My Biggest Regret Was Not Cutting Adam James...

Adam James is the symptom, not the disease that brought the Pirate to his knees.

Mike Leach = Tom Penders leading to

Rick Barnes = Tommy Tuberville.

Penders and Leach were both carnies with the ability to get people into the tent with some glitter and fireworks. Both had a lot of baggage that drove administrators suicidal, and both really didn’t care to work hard at recruiting.

When they left, the positions were upgraded, even if some folks think they took the fun with them.

Thoughts on ESPN? I find it borderline unbelievable that ESPN stood by its man, even when clear-cut evidence came out that James was meddling in his son’s and Leach’s affairs. While he didn’t abuse his power in the same way that say, Harold Reynolds or Steve Phillips did, it seems pretty inexcusable that James could leverage his position at ESPN to try and bring Leach to heel. And it’s not even like James is indispensable as an ESPN asset; now every time I see him on TV I feel the urge to throw the remote at his face.

jc:

It was Mike Leach.
ESPN wouldn’t have pulled that shit if it was Nick Saban or Mack Brown.

The Staples article linked from the excerpt is also a good read.

“It’s ridiculously fulfilling,” Leach says of coaching. “But it’s kind of a narrow existence. It changes all the time, because young people that age change. Their lives are changing. … Now, I get variety. The payoff’s not as big, but I get wide variety.” But would Leach rather have the big payoff or the wide variety? “I plan to get back into coaching,” he says.

Leach is good for the college game. I hope he comes back.

jc25 -
 
ESPN did keep James off of Tech’s bowl game coverage, but you’re absolutely right – for a news organization to allow Craig James to opine on the matter while serving him softballs while in the employ of the WWL is incredibly irresponsible.
 
srr50 -
 
Not bad parallels. I think Leach has more substance than Penders though.

Yes he is good for the college game — but he can only survive at a mid-level school, and like Lou Holtz (for entirely different reasons) he will wear out his welcome.

Leach is to be believed. His political/commercial theories to explain his firing are irresponsible, but Tech is fairly dysfunctional for a public institution of its size. I grew up in Lubbock and know some Tech boosters. They always had stories of how the administration and former AD Gerald Myers went out of their way to be a pain in Leach’s ass, like re-assigning his parking spot so he had to walk farther to go to his office.

Also, Lubbock is no longer a dry city.

“Leach has a lot of skeletons that Tech put up with long before the Adam James incident – this was merely a pretext for action”

Elaborate?

Scip, absolutely Leach has more substance — I wish he cared about recruiting more.

No question Tubs will improve the level of talent at Tech, but I’m not convinced his record will be any better. Leach won, big on occasion, despite having 50% of the talent at UT and OU. Tubs may bring in 75% of the talent, but without that gimmicky offense I’m not sure he can match Leach’s W-L record. We’ll see.

Agreed with just about everything, Scip. I would merely note that if you’re a zoo, there’s a case to be made for owning an elephant.

Which reminds me, there may well be a HC opening at UNM after this season. This strikes me as a nice entry point (if not L/T fit) for Leach, but he may yet refuse to recognize it as such.

Leach won, big on occasion, despite having 50% of the talent at UT and OU. Tubs may bring in 75% of the talent, but without that gimmicky offense I’m not sure he can match Leach’s W-L record. We’ll see.

Miike Leach caused a lot of headaches for Big 12 coaches, but he didn’t win that much. One great year and an overall 59% league winning percentage.

He feasted on the most laughable non-conference schedule this side of Manhattan, Kansas. Leach was 47-33 in league play and 37-10 in non-league action.

Tubbs will do just fine if he sticks around long enough to coach the talent he is bringing in.

Agreed with just about everything, Scip. I would merely note that if you’re a zoo, there’s a case to be made for owning an elephant.

Unfortunately for Leach, every Athletic Director that he has interviewed witih for a job realizes that he is the one who will have to follow behind that elephant with the shovel.

Tubbs isn’t unhappy in and with Lubbock?

I

Is Tubbs recruiting dirty?

He worked at Auburn.

Once Leach decided he was too smart to work with Myers and chose to deal with Hance, it created a negotiating environment similar to Dickie Scruggs working for Joe Jamail.

I don’t understand the fascination with Leach. He’s a mediocre coach whose crowning season would not have been if Earl F-ing Thomas does his job and knocks the sh*t out of Crabtree instead of purposely avoiding contact.

You blame Earl Thomas for that loss? Fucking weird you are.

And Tubbs is a clean recruiter. That’s why Auburn canned him.

I don’t understand the fascination with Leach.

I don’t understand how one could not be fascinated with Leach.

Fascination is not being able not to watch.

pleaseplaykindle:

from boosters i’ve heard mild stuff about them being pissed off for not going to golf tournaments/dinners all that sort of thing…generally blowing off all the fundraising/glad handing shit. stuff you have to do, esp in lbk.

either way dude’s a great football coach…he’d never go back to being an oc but that’s where he belongs.

Curtis Brown got burned on that play more than Earl but it shouldn’t have mattered.

Ransom is getting in pre-season form.

Ransom -

#Gideon?

So long, Tech. It was fun while it lasted.

Good stuff, Scip. You totally nailed it.

Tech will pay dearly for making a major negotiating mistake as regards Leach’s contract situation. If they didn’t want to deal with his personality/style/ego, they should have let him go a year earlier, when contract talks were going on. If they wanted him, they should have signed him to a contract.

A year later, they decided he was too much trouble. The James case gave them the ammunition they wanted to terminate Leach. But he’ll win a major financial judgement for wrongful termination. And I’m not sure they’re better off — you can pull occasional upsets with decent talent and surprise tactices (Leach). You’re less likely to pull upsets with decent talent and Tuberville’s tactics.

Digging up bones here, but even if we keep Crabtree out of the end zone on that game-deciding pass in 2008, Tech has a timeout and the ball at the 2-yard line in a one-point game (33-32). They win with a field goal.

The college game, with the little bits of uniquness that make is so great, is better off with Mike Leach on the sidelines somewhere.

As far as Leach’s skeletons go, in addition to his fairly well-known love of the bottle, he apparently had a thing or two for nose candy.

“Digging up bones here, but even if we keep Crabtree out of the end zone on that game-deciding pass in 2008, Tech has a timeout and the ball at the 2-yard line in a one-point game (33-32). They win with a field goal.”

I seem to recall Tech having some serious kicking issues in that game.

Not on extra points, which is what it would have been, basically. As others have pointed out, a dropped fair catch INT, which was easier than covering or tackling Michael Crabtree, came before any of that.

I have family in Lubbock and heard LOTS of Leach stories. All rumors, of course, and there is no way that they are all true. On balance though, if 20% of what I heard went down then I suspect that extracurricular activities that would make Dana Holgerson blush had as much to do with the end of the Leach era as anything else. It also makes me suspect that is the reason why no one has snapped him up.

Lubbock is not longer dry in terms of alcohol, but “the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away” and now Lubbock hasn’t had rain in almost a year. ‘Dry’ and ‘Lubbock’ will pretty much always go hand in hand.

Leach and Tech have skeletons because Leach is an old school football coach.

Would Tech have thought twice about bringing Gillispie into the basketball program if Leach was still around? It would have been like a 1980’s cop/buddy movie. Maybe they would have had a role for your boy Cleve.

If you dont like the elephant in your living room, you get ’em out before he gets too big to get through the back double door. If Tech didnt like his antics, they shouldnt have signed him to a new contract. the way it went down was low class by both James and TTU.

Football is entertainment – leach was entertaining, which lead to Tech having some of the highest tv ratings, not just in the conference, in all of college football. I dont want him as my football coach but he is good for college football

If Tubberville wins, he will be gone.

Hell Hance was complaining about paying Leach too much. Tubberville will actually get other head coaching job offers and have serious negotiating power.

Leach reminds me of an old college buddy – fun to get blitzed with once a month and mildly annoying in between those times.

I really thought this article was going to go a different direction with the words “cutting adam james” in the title and mentioning a sword in the blurb. Maybe something along the lines of making the argument that it could have been much worse than the ‘shed’ for Adam.

“he apparently had a thing or two for nose candy.”

He might have been a drunk but that rumor is funny if it’s really going around boosters, sounds straight out of a podunk town that is made nervous by “elephants”….I don’t see Leach doing blow and where the hell would he get it in Lubbock once Crabtree left? That shithole isn’t only dry with booze…

ballrific, you’ve obviously never heard of Tulia.

the real estate site? oh, you mean swisher county….good point.

Tulia strikes me more as Walter White than Tony Montana.

Curtis Brown got burned on that play more than Earl but it shouldn’t have mattered.

Boom’s fault, entirely. He told ’em not to let a receiver get out of bounds after a catch, but he forgot to tell ’em to tackle.

 But there was an elephant-turd sized pile of steaming blame for the OC, he-whose-name-is-not-to-be-seen-or-heard, too. Yes, indeed, let’s have a completely random play… hmmmmm… something really, really slow-developing… let’s have the quarterback take the snap and run back five or six yards deep into the endzone and hand off to a running back who’s standing still… yeah, that’s the ticket. That may have been the moment when Boom should have set Kindle on a mission to make he-who disappear during the half. Missed opportunities are sad.

some folks think they took the fun with them.

Count me amongst “some folks”, I reckon.

I have a question: if it ain’t fun, then what’s the point?

There is no way Tuberville wins as many games as Leach. He may have better recruits
but he’s an echelon below Leach in terms of coaching. Hance and the other clown (Myers)
should be summarily disconnected from anything to do w/ Texas Tech. They are a huge
embarrassment to the school. As for the Jameses they are pure white trash and always were.
Good riddance.