A north Texas college experience was a novelty for me, a south Texas
guy. I came around pretty quickly though. The school I was attending
at history, which I liked a lot. That history including athletics; back
in the day, little Austin College had suited up against state powers
such as Texas, Texas A&M, and the Red Raiders of Texas Tech.
Grayson county had history too, and I was immediately attracted to a big
event in the first month of my arrival. The Battle of the Axe. The
annual clash on the gridiron between Sherman & Denison dated back
almost to the 19th century, and the 1988 game was scheduled to take
place in Denison. I rounded up a few other freshmen I had only just
met, and we made our way north to Munson Stadium to watch the game. The
Yellow Jackets were a state 4A power at the time, but that night
belonged to the 5A Bearcats. Sherman won 33-16, and we headed back to
Luckett Hall.
Although I didn’t know it at the time, on the field
that night was a Sherman linebacker named Kirby Hocutt. Although
skilled and passionate, he was also a bit too small for the position.
He was exactly the type of player who would have thrived in a Vance
Morris coached defense (h/t Paula Young Morris) at Austin College. Many of his fellow Bearcats athletes and classmates did make it to AC. Some of them, such as Kelly Carver, Reggie Smith, and Chad Points I today call friends.
Hocutt had bigger dreams. He wanted to play Division 1 ball. Large
schools are cautious schools however, often unwilling to take risks on
players with more heart than stature. Hocutt eventually did land one D1
scholarship offer. But only one. It was at a program which had been a
laughing stock for decades, led by a new coach few had heard of. The
school had managed only 4 winning seasons in the previous 55 years.
That coach was former Austin College assistant Bill Snyder, who was
embarking on the greatest turnaround in college football history at
Kansas State. He had been hired in 1988, just months after I watched
Hocutt and Sherman win in Denison. By the time of Hocutt’s arrival in
1991, Snyder and the Wildcats had finally secured a winning season.
Snyder recognized Hocutt’s potential in Manhattan, and set no limits on
his newly acquired linebacker. Hocutt was a four-year letterman at
Kansas State, and earned Big 8 all-conference honors his junior year.
The Sporting News selected him as one of the top 20 underrated players
in the nation, and Snyder tapped him as team captain his senior season.
That 1994 season was one of 9 wins for Kansas State, and ended with an
appearance in the Aloha Bowl (James Kowalewski, here’s your Roo Tale Aloha Bowl tie requested earlier :)). The greatest turnaround in college football history was on.
His playing days over, Hocutt followed the former AC coach into the
coaching/sports administration ranks. After stops in Norman OK, Athens
OH, and Coral Gables FL, Hocutt was hired 2011 as Athletic Director for
the Texas Tech Red Raiders. In 2016, he lured Chris Beard back to
Lubbock take over coaching duties of men’s basketball; Beard had been a
Texas Tech basketball assistant under Bobby Knight for 10 years. Last
night, Beard guided Texas Tech to its first Final Four appearance in
school history, and the first for any Texas school in 16 years.
Texas Tech is the “House that AC Built.” From its founding in 1925
until well after World War 2, the new state school was a common
destination for Roo coaches who cut their teeth playing in Sherman. The
philosophy of Roo athletes from the 1920s to the 1940s was “Go West,
Young Man.” Many of these student athletes had come from West Texas to
compete in “East” Grayson County, and then returned west to hone their
craft either at the collegiate level in Lubbock or at the High School
level in the Texas of High Plains and Sunsets. In addition to Texas
Tech, Roo coaches before 1950 could also be found at Lubbock HS,
Amarillo HS, Cisco HS, Childress HS, Pampa HS, Big Spring HS, Levelland
HS, Brady HS, Abilene HS, Brownwood HS, Friona HS, Quanah HS, LaMesa HS,
and McCamey HS. Among others.
But most of those coaches? At one
point or another, they were at Texas Tech turning that new, small state
school into a West Texas equivalent or those East Texas cousins in
Austin & College Station.
I do not know Kirby Hocutt, but I
have friends who do. Hocutt does not have a degree from Austin College,
nor is he a former AC coach. I consider those facts a technicality.
Hocutt was raised in Grayson County in the 1980s, a memorable decade for
those of us who rooted for the Roos. He made his way successfully from
player to the administration ranks, a common path for former AC
athletes. He has successfully overseen the athletics program in
Lubbock, like so many Roo coaches nearly 100 years ago.
I’d like
to think that Hocutt, an undersized sized linebacker with oversized
heart and drive, would have found a home at AC soon after I watched him
and his Bearcats teammates beat Denison back in 1988……..had it not
it not been for that one former AC coach in Kansas who swooped him up
and helped him find his way.
Congratulations Kirby, and to all Texas Tech fans. Wreck ‘em Tech. Two more games to go.
