texas Tech’s football coach should be.
There is one potential monkey in the wrench, however, although TCU may have obviated it. Sonny Dykes was widely regarded as the search committee’s second preference after Traylor. Naturally then, after being jilted by Traylor, it seems the committee would quickly glom onto Dykes. However, the Horned Frog brass has forced Gary Patterson, the greatest thing to happen to TCU football since Slingin’ Sammy Baugh, into retirement, and early reports suggest TCU, in decidedly un-Christian fashion, covets their neighbor’s coach. Sonny Dykes, in other words, may be no more available to Texas Tech than Jeff Traylor. All of which would mean the search committee has to move onto option number three. Alas, there doesn’t appear to be a third option. And for that we should be thankful.
Unless the unthinkable happens, and Art Briles returns to Texas Tech like a mangy shih tzu to its own mess, Hocutt and the committee may now have to entertain the possibility of considering exceptionally worthy candidates such as Fresno State’s Kalen Deboer, Coastal Caronlina’s Jamey Chadwell, or North Carolina State defensive coordinator Tony Gibson. Those coaches are not Texas guys, but if Jeff Traylor’s decision to remain at UTSA indirectly shatters that very habitual and hamstringing parochialism that has typified Texas Tech coaching searches for the last two decades, and forces Hocutt and committee to consider all candidates rather than those who can trace their lineage to Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie or Sam Houston, who gives a rip? Let the best coach win.
247 article
So you don't have to click...
Jeff Traylor Forces Texas Tech to Conduct an Actual Search
- by Joe Yeager
- 21 hours ago
Sometimes, however, destruction creates opportunity. As odd as it may seem, Traylor’s decision to remain at UTSA could prove the best thing to happen to Texas Tech’s coaching search.
Throughout the 21st century, Texas Tech’s coaching searches in men’s basketball and football have suffered from severe tunnel vision. Occasionally the myopic approach produced very good results—see Bob Knight and Chris Beard—but most of the time the outcome has been underwhelming, to put it mildly.
The school was willing to allow itself to be locked in to hiring Pat Knight upon the General’s retirement, with the result being one of the most dismal periods in Tech basketball history.
To remedy the Pat Knight fiasco, Texas Tech fixed upon the psychopathic Billy Clyde Gillispie, whose brief tenure only deepened the death spiral.
The search for Gillispie’s replacement was considerably more wide-ranging and produced Tubby Smith who returned Texas Tech basketball to respectability.
After Chris Beard, Smith’s replacement, decamped to the University of Texas, Texas Tech hired Beard’s top assistant, Mark Adams, after considering nobody else seriously. The result of that hire remains to be seen.
On the football side, and with the notable exception of the Leach hire, the tunnel vision has been total. Tommy Tuberville, Kliff Kingsbury and Matt Wells were hired after perfunctory searches, and all three men failed at Texas Tech. Appearing not to have learned from their pitiful track record of hiring coaches without conducting a genuine search, Texas Tech was set to do the exact same thing with Jeff Traylor. Indeed, it is entirely possible that Wells was fired with four games remaining on the schedule precisely so Texas Tech could corral Traylor before anybody else could get to him. Wells’ sacking went off without a hitch; the rest of the plan blew up in the face of Kirby Hocutt and his search committee.
So, now unforeseen developments may be forcing the search committee to do something a search committee is supposed to do, but that this one apparently didn’t want to do—you know, conduct an actual search. And this may be a very good thing.
The search committee will now have to open its eyes and do some bona fide research. It will have to expand its scope, scan the horizon with an open mind, and find the best coach available rather than the one that fits narrow preconceptions of what Texas Tech’s football coach should be.
There is one potential monkey in the wrench, however, although TCU may have obviated it. Sonny Dykes was widely regarded as the search committee’s second preference after Traylor. Naturally then, after being jilted by Traylor, it seems the committee would quickly glom onto Dykes. However, the Horned Frog brass has forced Gary Patterson, the greatest thing to happen to TCU football since Slingin’ Sammy Baugh, into retirement, and early reports suggest TCU, in decidedly un-Christian fashion, covets their neighbor’s coach. Sonny Dykes, in other words, may be no more available to Texas Tech than Jeff Traylor. All of which would mean the search committee has to move onto option number three. Alas, there doesn’t appear to be a third option. And for that we should be thankful.
Unless the unthinkable happens, and Art Briles returns to Texas Tech like a mangy shih tzu to its own mess, Hocutt and the committee may now have to entertain the possibility of considering exceptionally worthy candidates such as Fresno State’s Kalen Deboer, Coastal Caronlina’s Jamey Chadwell, or North Carolina State defensive coordinator Tony Gibson. Those coaches are not Texas guys, but if Jeff Traylor’s decision to remain at UTSA indirectly shatters that very habitual and hamstringing parochialism that has typified Texas Tech coaching searches for the last two decades, and forces Hocutt and committee to consider all candidates rather than those who can trace their lineage to Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie or Sam Houston, who gives a rip? Let the best coach win.
