Joel Klatt remembers Mike Leach: ‘He was unapologetically himself’

Ask college football aficionados what Mike Leach’s coaching superpower was, and you’d get an extensive list of answers.

He was an offensive pioneer. The Godfather of the Air Raid. A brilliant and unapologetic football mind who simply wasn’t afraid to be himself.

FOX Sports college football analyst Joel Klatt, who played against Leach as a player and covered him extensively as a broadcaster, remembers all of those qualities. But according to Klatt, the one superpower he remembers most, the one he gave the sport of college football and all the wildly-successful coaches that worked under him, was how he inspired a revolutionary yet simple philosophy: Why not?

“If you talk with some of the coaches who coached under Mike Leach, they will tell you some wild stories about the way they would game plan, and the way that Mike wanted to do everything different from the norm,” Klatt said. “So often, coaches do things because they don’t want to stand out from the crowd and be criticized. Not Mike Leach.”

Joel Klatt speaks on Mike Leach’s impact on College Football

Joel Klatt remembers the legacy and sudden passing of Mississippi State Head Coach Mike Leach.

Klatt took to his podcast on Tuesday to share some of his most cherished moments and encounters with Leach, who died Monday at the age of 61 following complications from a heart condition. Leach, who was in his third season as the head coach at Mississippi State, fell ill Sunday at his home in Starksville, Mississippi.

He leaves behind his wife, Sharon, four children and an entire college football community that loved and appreciated him as much as he loved and appreciated the game of football.

“This is a terrible day in the world of college football and obviously in his family,” Klatt said of Leach’s passing. “You can’t really encapsulate the man he was outside of the sport unless you were a part of his family, so I don’t want to try and 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.”

Klatt shared stories of his many interactions with Leach, which included his first time covering the legendary coach during his time at Texas Tech, when he took a production meeting while ordering a coffee in the Starbucks drive through line.

There was also the time when Leach admitted to Klatt that he doesn’t call run plays for his offense, and the only time his team would run the ball is when the quarterback checked out of a passing play at the line of scrimmage.

But it was one story in particular that fully encompasses the demeanor in which Leach carried himself on a day-to-day basis and goes back to that superpower phrase: Why not?

The story was told to Klatt by USC head coach Lincoln Riley, who served as an assistant under Leach at Texas Tech from 2003-09.

It was a late-October day back in 2008, and Leach was preparing his Texas Tech team for an upcoming game against No. 1-ranked Texas. Leach was upset with the way his offense had been executing the go-route, so he made it clear that his team was only going to run go-routes that day in practice, regardless of coverage.

Some of Leach’s assistant coaches began to grow concerned with how much distance the wide receivers were running, which was probably somewhere near 3-4 miles in totality. One of Leach’s assistants at the time approached him and told him the team couldn’t continue to do this.

Leach looked at his assistant and simply said, “Why not?” He went on to explain that at some point in the season, the offense was going to have to throw a go-route against an unfavorable defensive coverage, and that it had to be successful when that happened.

Fast-forward to the final seconds of Texas Tech’s matchup against the Longhorns. Facing a second-and-10 from the 28-yard line with only eight seconds remaining in the game and trailing 39-33, senior quarterback Graham Harrell dropped back and threw a deep pass to All-American wide receiver Michael Crabtree, who caught the ball on the right sideline, broke a tackle and ran into the end zone for a game-winning touchdown. The play would go down as one of the most iconic game-winning scores in college football history.

The route that Crabtree ran during that play … a go-route.

“It didn’t matter what coverage Texas was gonna run because Graham Harrell and Michael Crabtree knew what to do because of that day where all they did was run go-routes in practice,” Klatt said. “It was because of Mike Leach and his willingness and fortitude to just say, ‘Why not?’”

Leach was boisterous. He was eccentric. But most importantly, he was authentic.

“Mike was unapologetically himself,” said Klatt, who paused for a moment to collect himself before saying his goodbyes. “He wasn’t afraid of what you thought, and in so many ways, it was freshening to see for someone in my position.

“Rest well, Mike. We’re all going to miss you.”

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Each week, FOX Sports college football analyst Joel Klatt dives into his Top 10 teams, answers questions and discusses the biggest storylines in college football on his podcast. Download “The Joel Klatt Show” here.