From Stuart Mandel's mailbag blog:
Mike Leach has done some incredible coaching at Texas Tech and Washington State. Where does he rank on your list of current coaches? What do you think the odds are Tennessee, Ole Miss or LSU calls him this offseason? I’d love to see him and his system in the SEC!
Robert, El Paso
So would I. At Florida.
Doug Fletcher, Orlando
Raise your hand if you’re an SEC fan who’s
not pining for a more exciting coach right now.
I’d put Leach somewhere in my top 20 — likely closer to 15 than 10. His offensive track record speaks for itself, but I’ve been very impressed with the staff decisions he’s made since he’s been in Pullman. DC Alex Grinch has worked wonders developing that unit into a top 15 national defense. Grinch was an unheralded 34-year-old safeties coach at Missouri when Leach hired him in 2015 to turn around a defense that ranked 99th nationally the year before.
The 6-0 Cougars sure look to be Leach’s best team since his 2008 Texas Tech squad that finished 11-2. If they reach that territory I’d likely move him further up my list.
But does that mean an SEC school will come calling? That’s going to depend on how willing the president and AD are to take on all the unorthodox elements of Leach’s unique personality. It’s worked out nicely for Leach that he’s thus far coached in two remote places with very little media scrutiny. He’s free to go on a 10-minute rant about the need for a 64-team playoff, as he did this week, or blame a loss on players listening too much to their “fat little girlfriends,” as he once did at Texas Tech, without eliciting a week of Paul Finebaum callers.
Unorthodox has not generally played well in the SEC, save for one notable exception — Steve Spurrier. But when you win big from the minute you get there, as Spurrier did at Florida, you can relentlessly poke fun at your rivals or rip your quarterback to shreds and everyone eats it up. If you’re Lane Kiffin and you accuse a rival coach of cheating before you’ve coached your first game, or you’re Ed Orgeron and you rip your shirt off at a team meeting — or you’re Butch Jones and you break out “Champions of Life” — they never let you live it down.
I cannot see Leach at Tennessee, LSU or Florida. Those are cut-throat places where the media ask you why you called a draw on third and 7 and expect a serious answer. Ole Miss would be interesting. Expectations will be lower out of the gate due to the pending NCAA sanctions, Plus, I could see Leach saying he took the job primarily because he loves reading Faulkner and Grisham.
But this being the SEC, the much safer bet is that Ole Miss hires another conference school’s defensive coordinator.
(Scott Olmos / USA TODAY Sports)
