The Josh Innes Show - Random Thoughts: The Closest I Came To Mike Leach

Episode Date: December 14, 2022

I'm legit sad that Mike Leach died. Jilly and I loved him. It seems most people felt the same way. I never got to meet him or talk with him. But, I had a few things where I was sort of on the peripheral. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Terms and conditions apply. Visit bmo.com slash viporter to learn more. So Mike Leach, information came down yesterday that Mike Leach died. He died Monday night, and the story sucks, and there's nothing positive about it because that's a dude that, it's funny, he seems universally beloved at this very moment. It's a couple of months ago. Remember the story about how there was the comic strip or whatever in the paper or something about a guy wanting to hang himself? And he retweeted that.

It became a big controversy. He had a couple of typical 2020, 2021, 2022, newer millennium, post-COVID, everyone's a whiny asshole drama moments. But for the most part, he escaped the Reaper. Now, of course, he didn't escape the Reaper at Texas Tech. He got whacked for the thing with Craig James' kid, which was stupid. But there was that. But if you ever listen to the show, we love Mike Leach. We talked about Mike Leach all the time.

We did it at 790. And I don't have any actual personal stories about Mike Leach. I don't have anything that would make you go, oh, wow, that's a really neat personal anecdote. But I have a couple that are kind of on the peripheral. And I guess one is sort of personal, although I never met the guy. I'll give you the first one. So Washington State was playing in the, I guess it's the Texas Bowl when we lived in Houston. And I think we were still on the air at 790 at the time because me, Sean, and Sean's lady and Jilly went to the game.

Because Sean said he got tickets from his buddy. He said, do you want to go? I said, yeah, sure, that's fine. And I'm trying to remember all the details of this. It's kind of blurry. Because at the time, it doesn't seem like that big of a deal. The story doesn't seem that big. But when someone dies, you're like, oh, that's the closest thing I guess I had to that person. So we all ride together and we go to the game and we go

to one of those areas kind of at the bottom of NRG where you would get tickets or maybe a will call or outside of it, you know, where the locker rooms are or whatever. And Sean goes, we've got to go down here. We've got to pick up our tickets and some gear. I said, okay, fine. So we go down there, and Sean talks to the guy that's at one of these tables, kind of at a desk. And he goes, yeah, I'm here to pick up some stuff, like some tickets and some hats and stuff.

He goes, who are you picking up hats from? And he goes, Mike Leach. I go, wait a second. You're friends with Mike Leach? Yeah, we're buddies. I've known Mike Leach for a long time. Okay, cool. So we're sitting there waiting before this Texas Bowl downstairs at Reliant,

and we're waiting for these hats that were supposed to be from Mike Leach. Now, in my mind, there's some poor lackey that's walking up to Mike Leach in the locker room saying, hey, Sean Salisbury is here, and I know the game starts in 30 minutes, but Sean said you got some hats for him and his buddies. And sure enough, a couple minutes later, lackey comes out there, and we got tickets, and we got hats. So we had gear that came to us directly from Mike Leach. We didn't get to meet Mike Leach or talk to him that day, but that was cool.

I mean, imagine like that's a concern, like you're coming through for people, you're about to play a bowl game and your thought is, oh yeah, I got to get some hats for old Sean Salisbury. Like that's cool. You know, he seems like a cool dude. I don't recall ever interviewing him on the phone. I don't think I did. I feel like I'd remember that, you know, battle asked me that earlier. Like, that's cool. You know, he seems like a cool dude. I don't recall ever interviewing him on the phone. I don't think I did. I feel like I'd remember that. You know, Battle asked me that earlier. Like, hey, have you ever interviewed Mike Leach? And I don't think I have.

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But if it would have, it would have been a great bit. So around the time that Leach had the thing with Gardner Minshew, where they won the big game, and he's being interviewed after the game, and they put the fake mustache on Mike Leach, and the chick interviewing him goes, hey, now you got a mustache. And he's like, yeah, I got one too. Anyway, like that used to be kind of a thing we would do on the show a lot. Anyway, me and Jelly still do that. Like it's a transition anyway. And he did the whole explanation about the mustache. And he's like, I don't think he had

a mustache when I recruited him. I don't recall. And it was just so Mike Leach. And it was great. It was funny. And we would play the hell out of that. And we had the idea to do a bit where we just threw out random topics to Mike Leach for him to record or to ramble on or pontificate about, talk in circles for 10 minutes about each topic. And then he would send them to us. And we would make it a bit called the 12 Days of Leachmas. Now, I don't know if it would happen at Christmas or whatever, but the concept of the bit was going to be throw out a topic,

let Leach kind of ramble on about it, and then each day do a new one. So it could have been the Loch Ness Monster. It could have been college football playoff. It could have been Christmas candy. I mean, it could have been anything. And he goes on for it as long as he wants to, and then we play the audio, and it's called the 12 Days of Leachmas. Well, I don't know how we got his number. It might have been through Salisbury. I'm not sure. I don't remember the whole timeline.

But that seems logical that that's where we would have gotten the info because Sean Salisbury was buddies with him. So Jim got his number and started texting him. I don't think he ever called him, but he texted him. And he proposed the bit of the 12 Days of Leachmas to Mike Leach. And Leach apparently was all on board. He was good. He said, that's funny. I'm in. Cool. We're going to have Mike Leach do the 12 Days of Leachmas. Well, it never came to fruition because we could never find time for him to do it or send him the topics and find someone to record it for him. It never really worked out. But he was in.

And I didn't really know this. I knew that Jim had texted him a little bit. But yesterday when we found out that Mike Leach died, I texted Jim and I said, Jim, did you kind of have a text relationship with Mike Leach? He says, yeah, I did actually. So we weren't like the best of friends, but we would talk every now and then. And I said, Jim, what the hell did you guys talk about? Like, what did you and Mike Leach text back and forth about? And his one word answer was Bigfoot. And that's what they talked about. Now keep in mind, this dude's never met Jim, never talked with him on the phone. He just texted him. And like, that's kind of who the dude was.

He was one of these dudes that would just talk with you and text with you. It didn't matter who you were. Some people never respond to people they know via text. Mike Leach, the head coach at the time of Washington State, is just conversing with Jim Mudd about Bigfoot. But that seems to be what this guy was, the genuine article, the real deal. And just you don't see that very often because everybody is so reserved and close to the vest and all that. But I wish I would have met the guy because I admired him, but I didn't get a chance to, obviously. And that's as close as I ever came to really having any sort of interaction with the guy either.