Several commentary items have referred to former Texas Tech coach Mike Leach as an “oddball.” I don’t know much about Texas Tech. What has Leach done to merit this description?
Mods, I thought this was a separate enough question from the discussion of Leach’s firing as to merit its own thread. If you all disagree, please merge.
Well, my wife thinks he looks like a hobbit. So that’s pretty odd. 
I think his ignoring his defense altogether and just having the true philosophy of trying to outscore the other team is even odder than Navy still running the triple option. Teams like Hawaii will play that same kind of game when the correct personel are available but they will change their offensive/game strategy to suit the situation. Mike Leach- nope, he is going to throw like hell every game.
It’s a personality thing. Most college football coaches were guys that played football in High School, then they played football in college, then they either started playing football in the NFL or they started a career as graduate assistant coaches, slowly working their way up.
Most of these guys (and I’m not knocking football players, I played football in High School) are guys who come from a very “specific type” of background and have a very specific type of interests. They live, breathe, eat, and sleep football, usually they’ll enjoy other sports on the side.
Leach is an odd ball because he didn’t play football, he graduated with a degree in American Studies from BYU then went to Pepperdine Law.
Leach is a huge fan of…pirates. He does research on pirates, he reads history books about pirates, he collects historical artifacts relating to pirates. He tells his team stories about pirates and uses them as motivational tools.
In his off season, Leach likes to study something new every year.
Most college football coaches aren’t only “not” renaissance men, they’re essentially one-dimensional. So focused on one thing they barely have room to think or do anything else in their life. They certainly never talk about anything else, Leach is weird in that he’s not like that. (He isn’t the first coach to be like this, Woody Hayes was famous for having a heavy interest in foreign policy and military history, but it is highly atypical.) Even the coaches that are out there who might be more than one-dimensional football machines, most of them don’t talk about it.. They talk to the media about football, and football exclusively. Leach’s interviews are usually rambling and out of control.
There is a New York Times article that explains it all quite well: link.
Interesting quote from the NYT article:
He doesn’t have much of a filter between his mouth and brain either. See the “fat little girlfriends” comment, his various appearances on Lubbock area TV, his Friday Night Lights cameo.
Leach, Mangino and Weis all got fired this year and all 3 of them did not play college FB. There are only 3 other coaches who did not play in college - O’Leary at UCF, Johnson at GT, and Cutcliffe at Duke.
“Oddball” is the wrong word, but Mike Leach DEFINITELY does not fit the image of a typical Southern college football coach.
A Southern college football coach is expected to be a good ol’ boy, a man with a drawl, who wears a cowboy hat, chews tobacco, and invites alumni to big barbecues on his ranch, where he’ll keep them entertained with raunchy-but-folksy stories.
Mike Leach is NOT a good ol’ boy, in any way, shape or form. He’s not a backslapper or gladhander, he’s not an extrovert who likes to yuk it up with rich boosters, and he’s more a cerebral strategist than a locker room motivator.
The strangest thing about this scandal is, if Leach HAD been a typical, tough-talking, drawling Bear Bryant type, he could have abused players all he wanted, and the rich alumni would have been in his corner. It’s precisely because he’s NOT that kind of coach that his crimes got him fired so quickly.
Just wondering now… is there ANY Divison 1 college where Mike Leach could still be hired, and still be successful?
One thing we know: he CAN’T make it at a school where there’s a large, vocal, group of influential, football-mad alumni. He has NO schmoozing or PR skills at all.
So, is there a Division 1 school that’s never been a football power (a basketball school would be ideal), but is located in a region with a lot of football talent that the big boys might overlook?
Some WAC school might want him to help challenge Boise State.
He’s been Kentucky’s offensive coordinator before, and we don’t really want him back unless he’s going to keep Joker from dialing up a bubble screen on 3rd and 6.
Give him a year off, then any team who ends the 2010 season with less than 4 wins. The fact is, if the man can win games, he’ll get a spot.
