The big picture
Sometimes it’s not what you know, but who you know.
Mississippi State head football coach Mike Leach said it’s the best approach for a developing coaching career.
Leach has proven to be a smart man.
After graduating with honors from BYU in 1996, Leach obtained his master’s degree from the U.S. Sports Academy and law degree from Pepperdine where he graduated in the top 1/3 of his class.
The law degree has come in handy for Leach when it comes to coaching because “any amount of knowledge helps,” but he said it’s more about the people who share information.
“I think people draw more from the whole picture than they realize,” Leach said on the Road Dawgs Virtual Tour on Monday night. “People say I learned this or that from a coaching class. I don’t think that’s it. You learn a lot from people you associate with. Law school organizes your thinking to a point and not it’s just something against the rules. I had to address an issue in law school a lot like coach
ing. There is more to do than you can get done. You have to figure out what’s most important and what will help you be successful the most. I think it’s an exercise of prioritizing.”
Leach compares demanding a courtroom as a lawyer to having a team meeting in football as both have a room with many people.
“You look like it as motivating players and bring the team together as a whole,” Leach said. “You try to see as many sides of things as you possibly can. Football is like that.
“You start early in the week and really load it up. You have to prioritize practice, prepare your team with what you feel like is best, you have a game at the end of the week and see how you did. No matter how well you did, you learn something from it so you can do better next time.”
Leach said it’s important for the head coach to give the team “the initial message” when it comes to installing a system.
It cuts down on mass confusion. “You don’t want that message to get diluted by other people,” Leach said. “You don’t want the running back thinking one thing, the receiver thinking one thing and the right guard thinking one thing.”
It apparently has worked out for Leach.
Leach has been a head coach for 18 years and has collected an overall record of 139-90. He has made 16 bowl appearances during stints at Texas Tech and Washington State.
MSU hired Leach as its head coach in January and the Bulldogs can thank the Green Bay Packers for their part in getting him into coaching.
The Packers were Leach’s favorite team growing up. He studied the plays of coach Vince Lombardi and had a picture of Bart Starr above his bed.
Leach actually started as a baseball coach.
“When I was 15, I had my own (baseball) team, which was unusual,” Leach said. “Most were kind of the adult type. I thought I might want to do it for sure in either baseball or football. I went to law school, then I kind of came back to my senses so I’ve been coaching ever since.”