What does the future hold for Leach?

Submitted by Huntington Wolverine on

Regardless of the outcome of the settlement and the lawsuit/investigation, Leach is gone from TTU.

What positions are open/opening that might be interested in him?

Could he make the jump to NFL O-Coord.?

Other BCS programs looking?

edit: changed title to be more informative

Bryan

January 2nd, 2010 at 6:04 PM ^

Right now, not a whole lot. He'll take the year off and see what opens up. If things turn out that he acted improperly, he'll never coach college football again. Too much of a liability for a school to take on, and what kid would want to come play for him.

Tater

January 2nd, 2010 at 8:01 PM ^

Leach should end up at a better program than Texas Tech. The "proof" of his wrongdoing is going to be a bunch of "he said, she said" bullshit, like "affidavits" from trainers who have been threatened with the loss of their jobs or disgrutled players whose senses of entitlement were offended. I'm pretty sure that a lot of people will share the opinion that he has been railroaded. As of right now, his attorney's video makes a lot more sense than what is coming out of Tech; prospective employers have access to this stuff, too.

Leach is still the same coach who had a few great offers last year, and an opening or two should pop up shortly. I think Leach will get hired unless he decides to take this year off to maximize his lawsuit.

Someone at a high-profile school that is in a .500-or-lower cycle right now will hire him to get them back on top. Tech's football program was nothing before he got there, and will probably be nothing within two or three years; he can improve someone else's program greatly when given the chance.

Ironically, his next employers will probably do exactly what Tech did with Bobby Knight: put some kind of conduct clause in his contract. If this doesn't happen, his Barkley-esque candor might be attractive to network executives who want to hire "outside the box." Leach will be fine either way.

Tech will ultimately suffer a lot more for this situation than Leach will.

gater

January 2nd, 2010 at 6:12 PM ^

I thought he was a lawyer before football coach, so he has that going for him. I hope he can land another job like North Texas and show them that it was a mistake to let him go.

CRex

January 2nd, 2010 at 6:22 PM ^

I was watching the Ole Miss Bowl game and thinking "Houston Nutt and Mike Leach, a match made in heaven."

Or Kiffin and Leach would make a fun pair.

Section 1

January 2nd, 2010 at 6:42 PM ^

From the 2005 New York Times profile. In that article, the then-Titans DC, some guy named Jim Schwartz, spoke of Leach in terms of genius.

Mike Leach-as-the-new-OC is probably one of the few, unlikely things that might turn me into a recovering Lions fan.

maizenblue92

January 2nd, 2010 at 7:19 PM ^

I think that he we will end up falling on the depth chart to a more talented player. Oh, you mean Mike Leach. Hmm, never heard of him. Isn't he a coach somewhere.

Zone Left

January 2nd, 2010 at 7:27 PM ^

He'll end up doing something like Mike Price did after his week or so stint at Alabama--end up at some Sun Belt type school.

It would be too much bad press for a big time school to pick him up as a coordinator, and his eccentricities may make the spotlight a little too bright outside of Mars, I mean Lubbock.

The NFL isn't happening. The Air Raid is probably not going to work in the NFL--kind of like the run & shoot ultimately failed.

21blue21

January 2nd, 2010 at 8:10 PM ^

Notre Dame would have been the perfect fit for Leach. Now, I don't know. Illinois could come knocking at his door and shake Zook lose. He probably be better off waiting and having his pick of the litter next year but hell weirder this have happened.

Topher

January 2nd, 2010 at 8:37 PM ^

On the same note, what serious coach wants to coach at TT?

Sure it sounds like a good scenario, but the administration has shown:

(a) they held a lowball vendetta against a highly successful coach, suggesting they aren't keen on rewarding success, and used a comparatively minor incident as pretense to fire him
(b) they did nothing to support a coach engaged in a battle of annoyance with a stage parent, instead delivering a summons to him and when he hired a lawyer they canned him before he could secure his due process
(c) they may not be too serious about success at all since they seemed to resent Leach's bringing the program to national prominence

A guy who is looking for his break as a head coach might be tempted, but a coach who believes he can be a top-flight HC and understands the kind of institutional and booster support he needs to do that would probably want to think twice.

Magnus

January 3rd, 2010 at 1:34 PM ^

He's not helping himself a whole lot with how he's handling this situation. He'd have been better off biting his tongue rather than calling James "lazy" and mentioning that the other coaches and teammates agreed.

He's got a major PR issue, and that won't be helped by potential recruits' parents seeing him on TV and calling Someone's Son lazy.

OMG Shirtless

January 3rd, 2010 at 1:41 PM ^

He's taking the head coaching job at Sylvania Northview High School in Ohio.

He hired E-Roc to use his brick skills to build him a new shed. First order of business...locking CoachBT in the shed until April.
No word on if he can get Maizeman to sign on to mop the lockerroom or not yet. It's kind of a step down to have to go from a vacuum to a mop.

gobluesasquatch

January 3rd, 2010 at 5:39 PM ^

Leach should coach again and at a high level. He knows football, his teams are exciting, he can win games, and his players GRADUATE!

He's also well educated, and probably has a bit of a chip on his shoulder working in a world of former coaches and athletes, many of whom aren't that bright. Sorry, too often that is the case. His arrogence has and will continue to hurt him.

That said, if he acted irrationally and dangerously in his handling of Adam James, then he'll never be a head coach at any level again. He might not even coach again. If the results show that essentially Tech was looking for a reason to fire him and pushed the situation, he'll coach again and very quickly. If the results lie somewhere in between, he might end up like O'Leary, Price, or even Bobby Knight, relegated to the world of the irrelevant (though if O'Leary or Price had ever won big and often at UCF or UTEP - they'd be at a major program).

As for the Air Raid in the NFL, someone might want to look at the type of offense that the Patriots run. They essentially run a pass oriented spread offense. And as for the run-n-shoot, it did work in the NFL, and in some cases very well. The Houston Oilers were consistently in the playoffs with Glanville and Pardee running variations of the offense. The problem is that their defense too often failed to hold leads (see Buffalo's comeback in the playoffs).

Has Central Michigan hired a coach yet?

Most likely Leach will wait a year and then start take a job as someone's offensive coordinator. He worked pretty well with Mummee in Kentucky and Stoops at Oklahoma.

FormerWolv

January 4th, 2010 at 12:17 AM ^

he's just gonna have to accept that some people will voluntarily come out of the closet

then he'll get a job as an analyst at ESPN right next in Craig James