Commentary: Leach, Tech got best of each other

Leach, Tech got best of each other

To call Mike Leach an original is not too original. Of course, he was. This is like describing the sky as blue and water as wet. Whatever the beat of Leach’s drum, he’s about the only one who heard that particular pounding.

You never knew what you were going to get with Leach – you just knew you were going to get something. He zoomed to prominence as Texas Tech football coach 20 years ago and controversy and fascination followed him to successful stints at Washington State and at Mississippi State.

While most head coaches have difficulty discussing much beyond the white lines, not Leach, who also had a law degree. He would go on these monotone tangents about Apache fighter Geronimo and pirates, gnats, dinosaurs and weather.

He could talk at length about his opinion on weddings and Halloween candy, provide dating and dancing advice or just go off on some stream-of-consciousness thought, and usually did it with a Styrofoam cup of coffee in his hand.

He was an unconventional off-the-wall quirky free spirit that often enjoyed tweaking the norms of college football culture. Maybe it’s par for the course for someone from Cody, Wyo., who never played college football, who coached at Iowa Wesleyan and in Finland, and who liked to hang out in the Florida Keys.

But if all Leach were was this droll dead-panned philosopher of the weird and wonderful, he would have disappeared from public view a long time ago. Fact is, he was a pretty good football coach.

He not only made his bones at Tech, but changed the landscape of college football. He took the one-back, five-wide receiver passing attack to new levels and turned offense on its head.

Leach could win with lesser physical talent. Nine out of 13 times, he beat Texas A&M. His teams weren’t going to outmuscle superior foes because he was coaching at places that couldn’t out recruit the bluebloods. But he could out-scheme them, confuse them, frustrate them, all while looking at a little piece of paper not much bigger than the back of an envelope for the next play.

That style of offense today is called the Air Raid with a nod to the man and place where it started in 2000, the first of three major college jobs. He rolled out one record-setting quarterback after another, from Kliff Kingsbury to B.J. Symons, from Sonny Cumbie to Cody Hodges to Graham Harrell.

Tech only had as much as two 8-win seasons in the 22 years before Leach. In Leach’s 10 seasons, he had one 11-win season, won nine games four times and eight games three times. In the 13 seasons since he left, Tech has wandered in the wilderness, winning as many as eight games only twice.

But for his charming goofiness at times, Leach could also be arrogant, stubborn to a fault and sometimes show a bit of a mean streak. That led to his December downfall at Tech nearly 13 years ago.

Leach went through a difficult contract negotiation in 2008, but eventually signed a new deal. The whole 2009 season, he seemed off, like his time had played out. Leach wasn’t the easiest guy to supervise.

It came to a head in Shedgate prior to the Alamo Bowl. Receiver Adam James complained of a possible concussion during practice. The suspicious Leach placed James in a dark adjacent shed for several hours.

That got to ESPN personality and father, Craig James, who raised a ruckus. It eventually reached Tech chancellor Kent Hance. In a battle of egos, Hance told Leach to privately apologize to the James family and let’s move on.

Leach would have none of it. He refused, and got into a war of wills – and words – with Hance, who suspended him from the bowl game. It only got worse as Leach went on the attack. Hance soon fired him for basically insubordination. Leach unsuccessfully sued Tech, saying he was dismissed a couple of days before he was owed an $800,000 bonus.

For the last decade, it has divided a fan base like nothing before or since. Leach was a friend of Donald Trump’s as far back as 2006. Like Trump, Leach had an almost cult-like following among a segment of Tech fans.

Not surprisingly, as ridiculous as it sounds, there was some hope that Leach would be a candidate for the Tech job last November that went to Joey McGuire. As time went on, and Leach continued some pettiness toward the Tech administration, more moved away from Leach. The so-called Leach Curse seemed over last December when Tech beat his Mississippi State team, 34-7, in the Liberty Bowl.

Everyone, no matter how they saw the Leach dismissal and his feud with certain Tech administrators, acknowledged his unique impact at Tech. Leach needed a change at the end. If it hadn’t been Adam James, it would have been something else. All coaching periods have an expiration date.

After two years off, he won 55 games in eight years at Washington State, and was in year three at Mississippi State. All three schools are a bit off the beaten blueblood path, but Leach could be a thorn in the side of the big boys.

His No. 22 Bulldogs are to meet Illinois in the ReliaQuest Bowl on Jan. 2, but sadly it will be without the Pirate. He died suddenly at age 61 on Tuesday. He suffered a massive heart attack on Dec. 11, and was on life support after that.

His last game was tweaking the nose of favored Ole Miss, winning 24-22. Very much fitting for an uncommon coach who did things – and said things – as only Mike Leach could.

Jon Mark Beilue is a 1981 graduate of Texas Tech. He has been writing about Red Raiders sports for five decades.