I get that the SEC West is a tougher neighborhood than Mike Leach has ever had to navigate, but I do wonder how much this will matter as a counter.
What would happen if Mike Leach got to coach a team full of really good college football players?
While the new Mississippi State head coach made the most noise this week over his tweet about Mitt Romney, and he didn’t have a whole lot to do with the new Bulldogs coming in, this is technically his best recruiting class in 19 years has a head coach.
Depending on what brand of recruiting rankings you believe in, this 2020 MSU class and the 2006 Texas Tech recruiting class – which didn’t turn out to be any big whoop – were both generally ranked around the mid-20s nationally. No other Leach class at Texas Tech or Wazzu was able to bust past the 30s, and most of them were around the mid-50s or worse.
Remember, Leach actually did very little recruiting in Starkville, and Moorhead imploded and lost his job before signing day. If MSU can garner a mid-twenties class without much from the head coach, that says a lot about the talent base Leach has access to now. How much difference will it make?
Get The Picture 
Leach’s M.O. is the same everywhere he coaches. He’ll win two he shouldn’t and lose two he shouldn’t. He’s got four automatic losses every year in the SEC West, so I predict he’ll reliably go 6-6 every year until they get tired of his act.
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4? Alabama, Auburn, LSU, and ? Ole Miss, Arky, and A&M are all gettable. Let’s say he loses 4 games every year, and then has one year where he only loses 3. He would match Mullen, and qualify to be Florida’s next head coach.
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He’s not going to beat A&M. He’ll win some against Ark and Ole Miss, and he’ll lose some against them, too. But you can count automatic L’s against Bama, Auburn, LSU, and A&M.
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If Leach can generate excitement through some moral victories and a little success, MSU recruiting could do well for the next two years or so. Although, Ole Miss going through their transition removed what little competition MSU would normally face. Jr. may bring recruiting pressure of his own going forward.
I see MSU becoming one of those teams that will shock one of the upper West teams if they come in unfocused. Remember the days of Hefty Lefty at UK?
Lot’s of points can put pressure on opposing offenses to execute.
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The SEC is a defense league. It’s NOT the Big 12 or Pac 12. He’s going to get hammered by Bama, Auburn, LSU, and A&M every year. You can count on that. I give him 2-3 years before MSU throws him overboard.
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Did you just watch LSU….or what am I missing here ?
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Lane is going to run rings around him.
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Junior is 0-1 against the Pirate.
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Going to be 3-1 by 2022. I get that you’ve got a man-crush on the dude, but he is what he is at this point. Had a W over Oregon in his grasp and then just gagged it away. Kudos to him for putting together a team and game plan that could have and should have beat Oregon. But he is also the guy who made some dumb ass decisions to give the game away.
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So, Ole Miss is just like Oregon?
I don’t have a man-crush on Leach as much as I wonder what Junior’s done to give you so much confidence in him.
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Senator, you have a man crush on Leach. He is a mediocre dilettante football coach. The SEC will expose him as a fraud very soon.
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Thanks for letting me know. 😉
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The Senator has a man crush on Leach?…Not that there’s anything wrong with that….
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Ole Miss is probably closer to UCLA. Who Leach gagged away a 32 point lead with 22 minutes left to play.
That takes a special kind of stupid right there. He helped make a huge mark in the game, but he’s more into his brand than his team at this point.
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Is Leach at MSU very different than Mullen at MSU? I know each would tell you he is the smartest guy in the room, while pontificating on all that’s wrong with the world. But there’s a definite ceiling at that school, and Nick ain’t retired yet. I see seasons like 8-4 or 6-6 continuing. The only question is which opponent experiences the occasional upset.
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Mullen at MSU was their glory years (longest stretch of sustained winning football since the 1940’s), so I think most Starkvillians would take that in a heartbeat. Leach averaged 8.5 wins per year at Texas Tech (they averaged 6.2 the decade prior and 6.0 the decade following), and Wash St had four consecutive winning seasons for the first time since the 1930’s while he was there. If MSU goes 8-4 and gets the occasional upset, then he will be an overwhelming success. Dan Mullen was 69-49 for the 9 years he was there (33-39 in SEC).
No one is predicting he will light the SEC West on fire, but… if he did should anyone here be upset about it?
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Not me.
I’d love to see that.
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He’ll generally go between 6-6 and 8-4, and he might hit 9-3 one or more times depending on how long he’s there. That’s fine, though they did just run a guy off who did the same thing in his two years. Is Leach going to fit the “culture” any better than Moorhead?
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Big Leach fan, but his sudden access to better players won’t make any difference, as he’s also facing far more talented competition to boot than he did at TTech and Wazzu. The fact that he’ll have to face Bama, LSU, AU and TAMU yearly is just unfair. Meanwhile, Wazzu’s 4 toughest PAC-12 games next year will be Oregon, Washington, Utah, and ASU. Night and day difference.
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Also, the problem with Leach’s offence is that, when he’s had to face a respectable or better D with relatively equal talent (according to recruiting rankings), his Cougar teams simply haven’t performed well. For ex., against UW the past 5-6 years, I believe they have only averaged around 12-13 points per game.
All in all, my main concern with Leach if I’m a MSU fan (or Leach fan in general) is that he readily admits he likes to work more of a banker’s hours type schedule (relatively speaking) than grind out 80+ hours a week that SEC coaches are known for. If you read his book or listed to his 2 hour interview with Clay Travis last summer, he talks about how he doesn’t believe in arriving early and staying late, and he likes to give his assistants as much time off as possible as well.
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I’m kind of hoping he gives Malzahn fits.
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Senator, you’ve got a man crush on him because he earned a law degree and he’s glib in interviews. Mike Leach is a mediocre dilettante football coach of a sub mediocre football program. He’s not going to consistently beat real professional college football coaches like Gus.
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Now I can certainly see that, particularly considering AU’s personnel losses and their less than stellar recruiting classes as of late. The AU game next year also is in Starkville. By the way, they have a four game stretch next year of TAMU, at Bama, at LSU, and AU in the middle of the season. That’s four straight games against all top 15 if not top 10 opponents in a row.
Again, this is just unfair, and I’m curious what MSU did to the SEC admins that they punished them with this.
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He certainly did when Wazzu played at Auburn in ’13.
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Well…yeah. If Kim-Jung-Il took the MSU job I’d want him to give Malzahn fits.
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I don’t see Leach beating Gus, but postgame I can see him calling Gus a “lying dog-faced pony soldier”.
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He’s waited his whole life to coach a team with talent like this.
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No man crush here, and no real prediction, either. But it will be interesting to watch. Leach has people’s attention because he has a rep of doing more with less, and the logic seems to be that he will do even more with more. I am not sure that equation will happen, but to be fair, he doesn’t have to beat any of the 4 teams in the TAMU-BAMA-LSU-AU stretch; he just has to show that they are competitive with those teams. That will be enough for next year. And if he beats AU we will all be grinning.
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