Mike Leach - RIP

Only tangentially related to Leach, but still:

 

Fucking guy was a bad ass every which way.

 

Talked to one of his former Mississippi State players today for a reaction story. He said they were at practice one day, getting ready to run a drill, when they realized Leach was off to the side talking on his phone.
He'd gotten a call from Trump during practice, and was over there talking to him.

 

I don't think it was just his politics. Leach had that reputation as a jerk long before Trump became a national political figure. If I remember correctly part of the brouhaha involving the son of Craig James was because Leach had the kid sit in the equipment shed as punishment for poor play. Which seems to me to indicate Leach was something of a jerk.

Maybe Adam James was just a spoiled kid with powerful parents and small humiliations are a motivational technique used by college coaches everywhere. But Leach used to criticize players after games more publically and vociferously than virtually any other D-1 coach. Leach gave the impression that he always out coached the other guy and his losses were alway due to his being burdened with inferior players.

Leach was a very smart X's and O's guy who was very good at designing offense that were tactically sound and easy to teach. The fact that the Air Raid is easy to teach is one reason it is so popular in high schools. I think that Leach, like many other very smart people, relied on his intellectual skills and ignored interpersonal relationships.

 

Being unfiltered doesn't make someone great.

 

One of Mike Leach's angrier tirades came in the SAME GAME as "I'm a man! I'm 40!"


After a loss to Oklahoma State in 2007, Leach said of his defense: “The entire first half we got hit in the mouth and acted like somebody took our lunch money. All we wanted to do was have pouty expressions on our face until somebody dabbed our little tears off and made us (expletive) feel better. And then we’d go out there and try harder once our mommies told us we were OK.”

Don’t remember that last one? There’s a good reason. In the other head coach’s news conference after that same game, Cowboys coach Mike Gundy emphatically announced his gender and age while criticizing a column written about one of his quarterbacks.

 

I think it is fair to say that if Leach was starting out as a head coach in the age of free transfers he wouldn’t have gotten nearly as far. Seems like if you played for him you’d either take a bullet for the guy or grow to despise him, with not much room in between.

 

If someone can outscheme teams with superior talent that many times, he must have been OK at his job.

 

A buddy I used to work with at the Valdosta Daily Times posted this gem.

 

This short quote probably sums it up as well as any.

"Our sport was better because of Mike Leach and is far less interesting without him." – Arizona Cardinals coach Kliff Kingsbury.