Texas Technique Is 8th In The Nation!

It's nice that Texas Technique has ascended to the heights of pigskin glory (however shortlived). Even better, is the fact that Texas Technique sits atop the Big XII Conference in graduating 79% of its football players. That's the real measure of a top-notch football program.

2008 BCS Football Program Graduation Rates
1. Notre Dame 94%
2. Stanford 93
T3. BC 92
T3. Duke 92
T3. Northwestern 92
6. Vanderbilt 91
7. Wake Forest 83
8. Texas Tech 79

In addition to leading the Big XII in football graduation rates — after the BIG win over the Texas Longhorns — Coach Bleach was quoting the same Winston Churchill witty insult that appeared earlier in this blog. Wits of a feather babble together. If this is (fair & balanced) alumni pride, so be it.

[x NY Fishwrap]
A Coach With More Than Football On His Mind
By Thayer Evans

After his Texas Tech football team scored the biggest victory in its history, knocking off No. 1 Texas on Saturday night, Coach Mike Leach stood in a narrow hallway under the stadium with a cup of coffee.

Instead of talking about Michael Crabtree’s last-second touchdown in the Red Raiders’ 39-33 victory or their place in the Bowl Championship Series standings, Leach, who was reading The Wicked Wit of Winston Churchill, began quoting Churchill.

Asked about the book, Leach enthusiastically recited an exchange between Churchill and Nancy Astor, the first woman to sit in the English House of Commons. “She says, ‘If you were my husband, I’d poison your tea,’ ” Leach said. “He says, ‘And if you were my wife, I would drink it.’ ”

The moment will go down as classic Leach, another chapter in the odd journey that has taken him from law school to the football hinterlands to the top of the college football world.

How do you quote Churchill after a big win? It’s vintage Leachy, as his friends know him. How do you turn a college team with little recruiting base and limited resources into a national power? It’s vintage Leachy.

“That’s Mike,” Brent Venables, who is the Oklahoma defensive coordinator and was on the Sooners’ staff with Leach, said in a telephone interview. “He’s got a lot of thoughts. He’s got a lot on his mind. He’s a multitasker to say the least. He’s a multiconversationalist.”

Kansas Coach Mark Mangino, who was an Oklahoma assistant with Leach, said of him in a telephone interview: “Here’s a guy that can talk to you about the European Union and Howard Stern in one conversation. He’s that diverse.”

Leach is hardly a typical football coach, yet he has become the face of college football this week, a mind-boggling development considering the lack of money, success and local talent at this remote West Texas college. He is 74-37 in his nine years at Texas Tech, and he has secured the Red Raiders’ ninth consecutive bowl berth; by comparison, they were 58-46 in the nine seasons before he came.

Leach is one of only four Football Bowl Subdivision coaches who did not play college football. He did, however, graduate in the top third of his class at the Pepperdine University School of Law at 25 before deciding to start coaching.

Behind Leach’s innovative aerial-assault spread offense, which ranks first in the F.B.S. in passing at 424.56 yards a game, Texas Tech (9-0, 5-0 Big 12) is ranked second in the Bowl Championship standings and is in the thick of the national championship race. The Red Raiders are also off to their first 9-0 start since 1938.

And with just two years remaining on his contract, Leach, 47, could well be one of the most sought-after candidates for coaching jobs at places like Clemson and Washington. He is earning $1.75 million this year, which does not put him among the five highest-paid coaches in the Big 12.

“Whatever he gets, he deserves,” Mangino said. “He deserves a big pay raise. He’s done a fantastic job.”

Raised in Cody, Wyo., Leach took an unconventional path to the top levels of college football. He graduated from Brigham Young and earned a master’s degree at the United States Sports Academy, which prepares students for careers in sports. Then, when Leach attended law school at Pepperdine, a classmate said he diagrammed football plays in his constitutional law class, said Ronald F. Phillips, Pepperdine’s vice chancellor and the law school’s dean emeritus.

“In Mike’s case that seemed to have been maybe the right thing to do,” Phillips said in a telephone interview. “Although for others, I don’t really recommend it at all.”

After his decision to become a football coach, much to the chagrin of his in-laws, Leach bounced around. He coached at California Poly-San Luis Obispo, where he began his career as an assistant; College of the Desert; Iowa Wesleyan; Valdosta State; and even in Finland before becoming the offensive coordinator at Kentucky in 1997.

After being hired as assistants at Oklahoma by Coach Bob Stoops before the 1999 season, Leach and Mangino briefly lived in a hotel in Norman. Mangino recalled that Leach often entertained him by telling stories until the early hours of the morning.

Leach talked in great detail about the Indian warrior Geronimo and his place in history, Mangino said.

“It’s interesting because most football coaches when they’re hanging out, they’re talking about football,” Mangino said. “But Mike was an interesting guy. You’d just like to listen to him talk and tell stories.”

While Leach was at Oklahoma, Venables had to walk by his office to leave. That inevitably led to late-night conversations with Leach.

“He’d always want to stop you and talk to you,” Venables said. “Of course, you don’t want to be rude. The next thing you know, it’s 11:30 p.m. and you’d have already been in bed for 45 minutes, but he wants to talk about the most off-the-wall things ever.”

During those talks, Leach was often watching episodes of Howard Stern’s radio show on television, Venables said. “He thought Howard Stern was an interesting guy,” Venables said.

Leach is fascinating for more than conversation. While recruiting for Oklahoma in California, he once called Stoops to inform him of a mishap he had while in-line skating on a boardwalk, Venables said.

“He’d crashed and burned and hurt himself,” Venables said. “That was a hard one to explain to the boss.”

But with Leach in charge, it all seems to make sense, especially this season. Even after a monumental last-second victory when he is reciting Churchill’s description of the former French president Charles de Gaulle as “a female llama who has been surprised in the bath.”

“Which he does kind of, if you put all that together and think about it,” Leach said.

And it kind of makes sense, just like Leach’s turning Texas Tech into a national power.

[Thayer Evans covers sports in the Southwest for The New York Times Houston Bureau.]

Copyright © 2008 The New York Times Company

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