Will Texas Tech do what it takes to be 'elite' in football?
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Texas Tech athletic director Kirby Hocutt repeatedly mentioned an interesting word on Sunday when discussing the future of the Red Raider football program: elite.
"We will be elite in football again," he said. "I guarantee you, we will be elite in football again. This program has been there before and will get there again."
Coaching hires can be a coin flip of sorts. Even the best hires on paper - does Billy Gillispie ring a bell? - come with little guarantees. Short of Nick Saban, there are no sure-things in college football.
The best programs in college football are generally the teams that recruit the best, and there's a pretty direct correlation between recruiting rankings and winning championships.
While Texas Tech will probably never be a program that consistently pulls in top-10 recruiting classes, Hocutt and the university's administration can take steps toward that elite level by taking steps to level the recruiting playing field between the Red Raiders and the upper echelon of the Big 12.
How much of an advantage does that upper echelon have over Texas Tech? We took look at Mike Gundy's Oklahoma State program to see how the Red Raiders compare from a recruiting personnel standpoint.
Texas Tech
Texas Tech's 2018 football staff had Kliff Kingsbury as head coach and 10 assistant coaches to support him. If you take a look deeper into the staff directory, the following people are also part of the staff in some capacity or another:
Chief of Staff: Kenny Bell
Director of Football Operations: Tommy McVay
Director of Player Personnel: Jason Reed
Assistant Recruiting Operations: Jenna Tabuena
Beyond those four, Texas Tech also employed:
Director of Player Development: Manny Ramirez
Offensive Graduate Assistants: Stanton Keane and Derick Perkins
Defensive Graduate Assistants: Skyler Cassity and Tevin Mims
Defensive Quality Control: Drew Cunningham
Special Teams Quality Control: Aaron Miller
Personnel Graduate Assistant: Diego Ortiz
That is it for the football staff, not including strength and conditioning coaches, trainers, video coordinators or equipment managers.
Oklahoma State
Oklahoma State is led by head coach Mike Gundy and 10 assistant coaches. Beyond that though, the Cowboys have a much bigger team of support staff overall than Texas Tech. Something that really stands out is that Oklahoma State also employee five full time analysts, compared to Texas Tech's zero.
Defensive Analyst: Bill Clay (Former DC at Southern Mississippi, SMU, Temple, Mississippi State, UTEP, UAB and Oklahoma State. Additionally, he served as an assistant at Virginia, Virginia Tech, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Louisiana Tech, Texas A&M, Samford and Blinn College)
Defensive Analyst: Chris Thurmond (Former DC at Rice. Additionally, he served as an assistant at Tulsa, East Carolina, TCU, Oklahoma, Alabama, Texas A&M, Houston and Kentucky)
Offensive Analyst: Brian Rock (Former OC at Western Michigan, Kent State and Holy Cross. Additionally, he served as an assistant at Purdue)
Offensive Analyst: Bob Stitt (Former Head Coach at Colorado School of Mines and Montana. Former OC at Doane College, Austin College and Harvard. Also served as an assistant at Nebraska Wesleyan)
Special Teams Analyst: M.K. Taylor (Former assistant at Jacksonville State)
Along with these five full-time analysts, Oklahoma State employs the following in its recruiting staff:
Director of On-Campus Recruiting: Patsy Armstrong
Director of Football Relations: Johnny Barr
Director of Football Operations: Mack Butler
Director of Football Recruiting: Mike Groce
Assistant Director of Operations: Rod Johnson
Beyond those five, which presumably all deal with recruiting in some capacity, Oklahoma State also employs the following:.
Player Development Specialist: Beni Tonga
Offensive Quality Control: Morris Berger
Defensive Quality Control: Will Wright
2 Offensive Graduate Assistants: Patrick Cashmore and Chris Meyers
Defensive Graduate Assistant: Shane Eachus
The Pokes also employ five "Prospect Analysts" - two for offense and three for defense. Here's the bio of one of the program's Offensive Prospect Analysts, Robert Luce:
"Robert Luce joined the Oklahoma State Football program in the spring of 2018 and works directly with the offensive line. Luce assists (Cowboys offensive line coach) Josh Henson as well as the recruiting office daily. Luce played college football at Missouri under Henson and spent time at Houston prior to joining Cowboy Football."
The other Prospect Analysts on the Oklahoma State payroll:
Offensive Prospect Analyst: Josh Gonzales
Defensive Prospect Analysts: Matt Clements, Jordan Martin and Bradley Thomas
Conclusion
It's pretty easy to see the differences between the staffs at Texas Tech and Oklahoma State. The Cowboys have allocated significantly more dedicated resources into recruiting, and it's safe to assume that's played a part in the two program's trajectory over the last several seasons.
Beyond just recruiting, Gundy has five full time analysts on his staff, three of which have assistant experience at other FBS schools, and a former FCS head coach.
Oklahoma State is just one example, but you could perform this exercise with almost any other program in the Big 12 and see similar results.
It's one thing to say you want to be elite. We will see in the coming months whether Hocutt, Texas Tech's administrations and its donors really mean it.