Sports Illustrated's Profile on Kliff Kingsbury

Really fantastic piece from Sports Illustrated's Lindsay Schnell on Texas Tech head coach Kliff Kingsbury.  There's so many personal anecdotes in this that it's darn near impossible to capture all of this in a single post and I really want to encourage you to go click the link and read the whole thing. Here's a bit:

When Kliff signed a contract extension in late August that will keep him at Tech through 2020, he sent a text to Tim with the news: "Thanks for helping me get here. I was very fortunate to have a man like you to look up to my whole life and show me the value of hard work and to never take the easy way out. Love you."

Tim wrote back: "I can't tell you how much that means to me. I'm so proud of you & so is your mom."

Kliff says Sally was the one person he showed weakness to, that her presence was the only place where he could completely lower his guard. He keeps a copy of her eulogy in his locker -- her parting words of advice, for the more than 1,500 who packed into her memorial service, were simply, "Be nice to each other." She was his first phone call on good and bad days, a role that now goes unfilled.

"I keep everything on myself now," Kingsbury says the day after Tech's loss to Arkansas. "I'm not going to burden anyone else with that."

Then, after a pause: "She's the one person I wish I could have called last night."

Go read the whole thing.