In the middle of his third season with the Arizona Cardinals, Kliff Kingsbury is reportedly being targeted to become the next head coach for Oklahoma.
Arizona Cardinals head coach Kliff Kingsbury probably thought he was going to have an uneventful Sunday with his team having the week off. But Kingsbury is now in the middle of something that could have a major impact on the future of the Cardinals.
On Sunday, multiple reports revealed that Lincoln Riley is leaving the University of Oklahoma to become the new head coach at USC. To replace Riley, Oklahoma apparently has their eyes on Arizona’s current head coach.
According to ESPN’s Adam Schefter on Sunday, Oklahoma is targeting Kingsbury as “one of the potential replacements” for Riley.
Could Kliff Kingsbury leave the Arizona Cardinals for Oklahoma?
Prior to becoming the Cardinals head coach in 2019, Kingsbury was the head coach at Texas Tech for a total of six seasons. With Kingsbury leading the way, Texas Tech went to three Bowl games, however, they only had two winning seasons in six years with him as their head coach.
Still, his success with Arizona this year is clearly generating interest from one of the best college football programs in the nation. But would Kingsbury actually leave Arizona for Oklahoma?
Anything is possible, especially if Oklahoma throws enough money at him, but Kingsbury’s success with the Cardinals this season makes it difficult to believe that he would head back to the college ranks in 2022.
If anything, he’ll likely be able to get an extension from Arizona as a result of this report. Kingsbury only has one year left on his current deal with the Cardinals, so one should expect the possibility of him leaving for Oklahoma to only motivate Arizona even more to give their current head coach a new contract.