Hot prospect Kingsbury brings small-town history, big offensive resume and movie star looks to USC
LOS ANGELES - The advertisements hit Kliff Kingsbury's inbox, each picture offering a future seemingly more breathtaking than the next. The properties stretch across Southern California, a place the man from small-town Texas had somehow always imagined himself, and, given the wild success he has achieved in his 39 years, a luxurious life in the big city is fully attainable and awaiting at his fingertips.
The house or condominium will come for Kingsbury, USC's pick to save its offense, a hire that was so unfathomable a month ago that his new boss has compared it to winning the lottery.
Kingsbury is a no-brainer investment for the Trojans, who surely made him richer than he ever could have conceived when he was tossing footballs through a tire in New Braunfels, Texas, but the coach does not feel like a million bucks.
Despite the excitement of seeing the beach and the majestic blue of the Pacific, walking onto a new campus, meeting new faces and shaking new hands, slapping on a new university's polo shirt, it has taken Kingsbury only so far from Lubbock, Texas. His heart remains there and he still proudly wears Texas Tech black and red.
"It's been hard," Kingsbury said last week from his office in USC's McKay Center. "You just miss the people, you miss the players, you miss interacting with them. You've seen them every day for five, six years and checking on them, and you want to know how they're doing and how everything is going, but you have to try to keep your feet where you are and focus on this new phase of your life.
"When it first happens, you feel like you lost your family, because it's just gone, and you're kind of lost and don't know what to do. And then you want to be a part of a new family."
It is easy to look at Kingsbury and see only the guy
