The AP Top 25 college football poll is back every week throughout the season! Gruff, pioneering and unfiltered, Mississippi State’s Mike Leach was one of the most influential football coaches of this or any generation. Thank you for sharing in the joy of our beloved husband and father’s life.” In 21 seasons as a head coach at Texas Tech, Washington …
When Mike Leach first moved to Mississippi State from Washington State, he stayed in the Left Field Lofts at the Bulldogs’ baseball stadium. Running the prolific Air Raid offense he learned from Hal Mumme as an assistant early in his career, Leach’s teams went 158-107 and often set records along the way. And that’s why he was able to turn …
Most of the coaches who stand out as singular entities in the big sweep of college football got there because they won, won, and won. As author S.C. Gwynne chronicles in The Perfect Pass, a tome of the system that Mumme once told me I should read, the Air Raid was a radical shift when Mumme and Leach developed it …
There is an alternate universe where the committee that selected the new football coach for the Key West High Conchs chose correctly in 1996. “Coach Mike Leach cast a tremendous shadow not just over Mississippi State University, but over the entire college football landscape,” MSU president Mark E. Keenum said in a statement. “The place is like Disneyland, only without …
The ideas that would one day inspire a football revolution had been rattling around in Hal Mumme’s head for a few years before he finally had the chance to use them. You dream about it.” — Lincoln Riley “I was always impressed that Lincoln wasn’t shy about sharing his thoughts, even though there were older, more experienced coaches in there,” …
Mike Leach settles into a leather chair in his office overlooking Mississippi State’s practice field after a routine spring session with his team and is asked to give a status report on the Air Raid offense, which has been carving up major-college defenses for the last 25 years. Other Air Raid descendants who are currently FBS head coaches include USC’s …
