Texas Tech suspends Coach Mike Leach indefinitely

Central Florida.

Interestingly, among the conditions that TTU asked Coach Leach to agree to after their investigation what that medical personnel making determinations about the medical ability of players with injuries to participate not be subject to pressure from Leach or his staff.

To me, this intimates they felt he was putting pressure on the doctors to release players to participation. Which might have been true in this case. Which might also make any written assertion Leach obtained from the doctor involved questionable.

Certainly, the firing in advance of the hearing on the TRO removed any question of the university losing today and having to face having Leach on the sidelines on Sat. Whether that was because they feared losing, or simply because you cannot ever be 100% certain of winning can’t be known unless you were listening to the conversations the university’s administration was having with its attorneys. :smiley:

In the pros some guys avoid team doctors just to get an unbiased opinion on injuries. Or they use another doctor to get a 2nd opinion. Pro guys can afford to see whoever they want which may not be the case for many college kids.

I agree. The fact that he already had a doctors’ note about his actions did not sit right with me. It indicated he knew he had to justify his treatment of James and it seemed very plausible that he pressured someone into writing him a note after the fact.

Whether the room is a closet or a huge suite of rooms, and even if James was not a hard worker, it still sounds like there’s a punitive element to this.

Did Urban Meyer or Jeff Tedford have to sign similar papers after playing severely concussed players very shortly after the concussion?

The papers they asked him to sign (well, aside from the apology), may not seem unreasonable but they also aren’t signed by any other coach in college football. Plus, you’d be an idiot to sign a paper saying you’d do x when x is in itself “subjective.” Especially if you work for an employer that has been looking for a reason to fire you.

I can easily see the situation playing out like this:

-Leach signs some garbage document saying he won’t “pressure” team doctors.
-Leach makes some comment to a team doctor asking about an injured player.
-Gerald Myers says that said comment equates to “pressure”, putting Leach in violation of his signed agreement and giving Myers cause to fire him.

I’ll say this, right now there is no evidence that has been released to the public that suggests Leach’s firing was in any way, shape or form, appropriate. Texas Tech has allowed coaches in other sports to get away with actual contact with players; I’d be surprised to find evidence of a coach anywhere in all of FBS history who was fired for a reason such as this, in such a short timeline with no prior history of misbehavior.. Bobby Knight had to act like a lunatic for 20+ years to get fired by Indiana, Woody Hayes had committed multiple assaults et cetera.

Not that I’m saying we want college coaches “living up to” those standards of personal conduct, but Leach has had one allegation made against him in ten years, and the response from the university was totally out of line.

Is it possible Leach was “pressuring team doctors” and that Myers was actually concerned about that? Sure, maybe. But it’s also possible Mike Leach is the risen zombie of Judge David Davis or that hidden on the moon is a secret military base built by the U.S. in preparation for defense against an alien invasion.

We have just as much evidence for all three of those possibilities, and until more evidence comes out all we know is Mike Leach put a kid with a mild concussion in a garage and then a press room (both climate controlled), with dim lightning (apparently recommended for concussions.)

I also don’t think the people who just posted actually have any solid facts on the order in which things went down, because I’ve certainly not seen any evidence as to when the doctor’s comments were made. One account I’ve heard suggests the doctor told James that there was nothing wrong with what was done from a medical standpoint prior to James going public with this. Obviously I’m not sure about that, but I’m also pretty sure no one else is sure as to when who said what, and should probably not make weird speculations until they are.

My understanding is that the James situation is simply the flashpoint for some much larger issues with Leach and the administration.

They don’t need a reason to fire him, they can fire him any time they want. All that matters is how much money he gets. A lot of cases like this end up with a settlement where neither side gets 100% of what they want.

I’m sure the fact that he openly kept trying to get other jobs didn’t help him keep his job. Ask the former BC head coach Jags about that. :slight_smile:

No one ever claimed Texas Tech needed a reason to fire Mike Leach.

However, what is definitely up for debate is:

  1. Does their reason, under the definitions of their employment contract with Mike Leach, match what will be construed in a court of law as “cause?” If it isn’t, then Texas Tech is going to owe Mike Leach a huge amount of money. (Remember, Mike Leach isn’t an “at-will” employee, he had an employment contract which stipulated what Texas Tech has to do if it wants to fire Mike Leach without cause, if they want to fire him for cause, then obviously they may have to demonstrate that under the terms of the contract, their reasons fit the definition.)

  2. Is it a good decision by Texas Tech?

  3. Was it a result that is good for anyone, even if the allegations are true?

My answers to those questions are that 1. they will not be able to demonstrate cause, 2. it was a terrible decision, and 3. no, it wasn’t good for any of the involved parties.

Obviously I’m speculating, but that’s my opinion. As for the legal side of things, I expect a settlement and I expect Leach to receive at least the bare minimum $2.4m that he was entitled to receive per the terms of his contract if he had been fired “without cause.”

I like what Lou Holtz just said on ESPN. One of his colleagues speculated about “whether or not this was just the tip of the ice berg and what other misbehavior has their been.” Lou Holtz said “you’re on that computer all day, you know everything about college football. You’re telling me that in ten years if Mike Leach had done something, you wouldn’t have heard about it?”

I agree 100% with Lou, if Leach had a history of doing this stuff, we’d already know about it. I follow college football enough to know that nothing stays secret, nothing. A lot of the “minor scandals and improprieties” of a college football coach don’t hit the national news, because they aren’t terribly relevant. But you talk to the folks that know about their own programs and they’ll tell you all the dirt, especially the ones that really follow the program, are close with people at the school and et cetera. If this stuff had a history of going on, we’d be hearing about it right now, and some of the people “in the know” would have already heard about it. But the reality is, over ten years of coaching we’ve not heard a thing. Even after all this comes out, nothing else has surfaced, not a word on the “insiders message boards” or anything, not even rumors of past misbehavior.

I also agree with something else Lou said. Lou said when he was a coach, an injured player became the responsibility of the team trainers. Lou had no real interactions with injured players, and it was the trainer’s job to decide when to bring the injured player back to him. Now, knowing what I know about Lou Holtz and remembering his Notre Dame days, and remember that he got most of his schools in NCAA violations or rumors of NCAA violations, I don’t believe a word of it. I do agree with the idea, though, and I think after this incident coaches would be wise to do just that.

However, I also think that if an administration wants an excuse to get rid of you, then you’re gone. It’s just a matter of time.

Well my scorecard for this.

Leach gets his money, but his next job is a huge step down. D

TTU ends up paying him and goes irrelevant F

James probably won’t get crap for a settlement and is untouchable anywhere F.

I don’t think TTech is going to easily settle for giving him the full amount. In most cases both sides don’t want to risk a trial so the settlement is less than the full amount.

It was a long while ago - 1990 - but when Jim Valvano was fired amid NCAA probation he insisted he was still due the full amount. He had a very good lawyer and NC State hired an outside lawyer to settle the case. Valvano got about 50% of what he thought he was due. I guess it’s different with probation but these days concussion problems are all over the news so it’s a very sensitive topic.

James can probably play at a FCS (1-AA) school somewhere if he wants to.

I hope Texas Tech has enjoyed their time in the college football limelight, because it’s over.

That’s what a lot of people said when Dan Hawkins left Boise State. They are now better than when he was there and he was nearly fired this year at Colorado.

BTW, I am not saying they are a lock to stay an 8+ win team. But it’s also not a lock they start being a 5 win team.

SI.com is reporting that Mike Leach’s employment contract stipulates the following six reasons that Texas Tech could use in a “for cause” termination of Leach:

Obviously Texas Tech’s lawyers will try to justify their actions amongst one of those 6 options. Nos. 1, 5, 6 are probably totally unusable.

If TTU can show that what Mike Leach did was an NCAA violation then it could fall under the definition of Nos. 2/3. Depending on how No. 4 is construed, I could see this being called a “failure to take appropriate disciplinary action.”

There’s also rumors going around about Craig James / Adam James suing Mike Leach personally. That would be a massively bad decision for them, in my opinion. It would probably embroil James so much in the affair that he could no longer continue his employment at ESPN (ESPN tends to not put up with much “outside news” coming out about their talking-heads), and at this stage in Adam James life I think the last thing he needs is more publicity from this.

He’s already getting death threats from TTU fans who found his personal contact information (and posted it briefly on the TTU message boards), I think on a personal level he should want this whole thing to go away, or at least his part in it.

Adam James video

Alright, so this is a link to a YouTube video; according to the TTU message boards this video was used as evidence by Adam James when he went to the university. (I have no way to substantiate that, nor does the TTU message board, so this could be something totally from the moon.)

I’ll say from what I can see that isn’t the visiting team’s press room. That’s a very different location than either of the two that were shown in an earlier video. So that means either Leach’s side lied when they took the news station through the two buildings, or James faked his video.

No idea who I trust in that regard.

I do question whether or not it is commonly accepted behavior for a college football player to have a cell phone on their person at practice. Somehow I very seriously doubt that…

Um, if you’ve been paying attention, Martin, you’ll note from what I posted earlier that James apparently was taken first to a place that was too noisy, and after that was moved to the putative press room, and the furniture removed. This is consistent with what James has said. Without looking at the video, I cannot say what it shows, but likely, if he’s not showing the press room, he’s showing the original room the investigation preliminarily (apparently; all comments off the record) determined he was placed in.

As for what I said, you misunderstood what I meant. I didn’t say that he should have signed the papers. I simply said that the fact they contained that requirement is a strong indication that the University felt that something of that sort had gone on. Clear?

You seem to be really, really strongly on the side of Coach Leach here. Is there some connection that makes you so interested in supporting his side in all this?
ETA: I suspect that the cell phones are pretty ubiquitous. They are most other places; I would suspect the usual rule is you can have them, but cannot use them.

Hell, you should have heard some Washington State fans piss themselves when news he was being fired came out. Paul Wulff IS going to have to have quite a season to keep his job. AD would have to deal with some serious fallout in addition to getting Leach to accept a monster paycut though. Probably at least in half.

Well, in my experience at least college athletics tries to be pretty hard on players during practices. I know for a lot of coaches, a cell phone with you during practice would be about the same caliber as having a cell phone with you in front of a drill instructor in the military. Obviously college football is about as different from the military as night and day, but college football coaches have always tried to make practices “tough.”

I’m totally clear on your comments about the papers, and I disagree. I imagine they were just another step in the university’s pre-determined path to get rid of a coach that they simply did not like. You don’t think that is a possibility? If you’ve been following this at all you know that last year when the contract negotiations fell apart the TTU leadership’s emails were published by Leach’s agents, and TTU people clearly stated they wanted to put Leach into a contract where it would be easy to fire him.

Plus, I don’t really care what the TTU administration “felt”, if they think there was a problem with Leach pressuring team doctors or trainers I’d love to see evidence of it. All we have evidence of right now is the treatment of one player, and no priors. Meaning we’re looking at the flimsiest ever seen for firing a college football coach “for cause.”

As for the “noisy room” thing, that room didn’t seem noisy to me, and I never read that Adam James was in the “noisy room” by himself and left, just that they took him to a room that was “too noisy” and then took him somewhere else instead.

Keep in mind the people that run Texas Tech are mostly a bunch of backwards rednecks, I honestly doubt they give a shit about how much a player is or is not pampered, and probably don’t really know or care about the medical repercussions of a concussion. Their problem was they hired a guy who wasn’t a redneck, he didn’t do the weekly redneck get together with big boosters and etc that all previous TTU coaches did (Leach called it a waste of time), and he used his “New York agents” when it was time to enter into a contract negotiation. Down in Lubbock it is apparently a sin to try and get the best possible deal you can in a contract negotiation (I somehow doubt that Kent Hance of Gerald Myers wouldn’t do the same if the shoe was on the other foot), it’s pretty obvious to everyone who has looked at the emails that came out last year or has followed the situation that they wanted Leach out.

This firing happened so fast as to be almost stunning, with only a cursory investigation. There’s a genuine potential that the TTU administration acted in a manner that goes against Texas State employee regulations, too. Mike Leach was employed by the State of Texas, and he was fired from his job with no chance to administratively contest the allegations against him. He was (arguably) fired for seeking redress in a State court. I don’t know a damn thing about what sort of rules govern Texas State employees, but I know in a lot of states, state employees have quite a lot of protections that regular people out in the private work force do not have.

I’m curious about this, because state employees don’t receive multi-million dollar salaries nor do they have buy-out clauses. It seems to me that Mike needs to pick. Either he’s a free agent working under contract (hence agents and contracts and buyouts) or he’s a state employee which should mean that he’s subject to state salary guidelines etc. Has he accepted endorsement money (usually illegal for a state employee)?

Yeah, I’m totally unaware of how it works. I know that back in the 70s and 80s one thing that was very common in college football is there were very strict rules about what state employees were allowed to make. Many “big name” college football coaches were technically on the State’s payroll and thus they had strict upper limits on their salary. I know in a lot of states the college football coaches couldn’t make more than some public figure (like governor, State Supreme Court Justice or et cetera.) However I also know times have changed and a lot of people who are technically State employees make a lot of money. Most states you’ll commonly find that big university Presidents, university professors, and of course big school football/basketball coaches all make more money than say, the governor.

For example in West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin makes something like $90,000 a year but some business professors at WVU make $200,000 a year or more. The head football coach and basketball coach make $900k/$1.3m respectively.

(From this link, I’d like to see a similar website for my state (Virginia) but couldn’t find one. Anyway if you search for “WILLIAM STEWART” and “ROBERT HUGGINS” you’ll see the amount the state pays them.)

I also know that the trend is to move as much money as possible away from “salary.” Instead, a lot of coaches are now paid for doing “mandatory publicity” type stuff. Like $800,000 in their contract is based on them showing up and shaking hands at a few big dinners.