Stupid rules.
What makes this especially stupid in Leach’s case is context.
Before Leach’s arrival, Texas Tech had been to the Cotton Bowl, historically a desired destination for Texas schools, just twice — in 1939 and 1995. Under Leach, they went twice in nine seasons, in 2006 and 2009. They have not been back since his departure in 2010. He’s the only coach in 103 years to win 11 games at Washington State.
Fittingly, Leach’s last win, Mississippi State’s 24-22 triumph over Ole Miss in the Egg Bowl, was the Bulldogs’ seventh win over a team ranked in the AP poll while the Bulldogs were unranked under Leach in the past three seasons. No other school has more than four unranked vs. ranked wins in that span.
Sadly, he’d likely have picked up those three wins with another season of coaching at Mississippi State. Not that it’ll make any difference now.
Get The Picture 
If you ignore the covid year, he’s over .600.
If the CFB HOF doesn’t want to change their rules, even though Josh Pate made a really good case yesterday why they should, they could decide that the covid year doesn’t effect those rules for eligibility.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Not the same exact scenario but even the crotchety baseball HoF rescinded its standard induction eligibility requirements for Lou Gehrig and Roberto Clemente after their untimely deaths. It’d be good to see a similar flexibility from the CFBHoF in Leach’s case.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Maybe because of Leach’s notoriety and sudden passing the CFB HOF will make a change. Leach, Erk ,and Schnellenberger should all be in there.
LikeLike
WSU started playing 12 game regular seasons in 2002. Not 103 years ago.
LikeLike
If it’s winning percentage that would have gotten him there, it would require three wins without a loss that gets him over .600. Oddly, he’d be at career .600 if he won one of the games that he lost.
LikeLike
Or this season’s bowl game.
LikeLike
Easy big boy.
LikeLike
Maybe they will consider a change… it’s ten years before they decide tho, right? Be nice to see them make the move now (I like the idea of 2020 being removed from eligibility – stupid aberration) but folks who consider themselves the supreme authority of sport seem to do what’s right by it at a fairly rare rate.
If they DO, it’s be nice to see them grant SBIV an exemption from needing an AA nod to make the Hall. His is a case of “Seriously, fuckers, what more did you want from me?”
Go Dawgs
LikeLiked by 1 person
I was sorry to see that Leach died. I enjoyed some of his moments with reporters and he was a refreshing change from the standard coach speak.
That said, I’m not sure he is really HOF material if you look at his career objectively. His career record was 158-107 and his record at MSSt was 19-17. While those are winning percentages, I’m not sure they are Hall of Fame type numbers. In 21 years, he won a division twice, once at Texas Tech and once at Washington State. He was 8-9 in bowl games. He never won a conference championship and never won a major bowl game.
I don’t think there is much comparison between Leach’s coaching career and Erk’s. Erk won three national championships and played for two more in 8 seasons at a program he built from scratch. Erk also won 78% of the games he coached, a much higher percentage than Leach.
I hate that he died but I don’t think dying unexpectedly automatically makes a coach eligible for the Hall of Fame.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Good Lord. Leach isn’t deserving of consideration because he died. He’s worthy because of his immense influence over how the game on all levels is played now. Not sure there’s anyone over the last 20 years who can make a claim of being more influential. That’s also reflected in the size of the coaching tree he left behind.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Maybe the HOF will think consider that his 18 wins over AP ranked teams when his team was unranked trumps the winning percentage requirement. Since those 18 wins as unranked versus ranked is the most in college football history, it seems to me that gives the HOF a pretty easy excuse for sidestepping the winning percentage requirement.
LikeLike
But one has to be unranked (aka not very good) to get a stat like that.
LikeLike
This is the part where people like you ignore the actual contributions that Leach made to the game of football at all levels, which are so vast that he’s among a few handful of all time greats in the way in his offensive concepts change the way the game of football is played.
Guys like Pop Warner, Paul Brown, Lavell Edward, Don Coryell, and Bill Walsh.
Mike Leach is on that list with them. His Air Raid concepts are used from Pee-Wees to the NFL.
If that’s no HOF worthy, nothing is.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Texas HS football is completely different because of the Air Raid.
LikeLike
Texas for sure, but it’s spread far beyond that at this point. High schools and Pee-Wees in every state run principles and concepts like Mesh and Stick, even if they may call it something else. Colleges and Pros definitely do, too. Even Kyle Shanahan has incorporated some of those concepts into what was the last, pure West Coast Offense left in the NFL.
Leach forever changed the face of offensive football at every single level, and in Texas definitely, so many of the biggest and best high schools are still running that pure Air Raid that he would run, even if he was one of the last guys in college running what he would consider a “pure Air Raid.”
LikeLike
I don’t know that I’m ignoring it but I guess I don’t really see it. There have been wide open passing offenses in college going back to at least when BYU came to Athens in 1982. The “West Coast” offense in the pros, which substituted short passes for handoffs and focused on throwing more than running came about in the 1970s and was actually created in the late 1950s and early 1960s by a coach named Sid Gillman.
I’m not sure Leach was quite the innovator some think he was. He did bring more of a wide open passing attack to the places he coached but I don’t think he created everything he brought. Hal Mumme created as much of Leach’s offense as Leach did when they worked together.
I’m not bashing the guy. I’m just not sure he is a Hall of Fame coach.
LikeLiked by 1 person
What you see or don’t see is immaterial. This is where it’s better to admit that you don’t know what you don’t know, because in this, you’re wrong.
When the people who know football on a granular level (that’s not me, for the record) are telling you that Mike Leach was an innovator who changed the way the game is played, better to say, “Okay, sure,” than, “I don’t see it,” because one makes you look wise and the other makes you look foolish.
LikeLike
Okay, sure.
LikeLike
Don’t you have a date with Negan over on SDS or something? jcdawg83 gave an honest opinion and here you go calling him wrong and foolish. Good grief.
LikeLike
What does “honest opinion” have to do with anything when it’s ignorant of actual reality?
LikeLike
I’m sorry if I upset you about someone you obviously have some personal connection to but to say my opinion is ignorant of reality is a little much.
My opinion is based on the “actual reality” of his results as a head coach and the “actual reality” of the origin of the air raid offense. Leach was a good coach and he did really embrace the concept of the wide open, pass happy offense but to say he was the creator or innovator of it is really not true. There were wide open pass oriented offenses at multiple levels of football before 2000, the year Leach became a head coach.
LikeLike
You’re wrong. You are actually, literally wrong. My feelings have nothing to do with anything.
IT’S NOT ABOUT A STYLE OF OFFENSE. You, and others, keep conflating style of play (wide open offenses) with Leach’s offensive concepts, that he created as in they didn’t exist before Mike Leach, that have changed the way the game of football is played at every level of the game. And that is why you’re wrong.
But you can keep being wrong, or you can go educate yourself about why you’re wrong by reading all of the testimonials this week from people who actually understand and know about football far more than you ever could. It’s your prerogative, jcdawg83.
LikeLike
And if they ever create a College Football Innovator HOF, I’m sure he’d make the ballot…
LikeLike
Sid Gillman based his offense on what UGA’s Wally Butts developed.
Just about every scientific or academic advancement builds on something someone else did.
LikeLike
This is where looking strictly at numbers falls way short. There are individuals in many sports who have a huge influence beyond the numbers of wins, yards gained on and on that should be in the HoF due to their influence. Got damn sabermetrics assholes!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Some people can’t see the forest for the trees.
LikeLike
Someone mentioned that Wazzu has only played 12 games since 2002, but they’ve played 10 games with a bowl game going back at least what, 70 years? So Leach winning 11 games there is a big deal.
LikeLike
Reckon Mike Price’s two Pac 12 championship trophies are more prominent at Wazzou than Leach’s Alamo Bowl trophy?
LikeLike
You mean Mike Price’s Pac-10 Championships? But I digress. I think different aspects and accomplishments have different value. If you’re a trophy slut or a stats whore, you might value those things more than taking a program that was low as it could be, like Wazzu was before Leach, or a program that had been to two big time bowls in its entire history which was overall below average, like Texas Tech was before Leach. However, if you took a macro view, if you look at the time he spent in Pullman, WA, the amount of games he won for an extended period of time, same as at Texas Tech, which no coach had before or after, you would also see much value in that. If you weren’t a trophy slut or a stats whore, that is. You might also be able to see the value that Mike Leach brought to the game of football, overall.
Just because Don Coryell never won the AFC Title or the Super Bowl, is his contributions to the game of football any less? By your small-minded perspective, the answer would be yes and that answer would be laughably wrong.
So tell me, do you see more value in Gene Chizik as a head coach over Mark Richt, because Gene Chizik won a National Title and Richt never did?
When you try to look at the bigger picture, you tend to see the forest for the trees.
LikeLike
Larry Coker, Chizik, Ogeron, and the like certainly deserve credit for their titles, but their entire careers are judged on their breadth, not an isolated peak.
An entire career without any championships, i.e., sans peak, at all ought to communicate something to anyone capable of listening.
You want to give a guy a blue ribbon for “trend setting” “influence” “contributions” or a “coaching tree?” Fine. But head coaching football is about winning titles and continuing to win and/or challenge for titles. So yeah, Shula > Coryell. Madden > Coryell. Flores > Coryell. Noll > Coryell. Not really debatable.
And don’t tell me every AD who passed on the guy, and their were dozens upon dozens, was wrong. As we know, they’ll hire literally ANYONE. None at any decent place would hire the departed. Which much like the absence of a peak, ought to say something. It doesn’t take a thing away from the attributes/contributions we all agree are there and are admirable in their own way. Nor does it take away from his unique person qualities.
Mouse Davis, June Jones, Mike Leach, Don Coryell each have a place in football history. Its just not the same place occupied by elite head football coaches.
LikeLike
So you’ve decided, when confronted with the ridiculousness of your narrow point of view, to cherry pick the context to which you’re going to pay attention and discard the context that doesn’t fit into said narrow world view. Fair enough.
The man changed the way the game of football is played. That has value.
To put it another way, in much the same way that Bill Walsh’s West Coast Offense and all of the Super Bowls won by the teams that ran the West Coast Offense doesn’t exist without Don Coryell’s influence, Georgia does not win the National Title last year without Todd Monken’s offense and Todd Monken’s offense doesn’t exist without Mike Leach. In fact, given that every pro-style spread offense has incorporated Mike Leach’s Air Raid principles into their offense, you can point to countless high school state titles, CFB National Titles, and Super Bowls won in the last 20 or so years that likely would not have happened without Mike Leach’s influence.
All I know is that by the stringent terms of your narrow point of view, regardless of the attempted cherry-picking, Gene Chizik is a more impressive coach than Mark Richt. That’s not the world in which I would choose to live. 🤷🏻♂️
LikeLike
Many times I’ve said the exact opposite of your final conclusion. For example, I said often and believe that Les Miles is a gd idiot. He also happened to win championships. Which is sort of an indictment of your case. In a world where even gd idiots win championships, and that list is long, no championships at all is a difficult resume to defend.
You, on the other hand, assured us all that Ogeron “gets it” and incessantly insisted that Kirby was too stubborn to ever win a damn thing.
LikeLike
Hah. Now we’ve reached the point where I exposed your narrow point of view and you backtracked to tie your internal logic into a pretzel to make exceptions to try to make it work like you want it to, but instead of just admitting you were wrong and there is more than one way to find value in coaching contributions that exists beyond trophies and stats, you instead try to change the subject of the argument; i.e. introduce a strawman about something I’ve never actually said about Ed Orgeron.
Some things never change, Derek. So we’re good, dude. Fair enough. 👍
LikeLike
You know this thing’s got an archive right?
“Corch Irvin Meyers New USC Trojans Corch (2020)
December 8, 2019 at 1:56 PM
At this point Senator, what have you seen from Kirby over the last four years that shows you he possesses the self-reflective ability to admit he was wrong and try another way? What have you seen from him that tells you he will adapt?
I have see nothing from Kirby to tell me this is true. He learned absolutely nothing of substance from Nick Saban. Saban, like Belichick, heck, even like Orgeron, has always shown the WANT to adapt to stay successful.
Kirby doesn’t want to adapt. Kirby would rather lose doing it his way on offense than to admit he was wrong, embrace the reality of modern college football, and try to win another way.
We hired Kirby Smart to be Nick Saban. Unfortunately, Kirby Smart is far more like Les Miles. He’s too stubborn. He’s going to throw everything away because of his pride. And we all get to see it unfold over the next few years.”
LikeLike
Hah. Yes, saying Ed Orgeron was willing to adapt to win, which is exactly what he did in 2019, like, it’s a fact he brought in Joe Brady, is what you said I said.
Wait. It isn’t?
It’s lessens the impact of the “gotcha” when you take the time to prove that you misquoted me, Derek. Seriously, how much time did you waste to find that? Hahaha.
But as I said… all of that wasn’t the topic of our argument HERE. This is a strawman distraction. That you continue to think you can get away with these kinds of underhanded tactics to “win” arguments you’ve lost just shows, again, that some things never change.
Fair enough, dude.
LikeLike
As we’ve all seen since 2019, the Joe that mattered in BR was Brady, as you suggested, and not Burrows as I suggested.
Mea culpa, dude, mea culpa.
Dude.
LikeLike
Not what this argument was originally about, but fair enough, dude.
LikeLike
Derek, if you ever choose to update your Curriculum Vitae, I believe you should include that you have achieved the status of a slut and a whore of small-minded perspective who is laughably wrong.
Congratulations!
#sarcasm
LikeLike
Is it the hall of fame, or the hall of statistics?
LikeLike
When you stick with stats, you end up with hall of pretty good too often.
LikeLike
I wonder why they created the rule to begin with.
LikeLike
To keep Erk and Howard Schnellenberger out, because they’re all a-holes. 😉
LikeLike
My guess is that the HOF set an arbitrary baseline requirement to avoid being overwhelmed with fights over relative merits of coaches with mediocre records. It saves them from having to weigh Pepper Roger’s merits against Harry Mehre (Pepper won a Big 8 title at Kansas! Mehre has a Heritage Hall named in part after him!)
LikeLike
I think you need to be flexible as opposed to rigid in just about most things in life. Apply this subjective rule where it makes sense. Look the other way when it doesn’t.
Howard Schnellenberger belongs in the dang HOF. So does Erk. So does Mike Leach.
If it feels like a common sense decision, then make the common sense decision.
LikeLike
No point in lobbying me for that change. I have never been in a position of authority with the Hall of Fame. I simply stated a hypothesis as for the reason for the rule.
LikeLike
It’s a dumb rule, but I don’t think Leach should be in the CFBHoF until well after DGD Mark Richt is in.
LikeLiked by 1 person
While I understand the bias at play (Richt is going to get in, likely in the first year after the wait period ends), if you take the bigger, wholistic view of the entirety of football, Mark Richt’s contributions pale in comparison to Leach.
Richt might have gotten Georgia back on track after the dark years following Dooley, but Mike Leach changed the way the game is played at every level. If you want to bring it back to the micro, we don’t win the National Title last season without Leach’s contributions to how the game is played as Monken’s offense is rooted in the Air Raid.
LikeLike
Mark Richt’s Gulf Coast, HUNH offense with Charlie Ward at Florida State eventually transformed the way the game is played. You could make the case that Ward is the original dual-threat QB.
Leach did a ton with lesser talent, but he never embraced the importance of playing good (or even acceptable) defense.
I admit I have the bias associated with CMR, but the guy knew how to coach QBs and offensive football and take advantage of the skill set each guy had.
LikeLike
Yeah, but do championships really matter? In coaching anyway?
I mean don’t we honor Mouse Davis over a guy like Bear Bryant who just took other people’s ideas and won a bunch of natties with them? Where’s the originality? Anyone can win with other people’s idea can’t they?
Where’s Spurrier’s “coaching tree?” I mean I question his value in the HOF since I can’t think of a single coach who was able to do it anything like he did, at all. Ever, really. Ok he won some trophies but “influence?” I don’t see it.
Seriously, I can’t for the life of me understand why we can’t have a healthy respect for what Leach was and wasn’t. Was he innovative? Yes. Influential? Yep. Big coaching tree? No doubt.
Did he win any fucking trophies? Not a one. And that absence is a bfd when it comes to being a head football coach. Which is what the HEAD COACHES HOF is, right?
LikeLike
That’s really not true about the defense, though. Mississippi’s State’s defense the last three years has been good, and he had quite a few defenses at Wazzu that were good as well.
As for contributions, it’s not just “style of play.” That’s the mistake others like jcdawg83 are making in discounting his legacy. Leach changed offensive concepts across all levels of football; how offenses are practiced, run, and called in game as well as how they’re prepared for by defenses. That’s the difference between he and Richt. Mike Leach changed the game.
LikeLike
Doesn’t look like the sort of room I’d be too worried about getting into:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_College_Football_Hall_of_Fame_inductees_(coaches)
Mike didn’t seem like the type who’d give a single fuck about this “honor.” Hell, Urban will be arriving soon won’t he? Ick…
LikeLike
Like almost all “Halls of Fame”, it is really just a “Hall of Pretty Good”, which really makes all the fighting over whether someone “deserves” to be in or not even more asinine.
Personally, I try to observe the Groucho Marx rule on clubs….
LikeLike
Always.
LikeLike
There were plenty of people here that really disliked Leach. They’ve pretty Mac held their fire for the last couple of days but they know who they are.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Pretty much
LikeLike
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with disliking someone for their personality as long as it doesn’t cause you to then conflate your personal feelings with a reality that isn’t true.
Like, I think we, as Dawgs, to a one probably all dislike Steve Spurrier, right? Some of us probably even hate the soused bastard. Even with that dislike and hate, I would like to think most of us, though gritted teeth, can admit he was a helluva great coach, right?
I do think what you’re implying here is that those who dislike Leach are letting it cloud their judgment otherwise though, and that is disappointing.
LikeLike
yea.
LikeLike
Round the number up, problem solved
LikeLike
He will get in.
LikeLike