somebodyshotmypaw
02-20-2023, 02:48 PM
Steve Spurrier Jr., Washington State and Mississippi State assistant: Every time I sat next to him it was a story.
Eric Mele, Washington State and Mississippi State assistant: I don?t even know where to begin.
Spurrier: This year, we had a late night. He?s got to go to the bathroom, so he gets up and leaves. We?re in there for 15 or 20 minutes, just standing there. We went by his office door and his door was shut ? and he was doing Cameos!
Luke Falk, Washington State quarterback: We?re playing UCLA. I ask him: ?Hey, Coach, what do you want here?? We had 1:17 left and were down by three. He goes: ?Ummm. Probably a touchdown.?
James Whalen, Kentucky receiver: I made a mistake (in a game). He came up to me and was getting after me pretty good. I said something to the effect of, ?Rome wasn?t built in a day.? He looked at me and his eyes got big and, boy, he got pissed. And he said: ?If we were in Rome, I?d feed you to the f?? lions.?
Graham Harrell, Texas Tech quarterback: My first encounter with him, I flew to Lubbock. I was excited to get out there and I figured he?d show me stuff about the offense. They only gave me 10 minutes with him ? and he did two magic tricks.
Spurrier: Things you?ve never seen before and things you?ll never see again.
Jamal Morrow, Washington State running back: He definitely left the world a better place with all of his stories.
McGuire: He was one of a kind now.
Morrow: One of one, man.
Robert Taylor, Washington State defensive back: An absolute legend.
Falk: I?ll say this: There was nobody better in crunch time.
Connor Halliday, Washington State quarterback: We got the ball with a minute left and were down seven. Our offensive line was so young. Right before we took the field for that drive, I was talking to the O-line. I was like, ?You guys just give me that extra second and we?re going to win this game. I love you guys.? Leach is standing right there and goes: ?I?ll love you a lot f?? more if you score.?
Dave Emerick, Washington State and Mississippi State chief of staff: No moment was too big.
Harrell: The Texas game in 2008, the game that his whole Texas Tech era gets remembered for. We were winning the whole game and they scored late to take a one-point lead. We get the ball with a minute and a half left. Right before he sends me out he?s like: ?Hey, if we score, we win.? And that was the end of it.
Falk: We?re playing Oregon my senior year. We?re up by like 17. I?m checking runs and short, quick-game passes at the end, trying to run the clock out. We end up kicking a field goal with two minutes left to really seal the deal. I go to the sideline and he was so displeased with me that I wasn?t being aggressive and trying to score a touchdown. He was like: ?What are you, just uh, uh, uh, a career bunter??
Seth Doege, Texas Tech quarterback: ?Oh, you?re just going to bunt all the way down the field??
Falk: ?You don?t like touchdowns? Are you allergic to touchdowns??
Clay McGuire, Texas Tech and Washington State assistant: That was the thing: No matter what, you had to be a really mentally tough person to play for him.
Isaac Dotson, Washington State safety: We were in crunch time. (Defensive coordinator Alex) Grinch called a timeout so we could strategize and game plan, so the whole defense is huddled up right off the sideline. We?re trying to hear what Coach Grinch has to say. He?s in there with a whiteboard, trying to tell us what we?re going to run. Then here comes Coach Leach.
Taylor: He barges through, and it?s taking him forever.
Dotson: We?re really pressed for time, and it takes him like 20 seconds to get all the way to the middle. He goes: ?All right, listen, listen. Everybody listen up.?
Taylor: We were expecting him to say something big.
Dotson: He goes, ?Don?t let them get a first down.? And then he walks away.
Drew Hollingshead, Washington State and Mississippi State assistant: God, he had a really unique way of not making those situations bigger than they were.
Spurrier: My first meeting with the quarterbacks, I asked, ?When y?all met with Coach Leach, what did y?all talk about?? They all just kind of looked at me.
Will Rogers, Mississippi State quarterback: Well, they would start at a different time every day. So they would start whenever Coach got there, which was between 30 minutes and an hour and 30 minutes after they were scheduled. And then as soon as he got there you didn?t know if he was going to talk about football, the military, what we?d been doing all day, what he?d been doing all day, what the food was like today, what kind of sunglasses he?s got on.
Doege: No coach in the country would show up late to his own practice.
Falk: We were late for practice 30 minutes at a time.
John Cohen, Mississippi State athletic director: Finally one day I said, ?Mike, when you go through your drills, I?m going to trail you, and I want you to go through every drill, and I want to know the idea behind all of it, and I want to know everything about the offense.? He really broke down every part of the offense and every route and what it was intended to do and what the quarterback was supposed to do and how important it was for him to give confidence to his quarterbacks. There was real genius there.
Doege: He would call me in on a one-on-one meeting, and my mind would be all over the place. I?d walk out of the meeting thinking I was the best quarterback in the country and this is the most simple game. How could I ever make it complex?
Spurrier: He was always really consistent in who he was and what his message was.
Emerick: If a guy was struggling with his accuracy, his coaching point would be: ?Point your dick to the target.?
McGuire: Simple as that.
Bob Stoops, Oklahoma coach: He?d tell the quarterback: ?Here are your reads. One, two, three, four.? He didn?t care what the defense did or whether the coverage dictated that this guy shouldn?t be open. He?d go, ?Listen, half the time they screw it up. If he?s open, throw it to him.?
Mele: He just made it so simple.
Rogers: Coach would always be like, ?Just throw it to the f?? open guy.?
Doege: He would put one hand over his eye and he?d have his script in the other hand. He?d ask, ?What play should I call?? and move his finger in a circle over the script. He?d uncover his eye and put his finger on a play and go, ?Oh, Ace 95. Great f?? play.? Then he?d do it again and his finger would get on another play. ?Oh, Ace 92. Great f?? play.?
Halliday: A lot of quarterbacks struggle with the way he wants you to call the game. When you?re running his offense the way it?s supposed to be run, when you get up to the line of scrimmage, you have complete autonomy. His thought process is: ?You?re standing there right in front of the defense. You see it better than I do.?
McGuire: The brilliance and the genius of Leach.
Halliday: It was the first week of spring practice. Leach was yelling at me for a bad check or something. I finally got so pissed off that I basically said ?f? it? and called all my own plays. I didn?t even look to the sideline to let him even signal a play in, thinking I?m being demonstrative. That next day, we watched the film. I?m thinking I?m going to get my ass chewed out. Was it really worth it? We sat down and he said: ?Connor, that?s all I?ve wanted you to do since I got here. This is what I want. You run the f?? show. This was the best practice you?ve ever had. I?m so proud of you.?
Rogers: We?re trying to put the game away. We get down to the red zone and we were on the sideline. ? I was 19 or 20 years old at the time, playing the 15th-ranked team in the country. ? He gives me a play and is like, ?Do you want to run this?? I was like, ?No, I want Blue 92 Post Wheel.? You could tell he just didn?t want to run that play at that time. ? He was like, ?Just call a play that scores a touchdown? and turned and walked away.
Whalen: That cross between crazy and genius and you don?t quite know where that line is.
Doege: Taylor Potts was the starting quarterback. At the time, Potts started off hot and then he got in a little slump. He wasn?t pulling the trigger like Leach wanted him to. He was a little indecisive on reads and stuff. So Leach changed his name to Nick.
Kevin Kilmer, Texas Tech graduate assistant: Leach had convinced himself ? and convinced Potts ? that Potts had an alter ego.
Taylor Potts, Texas Tech quarterback: We played Kansas at home. I think Doege started, and I went in at the end and we won. We drove all the way down the field and scored in the south end zone right there in front of the student section. All the way on that drive there was just check after check after check. ? We marched right down. I came off the field and Mike grabbed me kind of like on the back of the neck. And he said something to the effect of: ?Listen, you?re playing clear-headed, you?re playing fast, you?re playing confident, you?re playing just like Nick.?
Doege: What he said was, ?Taylor is indecisive. Taylor overthinks things. Taylor doesn?t pull the trigger. But Nick! Nick has a free mind. Nick goes through his reads. Nick pulls the trigger.?
Zane Perry, Texas Tech equipment manager: It was the night before a game. He calls me and says: ?Hey, I want you to put Nick on the back of Taylor Potts? jersey.? I was like: ?Coach, I can?t change his name plate the night before a game.? He was like: ?I don?t care. Write it in Sharpie.?
Doege: Nick is literally on the back of Taylor?s jersey.
Perry: The following Sunday, Coach said, ?I want to make sure you change all his jerseys from now on. Just have Nick. This is Nick Potts now.?
Kilmer: Potts beat Oklahoma when they were like No. 10 in the country with Nick on the back of his jersey.
Harrell: That was the magic behind his madness.
Stoops: As eccentric and different as he might have been, it still got back to: He was a great coach, and he got the best out of his guys.
Jesse Hallford, Washington State video coordinator: We?re playing at UCLA and we pull up to the hotel in LA and there are a ton of trucks, white trailers. We find out they?re shooting the TV show ?The Grinder? with Rob Lowe at the hotel.
Falk: The night before a game we always had some video that Leach picked out.
Hallford: This was about Vikings. We had these big old speakers in the room and it was nice and loud.
Hollingshead: Well, one of the showrunners from the show next door runs into the room.
Hallford: He goes, ?Hey, man, I?m a production assistant. I work for ?The Grinder? with Rob Lowe. Can you turn the music down? We?re shooting a TV show next door.? I go, ?I don?t care who you?re working with, I?m not touching this thing.? I think nothing of it.
Mele: We go into the Rose Bowl the next day and win.
Hallford: Coach Leach got everyone together after the game and was talking about how great they had played and it was a team win. He proceeds to go, ?We watched that video about Vikings. Well, let me tell you a story about that real quick. We?re watching this video and all of a sudden some little guy comes up to Game Plan? ? that was my nickname ? ?and taps on Game Plan?s shoulder and says, ?Hey, we?re shooting ?The Grinder? with Rob Lowe. We need you to shut the video off.? And Game Plan said something to the effect of, ?I don?t give a rat?s flying tail about Rob Lowe.??
Falk: ?Tell Rob Lowe we don?t give a f?.?
Hallford: Yeah, that?s exactly what he said.
Harrell: Leach loved Game Plan even more because of it. Anytime he would talk about Game Plan, he would be like: ?Yeah, he?s the guy that doesn?t care about Rob Lowe and his shows.?
Hallford: I got a game ball for it.
Rogers: This one week it was Ed Reed. We watch this highlight video and he goes on this whole rant about how Ed Reed was the best safety to ever play.
Mele: We?re watching an Ed Reed clip about three minutes long, and he liked it so much he played it back a second time.
Rogers: He goes back on another spiel and then he?s like, ?Start it over and really pay attention to the dialogue this time.? So I think we spent a total of 30 or 45 minutes watching the same clips of Ed Reed.
Mele: We win the game the next day and Leach sends the game ball to Ed Reed.
Chance Lovertich, Mississippi State quarterback: We lost to Bama. He was hard on saying to us that we just weren?t confident and we just had to believe in ourselves.
Mele: He started to mention to our guys about ?The Little Engine That Could.?
Rogers: Oh, my gosh.
Mele: He goes out and actually reads the book to them in the team meeting the next day about ?I think I can, I think I can.?
Lovertich: Just being dead serious.
Hollingshead: He was uniquely himself when it came to game planning.
Mele: My first day on the job, we?re there in the war room, just me and him, buzzing through film. You can?t make this up. The whole wall is a whiteboard. So we?ve got a famous play ? 92 ? a mesh play. ?We attack this guy, we motion this guy.? Next to that we?ve got Vikings ? different clans, where they resided. And then it was Y Cross, another famous play. ?We want to tag a post on it.? ? Next to that, he?s picking my brain. I?m from the Northeast, so it?s mafia bosses. And the next one is another play and then it?s pizza spots across the country.
Harrell: Everything about him was different from what you?d expect from a football coach.
Mark Mangino, Oklahoma assistant: On Sunday night, you start to watch your opponents and break down stuff. I?d walk down the hall past Mike?s office. He?s eating beef jerky and watching a show on TV.
Stoops: The way he ran his offense, the beauty of it, he didn?t care what the defense did. So he didn?t have to watch a lot of film or game plan over and over.
Whalen: One day after practice we went in and we watched the film. We sit down in the meeting room. He has the first play and he goes probably two or three seconds and then he backs it up.
Hal Mumme, Kentucky coach: James is sitting there trying to take notes and write down everything he says.
Whalen: He starts talking about a movie. It was with Nick Nolte when he says, ?There?s a new sheriff in town? ? ?48 Hours.? So he goes, ?You know, I watched a movie last night.? He let the play go and then he backed it up and he kept talking about the movie. He?d let the play go and then he?d back it up. We soon realized after an hour we never made it through the first play.
Spurrier: I?ll never forget our first offensive meeting at OU. It?s me, Mark Mangino, Jonathan Hayes, Cale Gundy and Mike Leach getting ready for spring football. Cale Gundy is kind of a Type A. He?s got his pencils lined up, he wants notes, he?s all ready to go. He goes: ?Coach Leach, do you have a playbook?? He goes: ?No.? Cale goes: ?Do you have anything written down that you?re going to give us?? He goes: ?No.?
Stoops: He had it all in his head.
Mangino: He was not conventional. He grew up in Cody, Wyo., right there by Yellowstone. He went to BYU. He got a law degree from Pepperdine. He had a different path than a lot of coaches.
Stoops: Steve Spurrier was with him, and he said, ?Mike, they?re in 2-man.? He goes, ?What the bleep is 2-man??
Hollingshead: All that stuff never mattered.
Mangino: One of the coaches one day said, ?Hey, Mike, do we really want to throw that against 3-roll coverage?? And Mike said, ?What?s 3-roll??
Hollingshead: He didn?t want all the different scenarios. He would be like: ?I don?t care about any of that sh?. What if the safety does this? What if the corner does this?? He would always say: ?Well, what if the cheerleader went to the 50-yard line and took a sh???
Stoops: The guy has won everywhere he has been. You can?t argue with his methods.
Harrell: Everything was different. But it was always a fun, good time.
McGuire: He was the most consistent person I?ve ever been around in my life.
Falk: Papa Leach.
Emerick: He did things his way. That?s one thing you can say about Mike Leach. Unequivocally, he did things his way and had a ton of success doing it. But it was different than anyone in the sport has ever done.
Eric Mele, Washington State and Mississippi State assistant: I don?t even know where to begin.
Spurrier: This year, we had a late night. He?s got to go to the bathroom, so he gets up and leaves. We?re in there for 15 or 20 minutes, just standing there. We went by his office door and his door was shut ? and he was doing Cameos!
Luke Falk, Washington State quarterback: We?re playing UCLA. I ask him: ?Hey, Coach, what do you want here?? We had 1:17 left and were down by three. He goes: ?Ummm. Probably a touchdown.?
James Whalen, Kentucky receiver: I made a mistake (in a game). He came up to me and was getting after me pretty good. I said something to the effect of, ?Rome wasn?t built in a day.? He looked at me and his eyes got big and, boy, he got pissed. And he said: ?If we were in Rome, I?d feed you to the f?? lions.?
Graham Harrell, Texas Tech quarterback: My first encounter with him, I flew to Lubbock. I was excited to get out there and I figured he?d show me stuff about the offense. They only gave me 10 minutes with him ? and he did two magic tricks.
Spurrier: Things you?ve never seen before and things you?ll never see again.
Jamal Morrow, Washington State running back: He definitely left the world a better place with all of his stories.
McGuire: He was one of a kind now.
Morrow: One of one, man.
Robert Taylor, Washington State defensive back: An absolute legend.
Falk: I?ll say this: There was nobody better in crunch time.
Connor Halliday, Washington State quarterback: We got the ball with a minute left and were down seven. Our offensive line was so young. Right before we took the field for that drive, I was talking to the O-line. I was like, ?You guys just give me that extra second and we?re going to win this game. I love you guys.? Leach is standing right there and goes: ?I?ll love you a lot f?? more if you score.?
Dave Emerick, Washington State and Mississippi State chief of staff: No moment was too big.
Harrell: The Texas game in 2008, the game that his whole Texas Tech era gets remembered for. We were winning the whole game and they scored late to take a one-point lead. We get the ball with a minute and a half left. Right before he sends me out he?s like: ?Hey, if we score, we win.? And that was the end of it.
Falk: We?re playing Oregon my senior year. We?re up by like 17. I?m checking runs and short, quick-game passes at the end, trying to run the clock out. We end up kicking a field goal with two minutes left to really seal the deal. I go to the sideline and he was so displeased with me that I wasn?t being aggressive and trying to score a touchdown. He was like: ?What are you, just uh, uh, uh, a career bunter??
Seth Doege, Texas Tech quarterback: ?Oh, you?re just going to bunt all the way down the field??
Falk: ?You don?t like touchdowns? Are you allergic to touchdowns??
Clay McGuire, Texas Tech and Washington State assistant: That was the thing: No matter what, you had to be a really mentally tough person to play for him.
Isaac Dotson, Washington State safety: We were in crunch time. (Defensive coordinator Alex) Grinch called a timeout so we could strategize and game plan, so the whole defense is huddled up right off the sideline. We?re trying to hear what Coach Grinch has to say. He?s in there with a whiteboard, trying to tell us what we?re going to run. Then here comes Coach Leach.
Taylor: He barges through, and it?s taking him forever.
Dotson: We?re really pressed for time, and it takes him like 20 seconds to get all the way to the middle. He goes: ?All right, listen, listen. Everybody listen up.?
Taylor: We were expecting him to say something big.
Dotson: He goes, ?Don?t let them get a first down.? And then he walks away.
Drew Hollingshead, Washington State and Mississippi State assistant: God, he had a really unique way of not making those situations bigger than they were.
Spurrier: My first meeting with the quarterbacks, I asked, ?When y?all met with Coach Leach, what did y?all talk about?? They all just kind of looked at me.
Will Rogers, Mississippi State quarterback: Well, they would start at a different time every day. So they would start whenever Coach got there, which was between 30 minutes and an hour and 30 minutes after they were scheduled. And then as soon as he got there you didn?t know if he was going to talk about football, the military, what we?d been doing all day, what he?d been doing all day, what the food was like today, what kind of sunglasses he?s got on.
Doege: No coach in the country would show up late to his own practice.
Falk: We were late for practice 30 minutes at a time.
John Cohen, Mississippi State athletic director: Finally one day I said, ?Mike, when you go through your drills, I?m going to trail you, and I want you to go through every drill, and I want to know the idea behind all of it, and I want to know everything about the offense.? He really broke down every part of the offense and every route and what it was intended to do and what the quarterback was supposed to do and how important it was for him to give confidence to his quarterbacks. There was real genius there.
Doege: He would call me in on a one-on-one meeting, and my mind would be all over the place. I?d walk out of the meeting thinking I was the best quarterback in the country and this is the most simple game. How could I ever make it complex?
Spurrier: He was always really consistent in who he was and what his message was.
Emerick: If a guy was struggling with his accuracy, his coaching point would be: ?Point your dick to the target.?
McGuire: Simple as that.
Bob Stoops, Oklahoma coach: He?d tell the quarterback: ?Here are your reads. One, two, three, four.? He didn?t care what the defense did or whether the coverage dictated that this guy shouldn?t be open. He?d go, ?Listen, half the time they screw it up. If he?s open, throw it to him.?
Mele: He just made it so simple.
Rogers: Coach would always be like, ?Just throw it to the f?? open guy.?
Doege: He would put one hand over his eye and he?d have his script in the other hand. He?d ask, ?What play should I call?? and move his finger in a circle over the script. He?d uncover his eye and put his finger on a play and go, ?Oh, Ace 95. Great f?? play.? Then he?d do it again and his finger would get on another play. ?Oh, Ace 92. Great f?? play.?
Halliday: A lot of quarterbacks struggle with the way he wants you to call the game. When you?re running his offense the way it?s supposed to be run, when you get up to the line of scrimmage, you have complete autonomy. His thought process is: ?You?re standing there right in front of the defense. You see it better than I do.?
McGuire: The brilliance and the genius of Leach.
Halliday: It was the first week of spring practice. Leach was yelling at me for a bad check or something. I finally got so pissed off that I basically said ?f? it? and called all my own plays. I didn?t even look to the sideline to let him even signal a play in, thinking I?m being demonstrative. That next day, we watched the film. I?m thinking I?m going to get my ass chewed out. Was it really worth it? We sat down and he said: ?Connor, that?s all I?ve wanted you to do since I got here. This is what I want. You run the f?? show. This was the best practice you?ve ever had. I?m so proud of you.?
Rogers: We?re trying to put the game away. We get down to the red zone and we were on the sideline. ? I was 19 or 20 years old at the time, playing the 15th-ranked team in the country. ? He gives me a play and is like, ?Do you want to run this?? I was like, ?No, I want Blue 92 Post Wheel.? You could tell he just didn?t want to run that play at that time. ? He was like, ?Just call a play that scores a touchdown? and turned and walked away.
Whalen: That cross between crazy and genius and you don?t quite know where that line is.
Doege: Taylor Potts was the starting quarterback. At the time, Potts started off hot and then he got in a little slump. He wasn?t pulling the trigger like Leach wanted him to. He was a little indecisive on reads and stuff. So Leach changed his name to Nick.
Kevin Kilmer, Texas Tech graduate assistant: Leach had convinced himself ? and convinced Potts ? that Potts had an alter ego.
Taylor Potts, Texas Tech quarterback: We played Kansas at home. I think Doege started, and I went in at the end and we won. We drove all the way down the field and scored in the south end zone right there in front of the student section. All the way on that drive there was just check after check after check. ? We marched right down. I came off the field and Mike grabbed me kind of like on the back of the neck. And he said something to the effect of: ?Listen, you?re playing clear-headed, you?re playing fast, you?re playing confident, you?re playing just like Nick.?
Doege: What he said was, ?Taylor is indecisive. Taylor overthinks things. Taylor doesn?t pull the trigger. But Nick! Nick has a free mind. Nick goes through his reads. Nick pulls the trigger.?
Zane Perry, Texas Tech equipment manager: It was the night before a game. He calls me and says: ?Hey, I want you to put Nick on the back of Taylor Potts? jersey.? I was like: ?Coach, I can?t change his name plate the night before a game.? He was like: ?I don?t care. Write it in Sharpie.?
Doege: Nick is literally on the back of Taylor?s jersey.
Perry: The following Sunday, Coach said, ?I want to make sure you change all his jerseys from now on. Just have Nick. This is Nick Potts now.?
Kilmer: Potts beat Oklahoma when they were like No. 10 in the country with Nick on the back of his jersey.
Harrell: That was the magic behind his madness.
Stoops: As eccentric and different as he might have been, it still got back to: He was a great coach, and he got the best out of his guys.
Jesse Hallford, Washington State video coordinator: We?re playing at UCLA and we pull up to the hotel in LA and there are a ton of trucks, white trailers. We find out they?re shooting the TV show ?The Grinder? with Rob Lowe at the hotel.
Falk: The night before a game we always had some video that Leach picked out.
Hallford: This was about Vikings. We had these big old speakers in the room and it was nice and loud.
Hollingshead: Well, one of the showrunners from the show next door runs into the room.
Hallford: He goes, ?Hey, man, I?m a production assistant. I work for ?The Grinder? with Rob Lowe. Can you turn the music down? We?re shooting a TV show next door.? I go, ?I don?t care who you?re working with, I?m not touching this thing.? I think nothing of it.
Mele: We go into the Rose Bowl the next day and win.
Hallford: Coach Leach got everyone together after the game and was talking about how great they had played and it was a team win. He proceeds to go, ?We watched that video about Vikings. Well, let me tell you a story about that real quick. We?re watching this video and all of a sudden some little guy comes up to Game Plan? ? that was my nickname ? ?and taps on Game Plan?s shoulder and says, ?Hey, we?re shooting ?The Grinder? with Rob Lowe. We need you to shut the video off.? And Game Plan said something to the effect of, ?I don?t give a rat?s flying tail about Rob Lowe.??
Falk: ?Tell Rob Lowe we don?t give a f?.?
Hallford: Yeah, that?s exactly what he said.
Harrell: Leach loved Game Plan even more because of it. Anytime he would talk about Game Plan, he would be like: ?Yeah, he?s the guy that doesn?t care about Rob Lowe and his shows.?
Hallford: I got a game ball for it.
Rogers: This one week it was Ed Reed. We watch this highlight video and he goes on this whole rant about how Ed Reed was the best safety to ever play.
Mele: We?re watching an Ed Reed clip about three minutes long, and he liked it so much he played it back a second time.
Rogers: He goes back on another spiel and then he?s like, ?Start it over and really pay attention to the dialogue this time.? So I think we spent a total of 30 or 45 minutes watching the same clips of Ed Reed.
Mele: We win the game the next day and Leach sends the game ball to Ed Reed.
Chance Lovertich, Mississippi State quarterback: We lost to Bama. He was hard on saying to us that we just weren?t confident and we just had to believe in ourselves.
Mele: He started to mention to our guys about ?The Little Engine That Could.?
Rogers: Oh, my gosh.
Mele: He goes out and actually reads the book to them in the team meeting the next day about ?I think I can, I think I can.?
Lovertich: Just being dead serious.
Hollingshead: He was uniquely himself when it came to game planning.
Mele: My first day on the job, we?re there in the war room, just me and him, buzzing through film. You can?t make this up. The whole wall is a whiteboard. So we?ve got a famous play ? 92 ? a mesh play. ?We attack this guy, we motion this guy.? Next to that we?ve got Vikings ? different clans, where they resided. And then it was Y Cross, another famous play. ?We want to tag a post on it.? ? Next to that, he?s picking my brain. I?m from the Northeast, so it?s mafia bosses. And the next one is another play and then it?s pizza spots across the country.
Harrell: Everything about him was different from what you?d expect from a football coach.
Mark Mangino, Oklahoma assistant: On Sunday night, you start to watch your opponents and break down stuff. I?d walk down the hall past Mike?s office. He?s eating beef jerky and watching a show on TV.
Stoops: The way he ran his offense, the beauty of it, he didn?t care what the defense did. So he didn?t have to watch a lot of film or game plan over and over.
Whalen: One day after practice we went in and we watched the film. We sit down in the meeting room. He has the first play and he goes probably two or three seconds and then he backs it up.
Hal Mumme, Kentucky coach: James is sitting there trying to take notes and write down everything he says.
Whalen: He starts talking about a movie. It was with Nick Nolte when he says, ?There?s a new sheriff in town? ? ?48 Hours.? So he goes, ?You know, I watched a movie last night.? He let the play go and then he backed it up and he kept talking about the movie. He?d let the play go and then he?d back it up. We soon realized after an hour we never made it through the first play.
Spurrier: I?ll never forget our first offensive meeting at OU. It?s me, Mark Mangino, Jonathan Hayes, Cale Gundy and Mike Leach getting ready for spring football. Cale Gundy is kind of a Type A. He?s got his pencils lined up, he wants notes, he?s all ready to go. He goes: ?Coach Leach, do you have a playbook?? He goes: ?No.? Cale goes: ?Do you have anything written down that you?re going to give us?? He goes: ?No.?
Stoops: He had it all in his head.
Mangino: He was not conventional. He grew up in Cody, Wyo., right there by Yellowstone. He went to BYU. He got a law degree from Pepperdine. He had a different path than a lot of coaches.
Stoops: Steve Spurrier was with him, and he said, ?Mike, they?re in 2-man.? He goes, ?What the bleep is 2-man??
Hollingshead: All that stuff never mattered.
Mangino: One of the coaches one day said, ?Hey, Mike, do we really want to throw that against 3-roll coverage?? And Mike said, ?What?s 3-roll??
Hollingshead: He didn?t want all the different scenarios. He would be like: ?I don?t care about any of that sh?. What if the safety does this? What if the corner does this?? He would always say: ?Well, what if the cheerleader went to the 50-yard line and took a sh???
Stoops: The guy has won everywhere he has been. You can?t argue with his methods.
Harrell: Everything was different. But it was always a fun, good time.
McGuire: He was the most consistent person I?ve ever been around in my life.
Falk: Papa Leach.
Emerick: He did things his way. That?s one thing you can say about Mike Leach. Unequivocally, he did things his way and had a ton of success doing it. But it was different than anyone in the sport has ever done.