Innovative Head Football Coach of Texas Tech

Great article in today's New York Times Magazine by Michael Lewis, author of Moneyball and Liar's Poker. In this article, Lewis follows the brilliant and somewhat eccentric head football coach at Texas Tech, Mike Leach. A law school graduate with no football experience, Leach worked his way up through the world of coaching and has brought great success to the Red Raider football program with players that other powerhouse schools ignored (one of whom is my old high school teammate Wes Welker, who was shunned by the big schools but went on to break several records while at Tech and now plays for the Miami Dolphins). Leach has achieved such success because he ignores conventional wisdom in favor of a fast-paced spread out passing game and a rigorous physical training program.

One humorous part of the article deals with Leach's recent fascination with pirates. While playing Texas A&M, he remarked on the "cadets", A&M students who have a quasi-military student organization that is famous for dressing in military uniforms at games.

"How come they get to pretend they are soldiers?" he asked. "The thing is, they aren't actually in the military. I ought to have Mike's Pirate School. The freshmen, all they get is the bandanna. When you're a senior, you get the sword and skull and crossbones. For homework, we'll work pirate maneuvers and stuff like that."