Kliff Kingsbury coming home to Texas Tech to be Red Raiders head coach

When Tommy Tuberville abruptly left Texas Tech last weekend for Cincinnati, the most obvious candidate to replace him was Kliff Kingsbury.

Kingsbury was a record-setting quarterback at Texas Tech, and had an impressive year at Texas A&M as the Aggies' offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach. Johnny Manziel won the Heisman Trophy with Kingsbury's help this year. Kingsbury also had a great run coordinating the offense at Houston under Kevin Sumlin, who brought Kingsbury along when he left for Texas A&M.

So it should be no surprise that Kingsbury agreed to come back to Lubbock to be Texas Tech's next head coach.

Texas Tech announced it in a fun social media-friendly way, with athletic director Kirby Hocutt tweeting out, "Red Raider Nation, your new head football coach is........ " and linking to a yfrog video of him teasing the new hire, then the camera pans to Kingsbury who gives a "Wreck 'em, Tech." Pretty cool.

The question is, whether Kingsbury is the right man for the job, or just a famous name from his playing past.

Kingsbury is young (he turned 33 last August), so there is probably some trepidation by Red Raiders fans about his hire. Because he played professionally until 2008, he hasn't had much time in the coaching field. He was an offensive quality control assistant as recently as 2009. After two years doing that, he was Houston's co-offensive coordinator for two years before spending the last year at Texas A&M. That's not much experience for a head coach in the Big 12.

But Kingsbury does bring back a link to the Mike Leach era for those who remember it fondly, and judging by the past few years, he has a good offensive mind.

If Texas Tech is lucky, they caught a rising star in coaching and he won't take too long to learn how to lead a program.

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