At first, UK’s players didn’t know about Mike Leach. Now they’re his biggest fans.
Long before he became the famous head football coach he is today, Mike Leach was just a 36-year-old assistant at the University of Kentucky in his first Division I job.
This Saturday, Leach returns to Lexington for the first time since then, leading his Mississippi State Bulldogs against the Wildcats at Kroger Field. But in 1997, Leach first arrived at UK from Division II Valdosta State as Hal Mumme’s receivers coach teaching the “Air Raid” offense that was to turn the program’s football fortunes around.
Back then, however, the players didn’t quite know what to make of this Pepperdine law school grad who had coached football at places like Finland and Iowa Wesleyan, and who had a poster of Geronimo on his office wall.
“We had never heard of these new coaches,” Anthony White, the former UK running back, said this week. “Bill Curry had been around for years, played for (Vince) Lombardi. We didn’t know if we could trust these guys.”
“When I first met him, I was like, ’This dude’s crazy,’” said James Whalen, the former UK receiver who went on to catch 90 passes as a senior under Mumme.
And now?
“Mike is probably my favorite coach that I ever played for,” White said. “He was no-nonsense, matter of fact. My favorite quote from him was, ‘A good excuse will get you beat just as fast as a bad excuse. It was either do or do not. If you get open, we’ll throw you the ball. If you don’t, we won’t. It’s on you.”
“I remember him being just extremely smart and diligent, based off preparation,” said Whalen, who after playing in the NFL with the Dallas Cowboys, settled in Texas and married a Texas Tech grad and spent time with Leach when Mike was compiling an 84-43 record in 10 seasons at Texas Tech.
“Over the years I’ve stayed pretty close with Hal,” said Whalen of Mumme, who now lives in Arlington, “and I’ve stayed close with Mike, as well.”
The one thing both players remember about Leach’s days at Kentucky was his honesty.
“You knew where you stood at all times with Mike,” Whalen said. “You didn’t have to wonder where you were within his personal depth chart, so to speak. And you knew what you had to work on to move up that ladder.”
Did they see some of the same eccentricities that Leach has become known for over the years? Of course they did.
“You know he loves pirates,” Whalen said. “You can be having a conversation with him and all of a sudden he’ll start talking about a historical figure from 200 years ago. And then out of the blue he’ll start talking about Subway sandwiches and by the end of the conversation it’ll all come together.”
“It might take him 30 minutes to get to the point of ‘don’t jump offsides,’” White said. “He may tell you about somebody traveling the world and there was this and they said that. At the end of the story, there’s always a nugget you can take from it.”
If sweet, Leach’s stay here was short. Elevated to offensive coordinator his second season — UK’s Outback Bowl season — Leach was gone by year’s end, hired by new Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops as the Sooners’ offensive coordinator. One year later, Leach was named head coach at Texas Tech. Following a messy Lubbock exit, he took over Washington State in 2012, going 55-47 before moving on to Mississippi State this season.
Are his former pupils surprised by Leach’s success?
“I’m not surprised,” Whalen said. “I’m a firm believer in the offensive system that they run. I think it produces yards and it produces points and it keeps your team in the game at all times. His personality is one that fans love him, the communities embrace him, the schools embrace him.”
“I didn’t know it would get to the point where he’d be a national treasure and everybody would be like, ‘Look at Mike Leach,’” White said. “When I started seeing that I was like, ‘That’s my dude!’ He’s one of the few that I’m really happy for that are getting the respect or at least the attention I think they deserve.”
