Mike Leach has been making the rounds – ESPN, The New York Times, AP – with his side of the story that lead to his firing.
We still don’t know everything, but I’ll say this: between these e-mails and the phone messages Craig James left with his son’s position coach (that evidently Leach saved), it’s starting to look like the pirate can make a pretty good case for being unfairly treated.
As for the rest of the players in this affair, silence might be the better tactic going forward. It’s certainly got to be better than hearing this from Craig James:
“Absolutely. This isn’t something we asked for,” Craig James said. “We continue to be a victim of something. Our family is going through a lot right now, far more than we ever wanted to go through.”
Or the admission that last year’s contract negotiations between TTU and Leach left a bad taste in certain school officials’ mouths.
And I wonder if the TTU chancellor feels as nonchalant today as he sounded before this stuff dribbled out.
Asked if a settlement could be reached, Hance said he expects the dispute to end up in court.
“If he wouldn’t reach a settlement to try and keep his job where he’s being paid $2.5 million, I doubt he’ll reach a settlement on anything else,” Hance told the Chronicle. “I imagine we’ll just go to court.”
At this point, that doesn’t take a lot of imagination at all.
Get The Picture 
Ah, the Freedom of Information Act. So easy to utilize for a journalist, so hard to remember for a shady university administrator.
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God , I hate the pencilnecks that run our country’s Universities. All of them. With a passion…hate. Slimy weasels all!
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You mean Jim Sowell, Dallas businessman, who appears to be the lead influencer here?
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If anyone truly believes that big-time sports are run solely by academic administrators, I have some land in Fla. you might be interested in.
(It’s a team effort between school, state, and community.)
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Are you saying they have liquor distributors in Texas?
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The genius at Dallas News who redacted the documents did so with little black boxes that can easily be dragged and dropped back off them, or simply deleted. Now all those addresses and phone numbers are out in cyberspace for angry Red Raider fans to behold.
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I noticed that. Guffaw.
I think the knucklehead admins who were using email for this kind of conversation deserve what they get, though, in a karmic kind of way…
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Leach is crazy like a fox. He will own TT, the fans love him and guess who will be on the jury. These Admin guys are so far removed from real life they actually think you can get away with anything.
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The case between Leach and Texas Tech seems like a contract action that will probably come down to whether they had cause to fire him. If my speculations are right (cause means no buyout), the damages will or will not be the buyout amounts. He has a chance at punitive damages but it depends on what other claims he can sling against the wall and whether Texas law allows punitives in contract actions.
The case between Leach and ESPN could be more interesting. It would be a tort case with definite punitive damage claims. Leach has to prove actual malice by ESPN, and considering Craig James’s position with ESPN Leach just might have a chance. Sports dads are prone to diarrhea of the mouth for anything related to Sonny, so I wonder how many of Craig’s phone messages and face to face talks Leach’s witnesses can remember. Craig will probably get amnesia.
Trivia dept. Wally Butts didn’t have to prove malice. His case pre-dated Sullivan vs. New York Times, which established the malice requirement for public figures. The movie “Absence of Malice” (Paul Newman/Sally Field) has a scene where the newspaper lawyer says of the subject of an article: ‘I wish he was a football coach. It’s so easy to say whatever you want about a football coach.’
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TT needs to reassess its position. Even if the boosters and University types are idiots surely they have access to lawyers who are not. Pay the man, include a non-disclosure agreement and hire a quality coach to replace him. Will they do that? Probably not given the lack of sophistication demonstrated by them so far. The WWL is another matter altogether. By now they have realized their exposure hence the change in tone and tenor of WWL broadcasters of late. CBS has come out on Leach’s side. The PR battle has flipped. I wouldn’t want to be in Craig James’ shoes. He may end up getting canned. He undoubtedly will get sued.
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I recently had occasion to participate in a university-admin and faculty discussion re: students with disabilities. The university lawyer told us point blank to take the conversation off the email airwaves, and this is why.
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Man, I really enjoyed reading those emails.
My favorite part was the “Not Quite Completed Completion Bonus”. Awesome.
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Mike Leach fires personal injury attorney and hires Atticus Peck as his trial co-counsel…
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Mike fires Atticus Peck and hires Fielding Melish as trial co-counsel thinking that those on jury are smoking one joint before they smoke two joints because it helps them relax so they can listen to his emails and Craig James ESPN arguments again…
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Mike fires Fielding Melish. Mike hires his cousin Vinny as trial co-counsel. Mike is pleased with the scathing cross-examination of the Tech administrator on how many email messages there were…
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Mike fires his cousin Vinny. Hires Vinny’s high anxiety cousin Pacino as trial co-counsel…
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The latest…
“Texas Tech has released a signed, sworn affidavit from an athletic trainer who says former coach Mike Leach instructed him to “lock” receiver Adam James in a dark place and that he disagreed with Leach’s treatment of James after the player was diagnosed with a concussion.
According to the affidavit, taken by representatives of the university on Dec. 21 and signed on Jan. 1, trainer Steve Pincock did not agree with the treatment and said he knew of no other player being placed in a similar room.
In releasing the affidavit from Pincock and treating physician Dr. Michael Phy, the university said, “After coach Leach’s conflicting recent media accounts of the treatment of James, the university asked witnesses to sign affidavits attesting to their original statements.”
Phy told university officials in an affidavit that James “may not have been harmed” but he “considered this practice inappropriate.” ”
Here’s where Leach loses his entire case. Right here. (for better or for worse.)
Just sounds like three hair-trigger parties getting together to see who could f*ck each the others over fastest and hardest. Leach blinked, a this will most certainly be a violation of the terms of his contract.
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Well, maybe they tried to be ” balanced” for a day or so, but during tonight’s Alamo Bowl, the WWL is devoting every other minute to the case against Leach. Though I can’t really see that the prosecution is well served by Bob Davie saying five times that coaches never, ever get involved with injury issues.
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Probably realized that they’re going down with Tech at this point, so they’re going down fighting. Might as well bias the public against Leach now prior to jury selection.
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Craig James will be and should be fired by ESPN. He has no credibility anymore. He used his big microphone to get his ass in a crack he cannot escape. He let his mouth write a check his ass can’t cover. BTW, did any of you notice how his son dodged the camera last night when the sideline camera was on him? He looked like a guilty weasel. A guy who truly believes he’s in the right would have not kept turning his back on the cameraman.
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