MIKE LEACH ALERT
- Thread starter ruxCYtable
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It's just how serious he takes such a light hearted question. He's so detail oriented and candid. I would be cracking up all the time around him.
The dude is a treasure- so nice to see public figures give real answers! I will be a Leach fan for life.
Most people don't know this but Mike Leach was the offensive coordinator at Iowa Wesleyan college in Mount Pleasant back around 1990. He was under a head coach by the name of Hal Mumme and while they were there it was probably the only time that Iowa Wesleyan ever had a winning record. They did it by putting in a spread offense that no one at that level had ever seen before. He is nothing if not a trip.
While Leach was coaching at Iowa Wesleyan in Mount Pleasant, he recruited a local high school player named Dana Holgorsen. Holgorsen played wide receiver at Iowa Wesleyan before going on to be Leach's assistant at Texas Tech and later becoming head coach at West Virginia and now Houston.
Our coaching staff went over to their coach's football clinic and heard all about what they were trying to do in 1990 or 91. They were playing Truman St. their first game, and we left there thinking these guys are crazy and Truman, then Northeast will smoke them. As it turned out they went down to Kirksville and beat them.
They were on the cutting edge of football, and we were so fixed in our ways, we did not realize it. Within a year or so, Mumme left, and the rest followed him. What was surprising about their offense, they only had about 7 to 10 formations and would run 5-10 variations off each play. The QB and receivers would look at the defense and then change their route according to what the defense was playing.
No one knew were we around great and forwarding thinking football minds, we thought they were nuts.
Fine line between innovative and crazy.
Leach apparently also said he'd like Alabama and Auburn to shift to the East and OU and TX to be in the West.
LOL
LOL
All that is covered in a book I read about 10 years ago. It is in the Eastern Iowa Library system to check out.
The Perfect Pass: American Genius and the Reinvention of Football: Gwynne, S. C.: 9781501116193: Amazon.com: Books
The Perfect Pass: American Genius and the Reinvention of Football [Gwynne, S. C.] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The Perfect Pass: American Genius and the Reinvention of Football
www.amazon.com
I was coaching the O-line at the time, so I spent the entire group work sessions watch their drills and how they worked. The thing that impressed me the most was the O-line was always in a 2-point stance. On the drive home, I brought it up with the head coach, that we should really do it. The other asst. coach thought it was a crazy idea, and that we could never run block out of it, and I told him, "Look, we have a lot of larger, slow lineman, if we are in a 3-point stance, they will get beat off the snap more often than we don't. Putting them in a 2 point will speed it up and make their job easier." The head coach took it all in, and then pull me aside on Monday, and told me to give it a try, but the other coach was right. We put it in, and used it for the next couple of year, never changed the mind of the coach that opposed the idea, but the head coach came around to my way of thinking, by the end of the season.
Me too. Iowa Wesleyan was the only school in the country smart enough to recruit me. Their coach gave me one phone call at the prompting of my best friend in high school who had gone there and played his freshman year. This would have been before Leach and I passed as well. I was bitter at the system that colleges weren't wanting to recruit a 5 foot 10 inch QB, who accounted for 600 yards total offense, threw 4 touchdown passes his senior year, and could run a 5.2 second forty yard dash. And the 5.2 was not wind-aided.
Someone brought to Murph and Andy the other day how Leach's throat clearing was very similar to Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Along Came Polly.
Sorry SJ4; pretty common knowledge IMO on where Leach gained knowledge on how to develop the “Air Raid” offense…
