clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

Art Imitates Mike Leach

By Matt Hinton

When SMQ imagined Mike Leach's reaction to clock changes by the NCAA rules committee earlier this week, it should have gone without saying that the pirate coach himself would top all efforts at fantasy and satire without breaking a sweat. And so he does, in Friday's Lubbock Avalance-Journal (tip of the 10-gallon hat to Seth at Double T Nation), in a story that sets the scene for a virtuoso performance in reactionary absurdity thusly:

Mike Leach tends to ramble when he gets on a rant, but he can't afford to next season.

When he pulls his entire team together for what some fans jokingly call "come-to-Leach" meetings, the Texas Tech football coach will have to get his point across faster than ever.

One aspect of the profession Leach has yet to master, it seems, is getting his point across quickly. And the 30-second cut in timeout length, from 90 seconds to sixty, doesn't exactly reward his brand of patience.

Here's Leach on whether he can condense sideline talks:

"I probably would just take a (delay-of-game) penalty and refuse to go out there."
- - -

Leach on the cognitive dissonance at work in concocting different aspects of the new rules:

"Everything on the timeout (proposals) is stupid, and it's not just dumb, it's really dumb...And then everything on changing the clock back to where it used to be is brilliant. That is literally Nobel Prize quality intellect and intelligence going into that."
- - -

Leach on the very premise of the necessity of shorter games to begin with:

"That's good why? I can think of as many reasons to go from 3:20 to four hours as I can to go from 3:20 to 3:07 or whatever."
- - -

Leach on the committee's personal time management skills:

"Here's what they should do. They should spend the morning changing the clock rule back to what it was before and what served football well for quite some time, and then as far as anything on the timeout rule, they shouldn't mess with it at all. They should pat themselves on the back for a job well done in the morning, and they should go golf all afternoon."
- - -

Leach on coaching as act of corporate subversion:

"Because I'm against the entire thing, I will strategically never tell them if I'm going to take a penalty or not, so I'm thereby screwing TV of a potential opportunity for a commercial...I'm like the gnat on 'The Love Boat' that's trying to sink it.
- - -


Now I got no patience
So sick of complacence
With the D the E the F the I the A the N the C the E
Mind of a revolutionary
- - -

Leach on how corporate overloads might leverage subversive coaching strategies for preferential treatment:

"If we're on a TV (network) I like a lot, I might cut a deal before the game. Tell them if I call timeout, I'm going to take a penalty before we go back out there, so you can go to commercial. Otherwise, I'm not going to tell them, so they're on their own."
- - -

Leach, acting consistently in his rational self-interest, must be aware here that penalties are irrelevant, and certainly Ragnar Danneskjold would approve.