The B12 (XII) Forum, home of the 'Front Porch, y'all' at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

In his one season at OU, he recruited and coached Josh Heupel, and recruited Heisman Trophy winner Jason White and Rose Bowl MVP Nate Hybl.
He never established a dynasty-type program. He was too off-the-beaten-track to get hired at a blue-blood program, and defense was an afterthought to him. But his coaching tree is a deep and wide one, and his offensive philosophy will continue to impact football for a long time.

Agree.

I never wanted him specifically as a coach because I saw things like when Tech played OU, in 2007 I think, where they had the game won if they just ran the clock out, but they couldn't, because Leach.  They threw 3 straight incomplete passes and gave OU the ball back with enough time to tie the game up.  iirc, it worked out because OU didn't score, but that's not the point.  I just shook my head.  He literally couldn't stop calling passes.

However.

There are some very impressive offenses orchestrated by coaches who come off of that Hal Mumme/Leach coaching tree.  Guys who commit more to the run and don't ignore defense, but whose core principles are those Air Raid concepts he paved the way for.  

Like some blue-check said while remembering him....they run his stuff in the NFL now.  Definitely a great football mind.  

I guess there is a reason no air raid kind of team has won the NC ...  but they can elevate a team with mediocre talent to 9-3ish.

Tulsa World
Mike Leach didn’t set out to change college football, but that’s exactly what happened
Kevin Sherrington, The Dallas Morning News Dec 15, 2022 Updated 38 min ago

DALLAS — My first one-on-one with Mike Leach was over the phone, his preferred method of communication outside the bigger pulpit of press conferences. He liked the freedom, and, to his credit, he always called back. Almost to a fault. Like the time the Houston Chronicle’s Joseph Duarte waited all day on Leach before giving up and going to bed.

At 2 a.m., a ringing phone stirred Duarte from his slumber. Sure enough, it’s the Pirate, calling from a Lubbock drive-thru.

“Were you asleep?” he asked.

Leach didn’t just operate on a plane different from other coaches; he was on a level unoccupied by most humans in general. As is typical of such beings, he occasionally seemed unaware he’d trespassed any social norms. He followed where his inquisitive mind led him, no matter the consequences.

Halfway through that first call, for instance, he suddenly broke from a discussion about his Air Raid offense or Texas Tech’s opponent that week or something else keeping coaches awake all night to report a sandstorm boiling up outside his office window. You’d have thought Auntie Em’s farmhouse was pinned to the middle of it. He was so fascinated by the weather — and, interestingly enough, the over-analysis of it — that he once conned his way into doing Lubbock’s local weather report.

Most of his forecast went about how you’d expect for a guy who’d probably never seen a green screen in his life. But, in it, you learned just about everything you needed to know about the Pirate:

If they were playing a team that threw the ball half as much as the Red Raiders did, he liked the wind to whip at least 25 mph.

If you really want to know what it’s like out there, go see for yourself.

And appreciate what makes life different, even difficult.

“My favorite weather pattern,” he told viewers, “is when it rains mud.”

Most football coaches don’t do weather on the side. Most don’t believe the world is round. Or flat, for that matter. To most, it’s a prolate spheroid, and their lives revolve around it ceaselessly. Even remorselessly. In November 2016, Nick Saban, the king of coaches, announced that he didn’t even know a presidential election had just gone off until reporters brought it up. He didn’t seem embarrassed.

“We’re focused on other things here,” he said.

Leach focused on everything. Pirates, as the title of his book, “Swing Your Sword” suggests, but also gangsters, Native Americans, candy corn, honeymoons, politics, mascots, Shakespeare, tailgating, camping, anything that crossed his fertile mind. The eclectic reading material on his bedside table piled high. He considered himself a little bit of an expert on just about any topic. Which, of course, made him a little bit dangerous.

Over his 21 years as a head coach, Leach made us laugh a lot. Made us wince a little, too. He encroached upon the authority of athletic trainers at Tech by essentially mocking a diagnosed concussion of Adam James, leading to his unfortunate dismissal and a subsequent lawsuit against the university. The miracle was that after suing his former employer, he got hired at Washington State and Mississippi State anyway. His unvarnished candor — he started controversies in both Pullman, Wash., and Starkville, Miss., with inappropriate tweets — made him a risk too big for the likes of blueblood schools. A Tennessee athletic director once tried to hire him and got fired for his efforts.

The irony is that Josh Heupel, one of the quarterbacks Leach created out of thin air, led a revival in Knoxville this year.

Leach didn’t give his players and coaches an offense with the command to go out and change football at all three levels, even if that’s exactly what happened. As Sonny Dykes, a branch on Leach’s coaching tree, told ESPN the other day, the Pirate’s greatest gift to his charges was the courage to “be ourselves. ... That was the biggest lesson that I learned, that you can see the world differently and still be a successful college football coach.”

Dykes crashed the College Football Playoff in his first season at TCU. Lincoln Riley, another disciple, made it three times at Oklahoma and nearly pulled it off in his debut at USC. They’re Leach’s proud legacy, but they’re not knockoffs. No one could follow that act. Not if you wanted to be yourself or, more to the point, work at places where you could win big.

The Pirate never coached at a state’s flagship university. Never had the history or resources to go head-to-head, year-in, year-out.

On the other hand, he owns four of the 14 seasons in Washington State history in which it has won at least eight games. After an ugly start at Mississippi State, he improved to 7-6 and 8-4 this year.

And at Tech, he owns as many 8-win seasons as Matt Wells, Kliff Kingsbury, Tommy Tuberville, Spike Dykes, David McWilliams, Jerry Moore, Rex Dockery, Jim Carlen and Steve Sloan combined.

Frankly, I’m not sure he would have enjoyed working at a school where he would have had to mind his manners. Wasn’t in his constitution. He was, above all else, a character, and characters are messy.

They’re also in short supply in his field. The Pirate, gone too soon at 61, will be missed, particularly in pressboxes. His legacy goes on, lighting up scoreboards everywhere, though pressers will be dimmer. Late-night interviews won’t be the norm, either. He made up for waking Joseph Duarte with a fun interview. He knew our weakness for a good story. If he didn’t always exactly answer our questions, never were we so merrily led astray.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1603398665024020480

I remember this game well.  We were competing to win B2B B12 Championships, and then the wheels fell off in Norman.  The worst part was the 6, not the 51.  RC was a defense 1st team.  

Can somebody answer me if this was just a brand new thing that they perfected in this game, or had OU been running this all season?  Because I sorta remember that we just had no answer.  Texas kinda had the same thing in the Cotton Bowl where OU got up big, but then adjusted and ended up coming back and winning.  But I'm not sure if they added some new looks after that for A&M or if our coaches were just woefully unprepared. 

You can trace back A&M's post-90's unraveling to this one single game BTW.  

Top 5 Mike Leach moments during his time with OU football
Jenni Carlson
Oklahoman
Dec 13, 2022

Mike Leach left an indelible mark on the game of football.

Not just because of his Air Raid offense either.

The Mississippi State head coach and former OU offensive coordinator who died Monday night had a quirky personality rarely seen from major college football coaches. Most in his position played things close to the chest. Few jokes. No shenanigans.

Leach was the exact opposite.

He could turn a mundane press conference into must-see TV. A pedestrian question about the offensive line or the kicking game might suddenly spur a diatribe about pirates or Geronimo or grizzly bears.

Leach was unique.

Here are a few fun stories from his one season with the Sooners.


When Bob Stoops was hired at Oklahoma, he hired Mike Leach to run the Air Raid offense. It changed the fortunes of Sooner football — but it also did a number [on] football in the Big 12. [AP PHOTO]

Good times at the Residence Inn
Bob Stoops’ first coaching staff had to jump quickly into the work of building a program, and that meant few had a chance to buy houses or rent housing right away.

So, most of the coaches lived at a Residence Inn in Norman.

“One of our first staff meetings back in 1999, we were at the Residence Inn,” current OU head coach Brent Venables recalled earlier this year; he was co-defensive coordinator back then. “We had some good times at the Residence Inn.”

The coaches often gathered there because OU’s football facilities were being renovated and space was limited.

“Our first staff meeting here at Oklahoma … this was the first time Mike Leach and (Mark) Mangino were talking ‘ball,’” Venables said. “And you know, Leach, he’s a man of few words, and Coach Stoops is introducing everybody. He introduced Coach Mangino as the run game coordinator and co-offensive coordinator, and somehow, someway, we got on the ball plays. And one of the staples of Mark Mangino’s offense is to run the power, to block down and double and kick out and pull the guard around.

“The power was not in Mike Leach's offensive playbook. And so after Mangino tells him what he's going to practice and can't wait to put that in and out of a spread concept, you know, Leach is standing with his coffee and he says, 'You can practice it all you want, I'm not calling it in a game.’”

Venables laughed.

“That didn't go off very well,” he said. “But as y'all know, we ended up pretty good. One year later, we win the national championship.


Texas Tech head coach Mike Leach and Oklahoma head coach Bob Stoops, from left, talk before the 2006 game. Photo by Bryan Terry

Surprise at the Switzer Center

In those early days of the Stoops era, the coaches often stayed up all night calling recruits or planning strategy.

Once offices at the Switzer Center were ready, Leach and some of his offensive assistants bought air mattresses to sleep on once their late-night work was done.

“It was actually a pretty fun time,” Leach recalled a couple years ago.

Funny, too.

“The cleaning lady got there real early,” Leach said. “Like 6. Mine was the first office. I don’t know how she didn’t get this sorted. I should have had a do-not-disturb thing or whatever.

“All of a sudden, she’d open the door every day and scream. Every day. Every single day, there was somebody sprawled out on the air mattress there, and she’d say, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were here.’

“After about three days of that, I said, ‘You know, I’ll be here tomorrow.’ But it didn’t make any difference.”

Carpooling with Leach

Oklahoman columnist Berry Tramel did a big story on Leach’s law background during his lone season in Norman.

Leach agreed to do a photoshoot after practice one day.

“OU that day practiced at the intramural fields, about four blocks southeast of Owen Field,” Tramel wrote a year ago. “An Oklahoman photographer joined us to shoot the photos. Leach asked where we wanted to snap the picture. I told him the law-school angle, and he suggested the OU Law School. Said the mock courtroom probably would be open."

But then Leach said he’d walked to practice and that he’d just hop in with Tramel and the photographer.

“My mind started racing,” Tramel wrote. “The photographer had parked far off. I was driving my old Ford truck that was only a cab-and-a-half, with those facing seats in a cramped second row.”

Tramel gave his car keys to the photographer and told her she could drive and he’d climb in the back so Leach could ride in the passenger’s seat.

“We got to my truck, and before I could even organize things, Leach had the door open, the seat pushed forward and he was climbing in the back seat,” Tramel wrote.

“I remember thinking, this is the guy who is helping Bob Stoops turn around OU football, and I’ve got him eating his knees as he rides across campus to do a photo shoot for us.”

Mike Leach's Red River Rivalry scheme

Leach only coached once in the Red River Rivalry, but his impact on that 1999 game is the stuff of legend.

During pregame warm-ups, a Texas student assistant found a copy of OU’s script of opening offensive plays. The student assistant took it to the Texas defensive coordinator.

Texas was already a big favorite in the game, and the Longhorns thought they’d caught a big break before the game even started.

But the script was a fake.

Leach decided to drop the paper in hopes someone from the Texas side would find it and believe it. The Longhorns did — and the Sooners took a quick 17-0 lead.

Texas eventually recovered, winning 38-28.

“It was a decent effort,” Leach told ESPN.com in 2018. “But it would even be more legendary if we had won the sucker.”

How Mike Leach found Josh Heupel

When Leach arrived at OU, the Sooners didn’t have a quarterback capable of running the Air Raid offense he was bringing from Kentucky. He had to go and find one. He had to look all over the country.

His search led to tiny Ephraim, Utah.

That’s where Josh Heupel was playing for Snow Junior College. Leach convinced Heupel to come to Norman for an official visit, and the two holded up in Leach’s office watching game film.

“All the cuts of Kentucky, talking about what the quarterback does here, what that guy does, what this guy does, what the reads are, things of that nature,” Leach said back in 1999. “And I mean, through every play, one reel after another.”

They did that for seven hours.

“Usually (recruits) want to see girls and buildings and things like that,” Leach said.

Pretty sure that's just a fanpic of a concept helmet, but it would be cool to see it on the field.  It's not like MSU has a ton of history or tradition tied up in their current uni, they switch things up all the time.

I'll never forget the Ninja formation and how it freaked me out the first time I saw it.

Origin of the Ninja accoring to James Hale:


The great thing about the first Bob Stoops staff is that they were always out and about around town, and the most popular place for them was Othello’s on Campus Corner in Norman. As a reporter covering a college team living in town, I was always out and about at the best spots, and Othello’s was always a top choice. It was nothing for a couple of coaches to be there after games and throughout the week. Thursday was always a popular night, and usually, a few coaches would be there with their families. That didn’t stop them from telling me to pull up a chair, and the information and stories would be flying.
Those were great days as the coaches were young and footloose and free, and if they trusted you, they would talk to you just like you were one of them. Not like today, where coaches are all paranoid and never seem to come out of their houses.
One Thursday night, Coach Leach sits at the bar drinking a glass of wine. He chats up any student or fan that wants to come and say hi, and he is having a good time. He sees me and tells me to take a seat beside him.
I watched a few people come up to Coach Leach and tell him about a play they thought would be good for him. He would always tell them to draw up the play so he could figure out how to block for it. Sometimes that would spook the fan, and sometimes it wouldn’t, but it was always fun to watch fans try to draw up plays with Coach Leach asking them how he would block for this play against a three, four, or five-man front.
He would tell them if I can’t block for it, I can’t run it, and usually, the fans would walk away laughing because the Sooner offensive coordinator had given them the time of day.
A pretty blond sorority girl came up to Coach Leach and was one of the young ladies in college that could always grab the attention of any man, no matter the age of the men. So, she had Coach Leach’s and my attention, and she told the coach that she had a play that she thought he should run. She said it was somewhat of a trick play with Heupel at quarterback and Trent Smith at tight end that she thought there was no way a defensive could cover it. Coach Leach told her to draw it up.
The young woman then told us her dad was a high school football coach, and she had seen a million plays drawn up. Coach Leach asked about what his high school was, and when he heard where it was, he knew it was legit. She proceeded to draw up the play even with a defense on the other side. Coach Leach and her talked for about 30 minutes or more, and when she walked off, he told her he would probably run it Saturday.
I will be damned if Coach Leach did not put that play in his playbook, as that play became the ‘Ninja’ at OU. After the game, I remember somehow getting alone with Coach Leach and asking him if the formation was the play that the sorority girl had drawn for him, and he said that was the inspiration for him to put it in at OU. He told me that the formation had been used at other schools but that the young lady was so into drawing it up he tried to put it in just like she drew it up.