Bowling Green Athletics Director Googled ‘Best Offense’ Before Hiring a Texas Tech Assistant
Mike Jinks was the best hire Kliff Kingsbury made in 2013 when he took the head coaching job in Lubbock.
Jinks recruited really well in Texas and coached future NFL player DeAndre Washington to a couple of great seasons. Then, Jinks was hired away as a head coach by Bowling Green in 2016 after his third year at Texas Tech University, his only collegiate experience.
The hire wasn't regarded as a bad one at the time, but Jinks has gone 7-24 in his time at Bowling Green, and, in retrospect, the fit was never there. Jinks has contacts and a pipeline here in Texas after being a long time high school coach in the state. He'd never recruited in Ohio, and the Bowling Green Falcons were depleted when he got there. It's hard to convince a bunch of Texas kids to come to join you in Ohio.
So, why did former Bowling Green Athletics Director Chris Kingston get Mike Jinks from Texas Tech to be his head coach? He didn't have the resume that's generally regarded as head coach material. He hadn't even been a coordinator at the college level. He was, however, widely thought of as a crucial piece of the Texas Tech staff.
It turns out that when Kingston started his coaching search, he Googled which team had the best offense in the NCAA.
That isn't a joke.
From the Toledo Blade:
With Bowling Green fresh off a Mid-American Conference title powered by one of the country’s highest-flying offenses, then-AD Chris Kingston wanted to keep a good thing going. So he Googled which team had the best offense that year, noted it was Texas Tech, and essentially targeted the top Red Raiders assistant he could afford.
Conservatively speaking, it was the dumbest coaching search in college football history.
Never mind that Jinks — then the 43-year-old running backs aide at Tech — was a career Texas high school coach with three years of college experience, none as a coordinator. Or that Texas Tech didn’t even run the same scheme as Bowling Green — no small thing if continuity was the main selling point. Or that Jinks had never so much as set foot in Ohio. Or that one BG insider told me Jinks had given so little thought to becoming a head coach that he did not have the standard, ready-to-go list of assistants he planned to hire.
In a lot of ways, this is similar to Kliff Kingsbury. Jinks just wasn't ready to be a head coach, so his first staff wasn't dynamic or experienced. I don't think there would have been a riot if Kingsbury had been let go after year three; most of his original staff was. But Kingsbury has lasted six years, and seemingly turned the corner from being a coordinator who some see as out of his depth to a true head coach.
The obvious difference between the Kliff Kingsbury pairing with Texas Tech, and the Mike Jinks pairing with Bowling Green, is that the coaching search didn't start with a Google search of prolific offenses.
A GOOGLE SEARCH! I mean, the Texas Tech offense with Jakeem Grant, DeAndre Washington, and Patrick Mahomes was obviously number one. Did he need Google? Did he think a trio like that was easily replaceable? You can't replicate that. Kingsbury hasn't even replicated it in Lubbock.
Granted, Texas Tech was a prolific offense in 2015, with more than 5,000 yards passing and nearly 2,500 yards rushing. It just wasn't Jinks doing the playcalling, or game planning, or even recruiting at that point. But he did coach Washington to a great season.
I wonder if Incarnate Word Googled 'best offense' before hiring Eric Morris? Maybe Nick Saban Googled something entirely different when hiring Karl Scott as his cornerbacks coach. Or maybe the Bowling Green AD was just inept and had no idea what he's doing.
Now excuse me while I Google "best blog topics" so I can find a juicy story.
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