Welcome to the Audible presented by Trader Joe's.

I'm Stuart Mandel, joined by Bruce Feldman for what is going to be an unusual and somber episode of the Audible.

On Monday, Mike Leach, head coach of Mississippi State, formerly Washington State, Texas Tech before that, passed away. And he was 61, and obviously every college football fan knows who Mike Leach is. But I have as my co-host here, the man who co-wrote Mike Leach's autobiography, Swing Your Sword.

And Bruce, I'm trying to remember when I first met Mike Leach and struggling and certainly

remember a lot of good interactions, but, you know, I feel like for most of your career, he was a big part of it.

You know, I remember meeting him.

The first time I had talked to him, he was at Kentucky, and I remember I was at my apartment

at the time, and we ended up talking for a long time, which I was like, man, this guy's

really open, not realizing that, well, that's Mike Leach.

And then, you know, I think we had talked a little, but it wasn't until I went down to Lubbock early in his tenure there to do an ESPN magazine feature where I was like, okay, I kind of felt like, you know, we kind of got along and

he was very open. And then the relationship grew from there. And, you know, obviously it wasn't

until they had approached me to write Mike's book. And I had to give it some thought. I had to talk to my bosses

at the time at ESPN magazine. But, you know, he is the most, and I'm, you know, it's funny. I'm

still in the present with him. Like he's, he, he is the most. I'm going to try to get through this because this has been like a

really screwed up last two days right you know so because i don't you know like the thing with

with the leach stuff is um and it's complicated right but like every like he was a gateway to a lot of people i got to know

and i've gotten to really develop relationships with beyond beyond just coaching and football

and so you kind of like mike's the godfather of this air raid tree and almost all of them are interesting

characters and they were a lot of people that I spent a lot of time around in Lubbock especially

and they've obviously most of them have gone on to bigger things in coaching so you know that

like Mike was kind of the hub of that wheel.

And, you know, he's such a, he's such a unique character, right?

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