The Joel Klatt Show: A College Football Podcast - Mike Leach's impact on college football

Episode Date: December 13, 2022

FOX Sports' lead college football analyst Joel Klatt remembers Mississippi State head coach Mike Leach. Leach died Monday night at the age of 61. His impact on the college football world was immense and included revolutionizing the passing game with his air raid offense, as well as producing a coaching tree of Lincoln Riley, Sonny Dykes, Josh Heupel, Kliff Kingsbury and more. Joel ends the podcast by sharing some of his favorite moments and stories of Mike Leach. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome into the show today, everybody. I'm Joel Klaat. This is the Joel Klatte show. Obviously, some heartbreaking news in the world of college football. Mike Leach has passed after the unfortunate news over the weekend of the cardiac event that he suffered on Sunday. Obviously, I knew Mike pretty well. And I just wanted to come on and give some perspective of what my thoughts are when I hear about this tragedy. First and foremost, I just want to say that I've been praying for Mike and his family over the last few days that he would heal.

And obviously that didn't happen. But I'm still praying for his family. obviously the pain and heartache is something that is real and my heart just goes out for all of you. This is a terrible day in the world of college football, but obviously in his family. What I wanted to do today is let you in on just kind of what has come flooding to me over the last couple of days in regards to Mike and what he's meant to our sport. You can't really encapsulate the man that he was outside of the sport unless you were part of his family. So I don't want to

try to do that. What I will do is talk about what his legacy will be within college football, because I think it will be large moving forward. I want to talk first about his impact on the sport overall. So Mike will be forever linked with his offense. And rightly so. It was one of the most productive and fun offenses to watch that we've seen in the history of college football. One of my favorite conversations that I ever had with Mike was a conversation about the genesis of the air raid offense. And so I thought that it would be appropriate to just share that conversation with you. Those of you that don't know, this offense came to pass when he was working for Halmoney. And he and Hal were at Baldasta State, really. And they didn't have

what you would categorize as like the best players in the league. So what they were trying to do was invent an offense that could be highly productive without having the best players. I know that that sounds disparaging, but it's certainly not. That's how most offenses have come to pass that have been innovative in any way, in particular the spread run game that Chip Kelly kind of brought forth and our briles kind of brought forth a little bit after the air raid. But the genesis of the air raid, he and Hal, Mike and Hal, it started with a genesis born through philosophy.

How do we want to move the ball? What do we want our offense to be like? Because at the time, you know, there was really only one or two ways that that would be accepted to move the ball down the field. You could try to run the option. You could be in a traditional what you would categorize as like NFL offense. There wasn't a lot other than that except for a couple. Run and shoot was out there, yes. But there was this offense that was being highly productive, winning a Heisman, winning an action.

championship. And that was BYU. And so Lavelle Edwards and his vertical passing game was very unique in college football. Mike and Hal loved the thought of adopting that vertical passing game. But then there was also this other offense that they loved the philosophy of, although not the schematics. And that was the philosophy of the triple option in that it didn't matter who was getting the production. Any one of the five skill position players could, really six with the quarterback, but five could produce. It didn't matter. It just depended on what the defense did on who was going to produce that day. So it wasn't necessarily player specific as it was defensive specific, and you would take what the defense gives. So there was this thought from Hal and Mike about

the philosophy of the vertical passing game and the ability to attack the defense throwing the football. And yet, how do you build an offense that attacks via the air but is not totally reliant on just a great wide receiver? And you can have four or five guys produce. And they built the air raid offense. And those were the two philosophies that were really foundational in terms of how they built it. They became very successful, obviously, and Mike would follow Hal to Kentucky and Tim Couch would become a household name in college football. And at Kentucky, they played a young defensive coordinator on a great team that would win a national championship when Bob Stoops was the defensive coordinator at Florida. And Bob was an excellent coach.

And Joe Castiglione, the athletic director at Oklahoma, needs. to make a hire at Oklahoma and bring them back to prevalence. And he looked to Bob Stoops. Now, Bob Stoops had been in Kansas State under Bill Snyder and he played at Iowa. There was nothing about Bob Stoops' past that would suggest that he wanted to move towards some spread, you know, passing attack style offense, except for the fact that he knew as a defensive coordinator that the most difficult offense to stop in the SEC at the time was Kentucky. and it was because they didn't have better players than Bob Stoops in Florida,

but they were able to move the football. And it was maddening for Stoops. And so one of his first hires when he became the head coach of the University of Oklahoma was the offensive coordinator for the Kentucky Wildcats, Mike Leach. And that's the genesis of when the air raid offense really started to influence college football. And the reason is, is because at the. time, it was a bit like the run and shoot. It was highly productive, but it hadn't won at the top level. You couldn't say that, hey, this is going to win a national championship. And while

Mike didn't specifically win a national championship at Oklahoma, his production at OU in his first year as the offensive coordinator got him the opportunity to be the head coach at Texas Tech. And then in the second year under Bob Stoops at OU, the Sooners would go on to win the national championship. And that's when Josh Hypo was the quarterback, and that's when everyone thought to themselves, okay, this offense is legitimate. And then Mike Leach started putting up all sorts of numbers at Texas Tech. And then it became a flood of influence on college football. But it was born out of this philosophy of how do we marry the threat of the vertical passing game from Lavelle Edwards at BYU to the philosophy of any player can be productive, depending on what the

defense gives out of the triple option. And that's how they built the air raid offense. And it's been transformational in college football. You think about the way that college football has evolved since the mid-90s. And it's staggering. When you go back and you watch, you know, they'll be on, you know, whatever it is, like Big Ten Network, SEC Network. They always play old games. And you're looking at some of these teams and you're like, oh, my goodness, like the game has changed drastically over the last 20 to 25 years. And I believe one of the biggest reasons is Mike Leach and the air raid offense. He made it okay to spread out to play with three wide receivers on the field at all times, four wide receivers on the field at all times. He made it okay to throw the ball 60, 65, 75, 70.

percent of the time. Before that, it was totally unheard of. Totally unheard of. In fact, when I think of the last 20, 25 years and the evolution of the game, I don't think it's ever changed as quickly and as drastically as it has in the last 20 or 25 years. And there's really, to me, like, three major moments or influences on that evolution in our sport. Mike Leach and the air raid offense is one of them and probably the most prominent. The next one would be the spread running attack under Chip Kelly and what that's done to college football. And then the third one would be Vince Young went in a national championship.

And that style of dual threat quarterback becoming what everyone wanted to chase and every defense started to realize that, man, this is impossible to stop a guy like Vince Young. And so from that moment forward, what you got, was this tug of war between are we going to be the traditional NFL style offense or are we going to be the like the spread zone read attack? And what has ultimately won out folks is spread football, mobile quarterbacks and throwing the ball as much as you can or want or are willing to. And that was clearly born through Mike Leach. His coaching tree is obviously

impressive, yes, but that doesn't do it justice. It has also been impactful and transformational in our sport. You think about his coaching tree, and it's easy to immediately think of Lincoln Riley, or I got like Sunny Dykes in the playoff this year. And those are definitely prominent pieces of the coaching tree, but they're not the only ones. You know, you look at who else is in this coaching tree. I mean, Dave Oranda is a guy that, coached under Mike Leach.

Neil Brown, the head coach at West Virginia, he has been a head coach throughout college football. He played under Mike Leach as a wide receiver. Sonny Cumbie was his quarterback, now obviously doing great things. Sunny Dykes, like I mentioned, Josh Heiple was his quarterback at OU. Dana Holgerson is a guy that spent a lot of time under Mike Leach.

Cliff Kingsbury played for Mike, obviously wildly influential on Cliff's path. Seth Lattrell, obviously Lincoln Riley. The list goes on, not to mention some of the great assistant coaches out there. You know, Bill Beedenbow, who's really invented a way to incorporate run dominance with the air raid system as an offensive line coach. Alex Grinch, the coordinator at USC defensively, was a coordinator under Mike Leach at Washington State. So the list goes on and on.

these guys have been highly influential and impactful in college football to the tune that Lincoln Riley again has another Heisman winner. All you have to do is look at what Lincoln Riley has done at the top end of the sport and you realize the influence of what Mike had on this sport. There are some favorite moments and I might get a little emotional. I loved Mike. And at times in this position, you know, you have to state your opinion and there are times when you're critical of people that you really love. I think it's one of the things that I like least about this job, to be honest with you. But Mike and I had a very good relationship.

I competed against him as a player, covered him obviously as a coach. And one of my favorite couple of moments were dealing with him in the capacity of a game week. and the reason I loved it is it was totally unlike any other interactions with coaches during game weeks. Mike was completely unafraid to be himself. And in so many ways, it was so refreshing for someone in my position. I have a couple of stories, ones that stick out that I've never really told or had the opportunity to tell. But the first time that I was ever going to get a chance to cover Mike and call one of one of his games at Texas Tech, I was obviously very excited, try to get a peek behind the curtain of this man and this program that was so unique in college football. He was at Texas Tech at the time.

And, you know, one of the big moments during the week of any game week for the broadcast crew is the production call and the meeting with the coach. coaches. This particular week, we were having Texas Tech on the road. And so in that case, you do a conference call. This is obviously before Zoom. So you were going to do a conference call with the coach from the opposing team. And the conference call was on Wednesday. And, I think it was like 11 a.m. or 10 a.m. And normally coaches get on. They don't say very much. their awkward conversations. And Mike gets on and he was chipper and it was kind of noisy in the background. I'm thinking to myself like, what's what's happening?

Is he in a golf cart on campus or something? And then I realized like, no, he's driving. And I start to think to myself, wait, hold on. The head coach is driving around 10 a.m. in the morning. It was 10 mountain time, 11 central time. I'm like, is he going to lunch? I don't quite understand. And so I asked him, I was like, where are you headed?

And he was like, oh, I'm headed into the office. office. It's like, wait, wait. And I was like, well, how early do you get to the office? And he said, like, oh, you know, my staff meetings, you know, are a little bit later. And I just thought to myself, man, how unique is this is this guy? And then all of a sudden, as I'm asking him questions, he starts to get a little distracted during the course of the interview. And, you know, And I was just like, hey, you okay? Do I need to call you back? And he's like, no, no, no, no, just hold on for a second. And I thought, okay. And he proceeds to then you can tell, kind of lean out his window and say, yeah, I'll have a large coffee, please. And no, no room for cream and no sugar, please, just black. And I'll always remember, and I'll never experience that again, having a coach's production. meeting when the head coach was driving through the Starbucks drive through to get himself a coffee made me love Mike Leach made me love him because he was totally unafraid to do things

his way. The next conversation I would share with you, and this is when he was at Washington State, we went up there and I was going to do an apple cup between Washington State and Washington. And this particular year, Washington State was doing pretty well, and they had a couple of running backs that were actually running for more yards than what Mike Leach's running backs normally run for. And so I started asking him about like, oh, is this some sort of evolution of your system? And is this something that we can expect in the future where we're going to run for more yards? And he looked at me and he was like, Joel, you know me better than that. He was like, I don't call run place.

And I was like, whoa, wait, you what? And he says, I don't call run place. he said every time we hand the ball off that's the quarterback checking to a run and i and i stopped and i and i was like hold on a second you mean to tell me you do not call run plays and he said absolutely not and i just again it was it was the the level of belief in what he was doing offensively and and the willingness to totally be different and i was like so do you care about balance at all? And he started howling balance. He said, you want me to achieve balance? I can just call 50% run plays. Then I can come in and I'll show you the stat sheet and I'll say like,

look at that. We were balanced. Good. How did I do? He's like, I can call for balance or I can call for production. One of the two. What do you want? And we howled and howled together. And we were, we were laughing and having a great time about balance and about calling run plays. And then he got on the board and he was starting to show me what they specifically would check from and get into in order to run the football. But we had a great time. And I failed to mention this at the beginning of the story, Bill Stevens, who is the SID at Washington State, he said at the time, coach only has 15 minutes. Like, that's it. That's all we got today because it was busy. It was Thanksgiving week. And I thought, okay, yeah, that's fine. I'll take as much time as you're willing to give.

We sat there for 45 minutes talking football. A couple of times I said, Coach, do you need to go? And he says, no, I love this. I'll always remember that. Lastly, I would just say, and I've said it a couple times already. You know, Mike was himself unapologetically. And one of the things that he gave the sport and all the coaches that coached under him was this superpower of the question, why not? So if you talk with some of the guys that cut their teeth under Mike Leach, they'll share with you some like wild stories, you know, about the way that they would game plan or or build things, you know, and they were different from what was the norm in our sport. You know, so often coaches do things only because they don't want to stand out from the crowd. You know, they don't want to be criticized.

And so they do things and they build things, whether it's practice schedules or the way that they're offense is called or what they'll try during a game or where their practice is built. And they just don't want to be an outlier because that can invite criticism. And so guys generally speaking will try to stay in the lane, you know, be different slightly here and there. But there's a real unwillingness from from coaching circles to be different and unapologetically different. And Lincoln Riley shared with me a story about the great.

Texas Tech team in 2008. Graham Harrell as their quarterback and Michael Crabtree is their wide receiver. And this is a team that I believe finished 11 and 1. Their only loss was at Oklahoma, three-way tie for that big 12 South with Texas and Oklahoma. And one middle of the season, one practice, Mike decides that they haven't been throwing the go ball, the nine route, And so he decides that in that practice, that's all they're going to do. So in every single route, route on air, one-on-one, seven-on-seven play, team play, that's the only play that they're going to run. That's the only route that they're going to run, regardless of coverage. And they had adjustments off of the route.

You could drop it out and you can do all of these things based on the coverage. And so they were just going to run go routes against whatever defense was out there. and the quarterbacks obviously are going to throw go routes all day, but the wide receivers are going to run go routes all day long. Again, this is the middle of the season, and they have at the time a Bolitnikoff Award winner in Michael Crabtree. Well, these wide receivers end up running go routes all day to the tune of probably Lincoln said three, four miles of go routes.

You know, that's all they're doing. And some of the other coaches started getting worried about like the number of go routes that they were running and the freshness of the wide receivers and their legs. And some of them said to Mike, we can't do this. And Mike said, why not? Why not? And then he said to them, at some point this season, we're going to end up having to throw a go route against the coverage that we don't want to, and it has to be successful.

Do you know what route was called on that iconic play against Texas or Michael Crabtree catches it on the sideline and runs in for a touchdown? That was all go. That was four verticals. It was go routes. And it didn't matter what coverage Texas was going to run. Graham Harrell and Michael Crabtree knew because of days like the only go route day in practice that they could complete it, that they could execute it.

And then they did in the face of double coverage. Texas is trying to double cover Michael Crabtree, and they couldn't because tech was outside of the box. And it was because of Mike Leach and his willingness and his fortitude to just say, why not? Mike, rest well, we're all going to miss you, buddy.