LOS ANGELES _ The advertisements hit Kliff Kingsbury's inbox, each picture offering a future seemingly more breathtaking than the next. The properties stretch across Southern California, a place the man from small-town Texas had somehow always imagined himself, and, given the wild success he has achieved in his 39 years, a luxurious life in the big city is fully attainable and awaiting at his fingertips.
The house or condominium will come for Kingsbury, USC's pick to save its offense, a hire that was so unfathomable a month ago that his new boss has compared it to winning the lottery.
Kingsbury is a no-brainer investment for the Trojans, who surely made him richer than he ever could have conceived when he was tossing footballs through a tire in New Braunfels, Texas, but the coach does not feel like a million bucks.
Despite the excitement of seeing the beach and the majestic blue of the Pacific, walking onto a new campus, meeting new faces and shaking new hands, slapping on a new university's polo shirt, it has taken Kingsbury only so far from Lubbock, Texas. His heart remains there and he still proudly wears Texas Tech black and red.
"It's been hard," Kingsbury said last week from his office in USC's McKay Center. "You just miss the people, you miss the players, you miss interacting with them. You've seen them every day for five, six years and checking on them, and you want to know how they're doing and how everything is going, but you have to try to keep your feet where you are and focus on this new phase of your life.
"When it first happens, you feel like you lost your family, because it's just gone, and you're kind of lost and don't know what to do. And then you want to be a part of a new family."
It is easy to look at Kingsbury and see only the guy who has it all: movie-star good looks that have drawn comparisons to Hollywood leading man Ryan Gosling; the moxie to approach any woman with a confident stride; and one of the most brilliant minds for offensive football that made him the hottest name on the college and NFL market the moment his alma mater let him go after six seasons.
But what is just as easy to miss is the man who works like he doesn't have anything. Kingsbury famously starts his day in the 3 o' clock hour, makes sure he's at the facility by 4 _ rumor has it that number has gotten earlier because staffers at Texas Tech started trying to beat him _ and does not go home until 9 p.m., when his head swiftly hits the pillow so he can do it all over again. He learned this from his father, Tim, the former high school football coach and decorated Vietnam War veteran, and his mother, Sally, the government teacher and town mom who was running about 10 miles a day before cancer took her.
Pushing 40, Kingsbury says he wants a family that exists outside of football too. There's a reason the official USC release announcing his hiring as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach included the phrase, "he is single." But to this point, the game has been enough to sustain him, and he has been unwilling to make time for anything _ or anyone _ else. He chose Los Angeles, a city he loves and has visited often during his short offseason, almost as a challenge to himself.
"I'm trying to be better," he says. "I think moving out here, I kind of promised myself, all right, we're going to try some different hours, try to improve the quality of time off that we do have. Still trying to sort out the work-life balance, I would say."
He pauses, before adding, "If you can't do it here, then I got real problems. I gotta go see somebody."
He could just as easily be trying to figure it out across town with Los Angeles Rams coach Sean McVay, Kingsbury's friend who also called with a job offer when he became available. The reasons Kingsbury decided to stay in college football and finish his early-morning commute near downtown L.A. are tucked a world away, hidden in a special place whose name is now etched onto the nameplate that marks the entrance to his USC office:
New Braunfels, Texas
