Minnesota Football: Get me Mike Leach

Mike loves defense, it’s just not his end of the game. At Texas Tech he did well, but things improved most on the defensive side when Ruffin McNeil was brought up. It was an impossible task getting the more athletic recruits, and rarely was a recruit stolen From UT, OU, aTm or Nebraska. But he found ways to beat them with their rejects. There was always a chance to win, because if the defense couldn’t exactly stop them, once the offense tested their defense, you would start to see the score-fest. The spirit of Texas Tech football left with Mike Leach; winning underdogs.

Mike Leach is his own person, their is no front or facade with him. If you chat with him and you’re reasonably intelligent you will get more than football. Pirates was just one of his many interests, but the fans first and then the media went with it, symbolically, so it stuck. I don’t know if he would go to Minnesota, but you won’t know either unless you ask him. He won’t play games and he won’t lie. He is responsible for keeping the team’s attention, so you won’t hear lame excuses in the event of a loss (Fat Little Girlfriends was not an excuse, it was a metaphor for losing the team’s attention. He followed the statement by saying that it was their failure as coaches to keep the team’s attention on the task at hand. He’s a politician’s worse nightmare because he won’t read their scripts. It’s practice and execution in a brilliantly timed and spaced scheme, and he will really work the team. They won’t do anything on the field that they haven’t practiced a hundred times. He only cares about football and the the student’s education. Struggling student athletes were put on study practice, and helped. There were no football player stacked free ride classes.

He never locked a student in an electrical closet for having a concussion. No one witnessed that student getting a concussion in any practice. Practicing for the Alamo Bowl, Leach had a kid standing on the sidelines with his hat on backwards, wearing designer sunglasses, with an attitude. He asked a trainer to take him off the field and put him in a dark place for the remainder of practice. Sure he was upset at his undermining. He did it because the student was in violation of team rules and was flaunting it in the presence of the team. All players come to practice injured or not wearing sweats (non-contact) or pads (contact), etc. This student made himself a distraction on purpose.

The important point is that he never touched the kid, and Leach was supposedly fired for this by the same institution that hired Bobby Knight. There’s a lot more to the story than what was spun on BSPN, but what is relevant is that Mike Leach loves the kids on his teams and works hard to make them successful on the field and in the classroom. He took athletically disadvantaged players in the conference and leveled the playing field for them and gave them opportunity. Your defense under Mike Leach will be as good as the quality of the recruits and the coaching skill of the DC and trainers. Mike’s staff was always high quality. Look at all the OC’s and HC’s that are doing well after leaving Tech. 10/01/2008 Brent and Herbie said that our defense was “the real deal” against the #1 ranked Longhorns. Listen to “what they say” or dig for yourself.