Welcome to the Andy Staples show.

It is a sad day in college football.

Mike Leach, innovator, pirate, lover of cargo shorts, has passed at age 61, and we're going to do a show about Mike

Leach and a lot of us have had a lot of interactions with Mike Leach over the years and know

him fairly well. I mean, Bruce Feldman helped write his book. I've done a lot of stuff with him

over the years. I don't think he'd want us to be sad about this. So I've got David Ubb in here. I've done a lot of stuff with him over the years. I don't think he'd

want us to be sad about this. So I've got David Ubb in here. I've got Ari Wasserman here. We're

going to celebrate Mike Leach because we were talking before the show started. We were just

trading Mike Leach anecdotes. And this is a guy who lived the life that pretty much everybody would have wanted to live because he just

kind of went and he saw something he wanted to do he just go do it like we were talking about

he went to law school got a lot of degree but so he wanted to be a football coach and then he's he's

head coach of texas tech he wants to do the weather on tv so he asks a tv weather guy can can i do the weather for you one day and then he's a he's a good he's not so he's not so he's the head coach of Texas Tech and he wants to do the weather on TV. So he asks a TV weather guy, can I do the weather for you one day?

And they say, yeah.

He winds up in an episode of Friday Night Lights telling Coach Taylor to swing his sword.

Like, it's amazing what you can do when you're just like, okay, I'm going to do this.

Yeah, I think, Andy, I think the biggest lesson, you know, before we get into the funny stuff and the stuff that made him so beloved is a lot of people believed either silently or loudly told Mike Leach that that he could not

do what he wanted to do. You know, people hated the air raid. Yeah, you grow too much. You go

on fourth down too much. Your line splits are too wide. Exactly. All those things. It's soft. It can't

work at major levels. Maybe you can do this at D3 or high school, but it's not going to work in college. And he kept going. He kept rising. He did it anyway, and he did it his way, and he never compromised who he wanted to be. I think you see a lot of assistance when they become head coaches. Sometimes they change their personality. They get guarded guarded they get super serious because they think they have to be nick sabin because that's how

you win and that's what a that's what a head coach sounds like he didn't pretend he was himself and

and and andy i think as we remember him and think about him i think that's a lesson that he taught us

without even knowing he was teaching

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