Youth Football the Texas Tech Mike Leach Way

Many of you probably watched that incredible Texas Make Money Online-Texas game Saturday evening like I did. The sheer entertainment value of the game alone was worth the time investment, with Michael Crabtree scoring the winning touchdown on a thrilling play with just 1 second left on the clock. Mike Leach is a story unto itself, definitely a man that follows the beat of a different drummer. On the Texas side of the ball, athletes abound and Mack Brown is a true gentleman, a modern statesman of the game.

The Youth Football Lesson in This

As youth football coaches what can we learn from Coach Leach? First let’s look for a moment at Coach Leach’s background. With the exception of one year of sitting on the bench of his High School football team as a Junior, he never played organized football. He got his Bachelors at BYU and then his Law Degree from Pepperdine. At age 25, married, with his second child on the way he decides he wants to be a College Football coach. Yeah right, After stops at College of the Desert, Cal Poly, Iowa Wesleyan, Valdosta State, Finland and Kentucky he is now the head coach of Texas Tech, Not bad for a self described “Christian with serious obedience issues”. He seems to look at things from a slightly different perspective, maybe even a sort of an “outsiders” viewpoint.

He has amassed a 74-37 record at a school that rarely, no let’s rephrase that, never gets the top tier or even second tier talent in the state of Texas. Those players are reserved for Texas, Oklahoma and Texas A&M. Those kids go to the big money, big stadium, big tradition schools, not to Texas Tech and it’s tiny 57.000 seat stadium with a masked pirate Zorro mascot. Just getting to Lubbock is a major undertaking, like something out of one of those “Dead Zone” commercials, the place none of the Big 12 Media crews relish going.

Leach does it with quarterbacks no one else wants, 6 foot kids with offers to just Tech and maybe a mid major school. He has started a number of quarterbacks for just one season, many being fifth year seniors like BJ Symons, who passed for 52 touchdowns in his only year as a starter. The following season Symons was replaced by another fifth year senior, Sonny Cumbie, who passed for 4.742 yards, the sixth best in NCAA history. This season Cody Hodges a fifth year senior with four years of bench sitting experience is leading Tech’s quest for it’s first ever Big 12 Title and even a shot at the National Championship.

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