Mike Leach. Spencer Hall. 8 hours on a boat off Key West.

Awesome. Lunch break extended.

so good. don’t know if yall listen to finebaum or not but leach was on today and was awesome.

He’s getting really good at this shit. Great read.

Agree. Spencer is really gifted. He plays around with the form, but manages not to color outside of the lines.

We’ve never met, but my snap assessment of Mike Leach is that he’s cursed by an IQ that’s 20 points too high for his own good.

With that, I’m a little surprised that he’s so enamored of Jimmy Buffett. Don’t get me wrong; all of the albums between White Sport Coat and Havana Daydreamin’ are classics. With the exception of 5 or 6 songs, however, everything since then is unmitigated, mail-it-in crap.

Even worse is what Buffett did to Key West. I’m old enough to have seen Key West when Jimmy Buffett was more inclined to sit in on the last set at Captain Tony’s than open a souvenir shop. If Key West wasn’t paradise back then, it was close enough. Today, IMHO, it’s not even marginally worth fighting the traffic on US 1 to get there.

I also gather Leach wouldn’t be interested in the UNM job. That’s too bad; I have a feeling the job could be his after this season (unlike UNC or UCLA), and his system could do well there. Remarkably, if Mike Leach moved from Key West to Albuquerque, he’d reduce the mean weirdness of both places.

I once spent a similar afternoon with Mike Leach at Tech. He took me and my dad around campus and showed us a bunch of stuff. We ended up talking about a million different topics and playing catch in their indoor facility. It was surreal. I got to experience some cool stuff because of football recruiting, but that day was probably the coolest.

Funny that he mentioned the deceptively fast walking thing. I noticed that too. He would look like he was in slow motion, and then you realize you just covered a ton of ground in not much time.

Thanks for linking. Spencer’s really got talent.

It’s hard to overstate the greatness in this:

“So Kliff goes out there, and I call “Six” again, and he shakes me off again, and now we get delay of game. It’s fourth down, and we’re on our own forty, but I just call it again and have some words with Kliff. We hit it against that corner cheating up for a touchdown, and Kliff comes up and starts yelling at me angry on the sideline: ‘FINE, FINE, ARE YOU HAPPY NOW? WE DID IT YOUR WAY, AND NOW ARE YOU HAPPY?’ And I was."

They should study this walking phenomenon. Nobody seems to understand it. Few steps but massive ground covered? I smell an NSF grant.

CS -
 
I lost it on that paragraph too. “And I was.”

Strangely pleased to see the Pirate’s top coach same as mine. Order notwithstanding.

The world of college football is a sadder place without the Pirate. When some school finally figures it out and hires him, they can ask " AND NOW ARE YOU HAPPY?" And we will be.

Dmitri Kissov –
As a long time Jimmy Buffett fan, it pains me to agree. A1A belongs on the short list of best albums ever made. From a peak like that, it is hard to go anywhere but downhill.

Unfortunately, that downhill slope has been steeper than we would like. Each time Jimmy Buffett would release a new album, I would be in line to buy it. Each time I would say to myself, well, there’s one or two songs that are worth keeping. The end came with “Beach House on the Moon”. After one time through, I realized that there was not one song on that CD that I would ever want to listen to again. Unmitigated, mail-in crap is right, as much as it hurts to say it.

Pirate Looks at 40, and Migration, are two of my favorite songs ever. Too bad that his newer stuff has dropped off so badly.

I spent some time in Key West back in the 70’s, and will probably not go back. I would rather remember it as it was then.

Yes I am an old fart, 200 years too late…

Hey Longhorn in Canada, where in the great white north are you residing?

I have a friend that has “Some of it’s magic, Some it’s tragic” tattooed across the top of his chest.

He Went to Paris, ftw.

I’ll read a Scip piece and say to myself, that’s why he’s the best on the ‘net. Then I read a Hall piece and go, well, maybe he’s the best.

I don’t think Hall’s quite as talented, but dammit if that guy doesn’t write all day everyday.

Obviously, in the end it doesn’t matter. They’ll never be Rick Reilly.

They’ll never be Rick Reilly.

Praise be to Jeebus!

8 hours on a boat with Leach should be on everyone’s bucket list.

Good call on hogfish, he’s dead right. I grew up spearfishing in the Keys, and hog were always a top priority. I might add Snook and Permit to my top 5 though.

Oddly, I happen to have an unread copy of Under the Black Flag sitting on my bookshelf.