FORT WORTH, Texas — Texas Tech may play in a bowl game, but after beating winless Kansas by only three points there’s an outside chance coach Matt Wells may not be around long enough to partake in it.
There is growing anger and frustration at the second-year football coach in Lubbock, and support to remove him immediately and replace him with a former Texas Tech assistant.
According to a source, support to hire former Baylor coach Art Briles is growing within the Tech community. This is a complicated, noisy, expensive and controversial process.
An outside law firm conducted its own investigation of the now Mount Vernon High School coach, and a source said the report was sent to members of the Texas Tech board of regents on Thursday morning.
Baylor alum, attorney John Eddie Williams, hired the law firm of Alston & Bird out of Atlanta to investigate the allegations against Briles, which led to his firing by the Waco school in May of 2016.
The 20-page report is signed by Alston & Bird attorney, Jody Hunt, who previously served as an assistant attorney general for the U.S. Department of Justice.
Conducting a report like this ain’t cheap.
Hunt acknowledged not everybody could be interviewed, nor could the sealed document be reviewed, but his conclusion reads: “Based on the information available to us as recounted herein, including statements made by Baylor and by others about Coach Briles with respect to the events surrounding his tenure as head coach at Baylor, we are not aware of any conduct on the part of Coach Briles that should serve to foreclose consideration of him as a candidate to coach football again at the collegiate level.”
Even Baylor has said this, but the general public has buried this coach.
As someone who has spent too much time to count on this topic, I would have fired Briles — and I would hire him today.
Back in 2018, I wrote Tech should have hired him then. That went over well.
After Texas Tech fired Kliff Kingsbury following the 2017 season, Texas Tech athletic director Kirby Hocutt conducted the coaching search effectively on his own and hired Wells from Utah State.
A source said a few influential boosters, and a few members of the Texas Tech Board of Regents, kicked the tires on Briles and were told, simply, “No.”
In Wells’ first two seasons in Lubbock, the Red Raiders have finished 4-8, and 4-6. Texas Tech’s last winning season was 2015, when it finished 7-6 with Patrick Mahomes at quarterback.
Firing Wells may be easy, but it won’t come cheap. He’s due a $9 million buyout. Tech, especially in a COVID year that has wrecked athletic department budgets across the country, doesn’t just have $9 million between the seat cushions.
However, there are a group of Tech boosters, said a source, who would put together the money themselves to cover the $9 million.
Firing Wells will be a party compared to hiring Briles.
No coach in college football comes with his reputation. He’s the coach who allegedly ignored charges of sexual assaults by his players.
Every time a school, or notable team, has tried to hire him, the public backlash is so severe the process stops.
Then there is also the specter of an NCAA investigation into both Baylor and Briles. That investigation, which has endured countless delays, may have a hearing potentially this month.
Hiring a coach with a potential show-cause penalty is not exactly great PR. But it can be done. Auburn hired former Tennessee basketball coach Bruce Pearl in 2014, even though the coach had a show-cause penalty from his time with the Volunteers.
Briles, 65, is about to finish his second season coaching at Mount Vernon. He wants to coach college ball again, preferably in Texas.
He’s from the general West Texas area, and played and graduated from Texas Tech. His first college job was as the Tech running backs coach under Mike Leach from 2000 to ‘02.
For Texas Tech to do this it will have to endure a level of scorn, mockery and criticism it ultimately will decide it wants to avoid. Such a move will likely alienate some members of the administration, and the fan base.
Hocutt is in a difficult position, in a bad year. The women’s basketball program generated plenty of negative publicity for the school after USA Today reported in August a detailed pattern of alleged abuse by players against now fired coach Marlene Stollings.
The men’s basketball team under Chris Beard and baseball team under Tim Tadlock are rolling, but football pays the bills.
Matt Wells is Kirby Hocutt’s hire. As was Kliff Kingsbury.
There are no signs that Wells is any better than Coach Bro’. Wells may be worse, and unlike Kliff he is not a Tech guy with Tech roots.
Hocutt knows the game, and knows his tenure is tied to football more than anything else.
The good people of Lubbock and Red Raider nation are sick of irrelevance, and yearn for the days of The Pirate when the football team was on the national name.
Hiring Art Briles will make Texas Tech a name, and they will win games, but to do so will be expensive, messy and controversial.
