Former KU assistant coach, current Texas Tech DC David Gibbs having big season

By Staff     Oct 17, 2018

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Houston interim head coach David Gibbs after the Armed Forces Bowl NCAA college football game, Friday, Jan. 2, 2015, in Fort Worth. Texas. Houston won 35-34. (AP Photo/Sharon Ellman)

If I were an agent for assistant college football coaches I would insist that they all are paid moving expenses with a set amount of cash and then can make arrangements on their own.

And then I would insist that each one of them buy a truck big enough to pack all of their belongings. They would pay off the truck by their third or fourth move and make money off of the next 10 moves.

Texas Tech defensive coordinator David Gibbs is just one of many whose background illustrates the itinerant nature of life as an assistant football coach.

A senior defensive back on Colorado’s team that won the national title under Bill McCartney in 1990, Gibbs is in his fourth season at Texas Tech, which struggled on that side of the ball until improving vastly this season.

Consider Gibbs’ many moves.

He was a graduate assistant at Oklahoma (1991-92) and at Colorado (1993-94). His first full-duties coaching job came at Kansas (1995-96), where he was defensive backs coach under Glen Mason. Gibbs would tell you going to Kansas was the best move of his life because it was there that he met his wife, Debbie, a Lawrence High graduate. The couple has two children.

Gibbs went with Mason to Minnesota (1997-2000), where he was the youngest defensive coordinator in the nation at the age of 29 in 1997.

He coached defensive backs for the Denver Broncos (2001-04) and was defensive coordinator at Auburn in 2005.

Next, Gibbs coached defensive backs for the Kansas City Chiefs (2006-08) and then the Houston Texans (2009-10). In 2012, Gibbs coached defensive backs for the Virginia Destroyers of the UFL. He then returned to the college game as defensive coordinator for Houston (2013-14), where his Cougars defense led the nation in turnovers gained with 43 in 2013 and tied for 11th with 30 in 2014.

As Houston’s interim head coach for the Armed Forces Bowl played Jan. 2, 2015, Gibbs coached his team to a 35-34 victory over Pittsburgh with the biggest fourth-quarter comeback in bowl history.

Houston fell behind 34-13 with 4:21 left on a 29-yard field goal from Chris Blewitt (how about that name for a team that blew a 21-point lead so late in the game).

The Cougars scored 22 points in a span of 90 seconds of game clock.
Gibbs wasn’t able to spin that into a head coaching job, but here’s guessing his name will surface regularly in postseason job searches.

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