{"id":42128,"date":"2026-01-02T04:01:58","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T04:01:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/texas-tech-gambled-on-its-underdog-head-coach-joey-mcguire-heres-what-stood-out-during-his-interview-and-landed-him-the-job\/"},"modified":"2026-01-02T04:01:58","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T04:01:58","slug":"texas-tech-gambled-on-its-underdog-head-coach-joey-mcguire-heres-what-stood-out-during-his-interview-and-landed-him-the-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/texas-tech-gambled-on-its-underdog-head-coach-joey-mcguire-heres-what-stood-out-during-his-interview-and-landed-him-the-job\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas Tech gambled on its &#8216;underdog&#8217; head coach Joey McGuire. Here&#8217;s what stood out during his interview and landed him the job."},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/695730d764858d02d217a3ee?format=jpeg\" alt=\"joey mcguire\"\/><figcaption>Head Coach Joey McGuire of the Texas Tech Red Raiders.<\/p>\n<p>John E. Moore III\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>Joey McGuire&#039;s bold outreach efforts led to his hiring as the head coach of Texas Tech football.<\/li>\n<li>McGuire impressed the hiring committee with a seven-step plan to start winning games.<\/li>\n<li>Under McGuire, Texas Tech achieved a program record of 12 wins and its first-ever Big 12 Championship.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Experience isn&#039;t everything when it comes to hiring. Just look at Joey McGuire, the head football coach at Texas Tech University.<\/p>\n<p>When the Red Raiders began their head-coaching search in 2021, McGuire didn&#039;t have as stacked a r\u00e9sum\u00e9 as his competition. As ESPN reported, he was &quot;a true underdog candidate.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>At the time, McGuire had spent the majority of his coaching career at Cedar Hill High School in Texas, where he had notched three state championships. He also spent a few years as an assistant coach at Baylor.<\/p>\n<p>On paper, it was the kind of background that would have given many Power 4 programs pause.<\/p>\n<p>Texas Tech&#039;s hiring committee may have completely overlooked McGuire had he not reached out himself. According to ESPN, he cold-called athletic director Kirby Hocutt, left a voicemail, and asked for the opportunity to interview.<\/p>\n<p>That kind of bold outreach can be a differentiator.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I always advise not to be too afraid of cold outreach,&quot; a former Google recruiter told Business Insider in 2023. &quot;If you&#039;re really interested in a company, get in touch with those you want to work with \u2014 email the CEO, the head of talent, or the hiring manager and let them know why you&#039;re the right person for the job.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Once McGuire got in the room, he made the most of it.<\/p>\n<p>ESPN reported that he showed up to the interview with unmatched enthusiasm and &quot;a seven-step plan for winning.&quot; The publication said he had with him &quot;the full list of coaches he would like to hire. He had a detailed plan for fixing in-state recruiting and spoke of waking a sleeping giant.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>The preparation left a lasting impression.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;We were all like, &#039;We found our guy,&#039;&quot; Tony Hernandez, a former deputy athletic director and member of the search committee, told ESPN after the meeting.<\/p>\n<p>Texas Tech ultimately decided to go with McGuire, and the gamble has paid off.<\/p>\n<p>While the Red Raiders fell to Oregon in the College Football Playoff quarterfinals on Thursday, under McGuire, the team has surged from relative obscurity to a program-record 12 wins in 2025. They also secured their first outright conference championship since 1955 when they toppled BYU last month.<\/p>\n<p>McGuire&#039;s story is a good reminder that a little preparation can go a long way, no matter what type of job you&#039;re applying for.<\/p>\n<p>As business etiquette expert Jacqueline Whitmore told BI, &quot;Most people don&#039;t do the proper research about the company. We have so many resources to use, including LinkedIn, websites, and social media. There&#039;s no excuse for you to go into an interview and not know about the company and something about who might be interviewing you.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Head Coach Joey McGuire of the Texas Tech Red Raiders. John E. Moore III\/Getty Images Joey McGuire&#039;s bold outreach efforts led to his hiring as the head coach of Texas Tech football. McGuire impressed the hiring committee with a seven-step plan to start winning games. Under McGuire, Texas Tech achieved a program record of 12 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42129,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-42128","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}