Find Your Inner Pirate - Mike Leach: 1961 - 2022

By Simon Carroll

The College Football world was rocked yesterday with the news that Mississippi State head coach Mike Leach had died on Monday evening at the age of 61, following complications from a heart condition.

Simon Carroll looks back at the career of ‘The Pirate’, a man who was as unconventional off the field as he was on it:

“You’ve lost your inner pirate. Have you ever heard ‘Swing Your Sword’? You’re supposed to swing your sword like this, but you’re swinging yours like this. You’ve got to find your inner pirate. A lot of times things just happen for a reason. We don’t know why God wants it that way, but you can’t make the best out of it until you get back to your inner pirate. You might be the luckiest man alive and not even know it.”

Character.

The word is so often overused in the modern lexicon, it has almost lost some of its true lustre. Football is as guilty of this as any other arena; the success of the best teams, coaches and players in the history of the game is often perceived to be built on an abundance of the quality. And yet in truth, only a rare few show character in every aspect of their lives. Some mistake will, determination or grit as character, when they’re simply individual pieces of the puzzle. Similarly, those who shine in front of the camera, or are the life and soul of the party are repeatedly referred to as ‘characters’, when really what they mean is they have ‘charisma’. And then there are leaders, who many consider have the character to get more out of a group of individuals than the sum of their parts. Admirable, no doubt. But on its own? It falls short of the definition.

The truth is, you will encounter but a handful of people in your lifetime that demonstrate all of these attributes and more. But when you meet one – you immediately know you are in the company of greatness. THAT is the true yardstick of character.

Michael Charles Leach had character.

The Shaping of Mike Leach

Mike Leach & Hal Mumme at Kentucky

Mike Leach was born March 9th 1961 in Susanville, California, but spent most of his young life growing up in Cody, Wyoming. The eldest of six children and the son of a forrester, it didn’t take long for Leach to fall in love with football. After shining on the gridiron at high school he was recruited by BYU, but a bad ankle injury cruelly denied him a college career. He graduated in American Studies in 1983 before completing law school three years later, but most of his spare time was spent in the Brigham Young film room under legendary head coach LaVell Edwards.

Edwards won more than 250 games in his time in Provo, along with a National Championship (1984). His success was credited to his mastery of the passing game, something considered revolutionary back then. But the ingenuity and effectiveness of this innovation was not lost on a young Leach, who would eventually take Edwards’ mantra and dial it all the way up to eleven….

Leach began his coaching career immediately after law school, with a year at both Cal Poly and College of the Desert. In one of his first acts of outside the box thinking, he headed to Finland to become the head coach of the Pori Bears in 1989 for a year – an experience he would frequently talk about in press conferences. But eventually he returned to the states to become offensive coordinator at Iowa Wesleyan, striking up a working relationship with Hal Mumme that would help define his own football philosophy.

Mumme and Leach worked together for ten years, first at IWU before stints at Valdosta State and Kentucky.

The Birth of the Air Raid Offense

Over a decade, the Mumme-Leach braintrust developed an offense that went against almost every conservative football principle. Legendary Ohio State coach Woody Hayes often opined “only three things can happen when you pass (a completion, an incompletion, and an interception), and two of them are bad”. Ball security and the ground game were staple foods of the college football diet. Edwards had bucked the trend in the eighties, but Mumme and Leach were scorching earth in the nineties…

Operating almost exclusively out of the shotgun with four receivers and one running back, Leach would preside over an offense that threw the football as often as 75% of all snaps in a season. Radical alignments such as Trips, which are commonplace nowadays, overloaded and imbalanced defenses who had never come across such aggressive tactics before. And widening the splits between the offensive linemen forced rushers to take longer routes to the quarterback. This was doubly effective when the ball was being thrown in less than three seconds. Leach and Mumme were pioneers of the quick pass offense, using route concepts that allowed receivers separation early.

Leach was unafraid to empower his quarterback at the line of scrimmage, allowing him to adjust plays and take advantage of mismatches based on what the defense was showing. And what made this masterpiece deadly was the quick tempo, no huddle system – giving their unit the freedom to diagnose, adjust and dissect an opponent who struggled to change personnel between plays.

Leach had created something so unique, it (eventually) changed how defenses operated. During his time at Kentucky, his innovative offense helped Tim Couch set numerous NCAA and SEC records – including the record for completion percentage in one game (minimum 40 completions, 83.0%), which still stands to this day. Couch went on to be the first overall pick for the Cleveland Browns in the 1999 NFL Draft.

The Air Raid Offense was unstoppable.

Forging His Own Path

Mike Fuentes / ASSOCIATED PRESS

After one year away from Hal Mumme as Oklahoma’s OC (where he tutored a young Lincoln Riley), Mike Leach was hired as the thirteenth head coach of Texas Tech. In ten years at the helm, Leach transformed the Red Raiders from Big 12 also ran to a thorn in the side of the conference heavyweights. TTU went to a bowl game in every season he was a head coach, finished five seasons nationally ranked, and won a Big 12 championship in 2009 – the only conference title in the football program’s history.

Leach compiled a 84-43 record during his time in Lubbock, a resume studded with huge scores and upset wins – including putting 55 points on Clemson (‘02), 70 points on TCU (‘04), 59 points on K-State and 56 points on Texas A&M (both ‘05). He developed quarterbacks Kliff Kingsbury, BJ Symons, Cody Hodges and Graham Harrell – all of whom set NCAA records.

After leaving TTU in acrimonious circumstances (more on that later), Leach became head coach of Washington State University. Another unfancied Power 5 program in something of a state outpost, Leach spent eight years in Pullman, implementing his Air Raid offense and finding even more success. Between 2015 and 2018, The Cougars won 37 games and two bowl games. In 2018 they won their division and a shot at the PAC-12 title – the first time they’d been to the Championship Game in sixteen years. They were bested that day by in-state rivals Washington, but bounced back to win the Alamo Bowl and finished 10th in the nation.

Leach’s time in the Pacific North West saw the rise of Gardner Minshew, a quarterback Leach found in the transfer portal after graduating at East Carolina. As the story goes, he called up Minshew and asked him “you want to come lead the nation in passing?”. Minshew duly transferred and threw for 4,776 yards and 38 touchdowns in one season. Leach’s ability to plug and play his offense with the talent at his disposal saw no bounds. And another school took notice…

Shocking The SEC

MSU Athletics

In 2020, Mike Leach was named Mississippi State head coach, succeeding Joe Moorhead. The Bulldogs’ decision was a surprise, as the SEC has traditionally been something of a smashmouth football conference. Indeed, MSU themselves were widely known for their ground game, led by star running back Kylin Hill.

It took all of one game for Leach to give the SEC a glimpse of what he was all about, stunning reigning National Champions LSU 44-34 in Baton Rouge. KJ Costello, who had only transferred to the school that Summer, had 623 passing yards and five touchdowns. For context, the same quarterback only threw for 1,038 yards the entire previous season at Stanford.

That debut performance immediately had Leach setting more records, shattering both the school and conference passing records for a single game, as well as becoming the first coach in NCAA history to beat a top ten opponent in his coaching debut. Whilst the rest of the SEC were lost for words, it was nothing less than the Bulldogs expected after a few months with their new head coach.

“I don’t know if any individual could visualize this taking place, but this team did” said Costello.

“We knew this was the type of offense we were going to have just from the practices, all the workouts we had, how everybody bought in. So we knew it was going to be something special” added wide receiver Osiris Mitchell.

Even the Air Raid isn’t impervious to the step up in quality from the Big 12 or PAC-12 to the SEC, and Leach’s first year in Starkville had more downs than ups. But by the end of this season, despite ill health, the enigmatic head coach had this program at eight wins once again. Wherever he has coached, Mike Leach hasn’t just been a success – he’s changed the game. But that doesn’t tell even half the story of a man who has been as interesting off the field as he was on it.

The Man, The Myth, The Pirate

In a spot of self-indulgence, I’d like to offer a hypothesis on why the Air Raid offense came to be. And it’s simply this; Mike Leach was bored with conventional football. Clock chewing, ground and pound football simply did nothing to entertain him. But a high-octane passing attack that spread out an offense and killed opponents with a thousand passes and 70 point scorelines? Inject that into his veins…

Leach hated the mundane. He hated the usual press conferences. My colleague George Somerville has seen this every week on the SEC conference call, where the Bulldogs head coach almost defiantly talks about anything other than football. In truth, this has been the modus operandi of Leach since his days in Lubbock. And amid the outpouring of grief in his passing, social media has been awash with fantastic examples of ten minute soliloquies on the best halloween candy, or which college football mascot would win in a battle, or the best format for a playoff, or how best to approach your wedding preparations. He is known for his fondness for the history of pirates, which led to the famous Friday Night Lights quote at the top of this article. That moment stemmed from his coaching methods at Texas Tech, frequently extolling the virtues of teamwork and telling his players to ‘swing their swords’:

“Pirates function as a team. There were a lot of castes and classes in England at the time. But with pirates, it didn’t matter if you were black, white, rich or poor. The object was to get a treasure. If the captain did a bad job, you could just overthrow him”

Leach himself wasn’t above moments of skullduggery, with referees often the brunt of his sharp tongue. He has frequently called into question the dedication of his players after defeats, particularly at Mississippi State. And only last month he was filmed folding up chairs and making his receivers stand up on the sideline during a game. Asked about it afterwards, Leach was only happy to explain his actions:

“We were in that period of time where it sure seemed to me we were a lot more interested in sitting in that chair than being on the football field or rooting for our teammates, so it was my opinion that we oughta be rooting for our teammates rather than kind of lounge it because we pretty much had everything but playing cards over there, so I thought it was time to move on from that.”

Not one minute with Mike Leach was boring or mundane. He made sure of it.

The Adam James Controversy

On 30th December 2009, Mike Leach was fired by Texas Tech – just days before they were due to play in the Alamo Bowl after the team’s eighth straight 8+ win season. Accounts of how events transpired vary, but surrounded the treatment of Adam James, the son of former SMU & Patriots running back (and ESPN analyst) Craig James. James suffered a concussion, and claims that Leach – unhappy with his inability to train – told him to stand in the corner of an equipment room.

The University demanded Leach apologise to James or be suspended. Leach refused, denying James’ version of events – instead claiming that he asked James to be ‘taken out of the light’ and didn’t know where he had gone. Instead, Leach believed the motivation behind the Universities’ ultimatum was around the tension in recent fruitless contract extension negotiations. He also claimed that James and his father bore a grudge over a lack of playing time.

Just one day before Leach was owed $2.5m in different guarantees, his contract was terminated by TTU. Leach went on a litigious holy war, trying to get his termination overturned and allowing him to coach the bowl game. He filed suits against TTU, three individual university administrators, James Sr, ESPN and Spaeth Communications – a consultancy firm employed by Texas Tech to investigate the claims. All but one of his cases were dismissed by the courts, with Leach only allowed to sue the school for monetary reparations.

The next eight months saw further litigation, injunctions and counters from both sides, with no further punishment or restitution. To his final day, Leach continued to explore legal means of reparation, maintaining he was wrongfully dismissed and that the school used the situation to get out of his contract. In a twist of fate usually reserved for lowbrow soap operas, Mississippi State faced Texas Tech in the Liberty Bowl at the end of the 2021 season. In a jaw-dropping press conference, Leach did not hold back on his thoughts of his previous employers:

“You know, great school. I’ve got great memories there. They still owe me for 2009, the last time they won nine games, so maybe they’ll deliver the check. So we’ll see what happens there.”

When asked how long he planned to fight TTU, he answered:

“Forever. Why not? I mean, what do I got to lose? I don’t have anything to lose. I mean, they cheated me out of $2.6 million, plus four years remaining on my contract.”

The Great Philosopher

Getty Images

College Football is a murky world, where very little behind the scenes is black and white. Recruiting, money, and the treatment of student athletes are all susceptible to the pressure that is put on coaches to win. Is it conceivable that Mike Leach was draconian in his reaction to James’ concussion? Of course it is. Leach is as driven as any other successful coach out there, many of which will also have had moments they are not proud of. We know Leach demands a lot from his players – only last week, MSU running back Dillon Johnson threw some barbs at his former head coach when entering the transfer portal, in a social media post that has now been classily removed.

Friction between head coach and player is nothing new. And Leach was smart enough to see that this particular incident was the perfect excuse for his former employers to move on from him. Unfortunately for TTU, the disgruntled employee brought all the swashbuckling swag he displayed on the sideline to the courtroom; to be honest they were foolish for expecting anything less.

This defiant single-mindedness is what made Leach one of the game’s great innovators and most successful head coaches of his generation. But it’s also what has probably stopped him from getting one of the truly elite jobs in college football that his resume deserved. Leach was wedded to the Air Raid for life, captivated by its ability to take down the mightiest of opponents. As with anything in his life, Leach loved to be stimulated. At home it was philosophy, politics, American history, and wildlife. In a press conference it was anything he could wax lyrical about to stave off the next obvious question. And on the field? His refusal to conform allowed him to create something that has changed the sport forever. He found his inner pirate and never let go.

The Mike Leach coaching tree is impressive. All the records, the accomplishments, truly astonishing. The Air Raid, and all it’s derivatives, permeates football at every level. That alone would earn someone a place in the annals of history, but Leach was much more than that. A maverick, an entertainer, a genius.

Mike Leach was the definition of character.

Mike Leach Achievements (per Wikipedia):

KENTUCKY (OC)

Four NCAA, 42 SEC, and 116 school records broken

TEXAS TECH

10 consecutive winning seasons

8 consecutive seasons with at least 8 wins

4 seasons with at least 9 wins

1 season with 11 wins

9 consecutive bowl appearances

5 bowl wins (most by any individual coach in the history of the program)

4 seasons completed with team ranked in the Top 25

19–11 record against in-state conference rivals Baylor, Texas, and Texas A&M

53–11 record at Jones AT&T Stadium, home of the Texas Tech Red Raider football team

2008 AP Big 12 Coach of the Year

2008 Big 12 Coach of the Year

Coached 1 Fred Biletnikoff Award (Best Wide Receiver) winner: Michael Crabtree (two-time winner)

Coached 1 Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award (Best Senior Quarterback) winner: Graham Harrell

Coached 1 Mosi Tatupu Award (Best Kick Returner) winner: Wes Welker

Coached 3 Sammy Baugh Trophy (Outstanding Quarterback) winners: Kliff Kingsbury, B. J. Symons, and Graham Harrell

More than 150 NCAA, Big 12 and school records broken as Texas Tech’s head coach

All-time winningest football coach in Texas Tech history

WASHINGTON STATE

2015 Pac-12 Coach of the Year

2018 Pac-12 Coach of the Year

4 consecutive winning seasons

First coach to win 11 games in a season at WSU

Coached 1 Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award (Best Senior Quarterback) winner: Gardner Minshew

1 top 10 finish

2 bowl wins

MISSISSIPPI STATE

First head coach to win against a top 10 ranked team in coaching debut

Broke SEC and school record in passing yards in a single game

Mock Draft

SIMON CARROLL

HEAD OF CFB/NFL DRAFT CONTENT

PREVIOUSLY THE FOUNDER OF NFL DRAFT UK, SIMON HAS BEEN COVERING COLLEGE FOOTBALL AND THE NFL DRAFT SINCE 2009. BASED IN MANCHESTER, SIMON IS ALSO CO-CREATOR & WEEKLY GUEST OF THE COLLAPSING POCKET PODCAST.

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Everyone at The Touchdown would like to offer their sincere condolences to the Leach family, Mississippi State University and the wider College Football fraternity. Coach Leach will be sorely missed.