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The Cardinals announced this week that head coach Kliff Kingsbury — along with G.M. Steve Keim — signed a contract extension through 2027, giving Arizona stability at the top of its football operation.
But a few months ago, there was a rumor circulating that Kingsbury was a candidate for the then-vacant Oklahoma coaching job. Kingsbury, who was about to enter the last year of his contract in 2022, didn’t exactly pull a Mike Tomlin when asked about the rumor. Instead, Kingsbury said it wasn’t a topic he wanted to touch at that moment.
Now that he’s slated to be with Arizona for the better part of the next decade, though, Kingsbury was singing a different tune in a Thursday appearance on the Pat McAfee Show, basically dismissing the thought of ever going back to coach at the collegiate level.
“I tell everybody and I’m not making this up, I would do anything before I went back to that,” Kingsbury said, via Tyler Drake of ArizonaSports.com. “Like I would do any job.
“It’s full time now with the social media and you’re either tweeting, calling, facetiming and there’s like this constant anxiety, because if you’re not doing it, the university down the street is. It just never goes away. [In the NFL], when you’re done with the football, you’re done, you go live your life. College, it just never goes away.”
Kingsbury started his coaching career in college, going from an assistant at Houston and Texas A&M to head coach at his alma mater Texas Tech from 2013-2018. He compiled a 35-40 record at the program with one winning season before he was fired.
He then agreed to become USC’s offensive coordinator before landing the Cardinals job in the 2019 offseason.
Arizona is 24-24-1 under Kingsbury with one playoff appearance.
