As motivator, Leach is an intriguing read
In high school in Cody, Wyo., Mike Leach rode the bench on the football team. That was as close as he ever got to playing the game. Never played in college.
He went on to become one of college football’s most innovative thinkers. He latched onto former Kentucky head coach Hal Mumme’s “Air Raid” offense and developed it into a sophisticated attack that created blizzards of touchdowns for Oklahoma ( as an assistant) and then, as the head coach, for Texas Tech andWashington State.
He has turned unheralded and, in some cases, unrecruited quarterbacks into stars. The latest is his current quarterback, Luke Falk, who arrived in Pullman as a walk- on.
Leach, 56, who has a law degree, is a man of enormous intellectual curiosity. He’s learning Spanish on his iPhone. He is considered eccentric, brilliant, often cantankerous and stubborn. He’s still trying to get Texas Tech to pay the $ 2.5 million he said he’s owed for 2009. Earlier this year, he hired a private eye to study phone records of the school’s officials. He even launched a website to stir up public support for his cause.
His No. 25 Cougars ( 7- 2, 4- 2 Pac- 12) host No. 18 Stanford ( 6- 2, 5- 1) in a Pac- 12 North game Saturday, possibly in snowy weather.
During his weekly teleconference Monday, Leach’s most extensive answer came to a question not about football but about the subjects of his offseason interests, especially 18th century pirates and the books he hopes to read in the offseason: a Hunter Thompson biography; an exploration of Stiltsville, a group of wooden stilt houses off the coast of Miami that trace to the 1920s; William L. Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”; a biography of former Reds and Tigers manager Sparky Anderson; and a book on Ernest Hemingway.
Such works have piled up in what he calls his “on- deck circle.” Shirer’s 1960 book about Nazi Germany “keeps intimidating me,” he said, “because it’s the size of the Chicago phonebook.” Shirer, a journalist stationed in Germany, “knew some of these people personally, very evil characters, how they evolved, how they developed.”
Pirates were pretty evil characters too, but Leach is fascinated by the fact that a pirate ship was a functioning democracy. Pirates came from all walks of life but found ways to work together, much like football teams, he said.
“Some of them were flat- out rich guys who thought this would be a good way to make money,” he said. “And the queen of England state- sanctioned piracy — of course, you had to give her a cut of it.”
After his Texas Tech team lost to Texas A& M in overtime in 2004, he hauled his players into a conference room the next day and launched into a threehour lecture on the history of pirates. Over the years, his players no doubt would rather walk the plank themselves rather than hear another of his pirate stories.
He co- wrote a book on Geronimo. Every year, the topics of his research expand. The list has also included Montezuma, Daniel Boone, Ulysses S. Grant, whales, chimpanzees, grizzly bears and the artist Jackson Pollock. He says he has read the Old Testament and the New Testament four times, along with the Book of Mormon.
This year, talking about the take- a- knee protests in the NFL, he told ESPN. com, “Nothing has done more to bring people of different races and different backgrounds together than athletics, certainly more than politicians have done. It’s why the Greeks invented the Olympics.”
He has a political side himself. He appeared at a campaign rally for Donald Trump last year in Spokane and is in favor of mandatory civics classes.
But don’t expect him to run for office. He has too many books to read.