“Why are we manipulating the rules?”

Coaching is a brotherhood and a noble profession. I would hope there are not those in our business who would sneak behind everyone else's..—
Mike Leach (@Coach_Leach) February 14, 2014

..back and try to get something passed without the others in the profession having the opportunity to be heard.—
Mike Leach (@Coach_Leach) February 14, 2014

Take ten minutes or so out of your day and listen to this interview with Leach yesterday about the proposed substitution rule.  It’s an absolute tour de force.

My thoughts on the proposed 10 second/substitution rule in college football. cdn.stationcaster.com/stations/wjox/…—
Mike Leach (@Coach_Leach) February 14, 2014

“Speak up, Coach. I can’t hear you over the crowd noise.”

This story (h/t Doc Saturday) is chock full of awesome.

“I can remember in the third quarter, he’s pulling his cell phone out,” Harrell says of Texas Tech’s 2007 loss at Texas. “He always talked to me between series, so he’s talking to me and he pulls his cell phone out and he called the Big 12 commissioner. He’s like cussing out the Big 12 commissioner, telling him like, ‘These refs are screwing us. You better watch my post-game press conference because I’ve got some stuff to say.’”

Wouldn’t you have loved to have seen an enraged Mark Richt whip out a cell phone and call Mike Slive after the second targeting call in Nashville?

Of all the things to get on Mike Leach’s case about…

Paul Petrino bitching about Wazzou putting its defensive starters back in at the end of the game to try to preserve its first shutout in a decade is about the last thing I would have picked.  I mean, crap, just score, you know?

Although it means we get treated to this classic moment of postgame comity:

Tuesday morning buffet

Another day, another buffet line to negotiate.

• So, Spurrier advises Richt ‘Do not under any circumstance take the Georgia job’.  In 1991.  I’d love to know the context of that quote.
• Is there bias in the preseason rankings?
• Glad you like those jerseys, Arkansas State.
• Josh Kendall takes a look at South Carolina’s linebacker play against Georgia.  It isn’t pretty.
• If you’re the Georgia equipment trainer and Todd Gurley wants something, don’t argue.
• Salty Gamecock tears are quite tasty, you know.
• Craig James, doting father or schmuck?  You decide.
• Chip Towers thinks the special teams’ problem with dropped snaps stems from Nathan Theus snapping with more velocity than Ty Frix did.
• Bill Snyder is one classy dude.
• So is Mark Richt.

Don’t mess with Texas.

Judge knocks out remaining claim in Mike Leach’s suit against Texas Tech.  That sucks for entertainment purposes, but at least we’ve still got Leach’s suit against ESPN to look forward to.

“He was literally crying at practice.”

I can see how what happened to Adam James scarred the management at Texas Tech permanently.

Former players have come out and told CBSSports.com that Gillispie broke NCAA rules by not adhering to practice limits. He once went eight hours in a single day. NCAA rules stipulate you can’t practice more than four hours per day or 20 hours per week.

“We practiced a lot more than 20 hours a week,” former guard Kevin Wagner told CBSSports.com.

“We used to go more than four hours all the time,” added Jaron Nash, who transferred to North Dakota after last season. “I remember that day when we went almost all day. We didn’t leave until 9 p.m. or so. It was pretty bad. A lot of guys were really hurt after it. One guy had a stress fracture in both legs.”

One source identified that player as African native Kader Tapsoba, who did not play last season while dealing with multiple stress fractures.

“He was literally crying at practice,” said the source, who was with the program last season. “He couldn’t even run and Gillispie had him running up and down the steps at the arena. I remember the doctor getting the X-rays back and coming to practice and telling Gillispie it was really bad. He’d just ice him up and tell him to go practice.”

“He shouldn’t have been practicing,” he added. “But he bullied everyone, including the trainer. He’d make the trainer make kids come back. Bodies were dropping like flies. One day I walked in and the whole team was in the training room. All the players and even the managers. He’d make them practice.”

I can’t wait to hear ESPN’s take on this.

Mike Leach on the balance “myth”

He’s said things before like what you’ll hear beginning at the 1:27 mark.

The transcript is here.  It’s good stuff.

“Balance, whether you run it or throw it, is getting contribution from all the skill positions. Ours is a balanced offense. The wishbone is a balanced offense. Some I-tailback offense, it may be a great offense, it may be great for the team that they play for, where you’re giving it to the back 40 times. There’s nothing balanced about it. It doesn’t even add up to balance. We try to be balanced based on contributions by all the skill positions.”

Steve Spurrier, uncle of the Air Raid

Not the scheme.  The name.

“We had Dustin Dewald throwing for more than 400 yards a game, and, as part-time SID, Mike had to try to get him in the newspapers,” Mumme recalled. “Mike read an article about Steve Spurrier at Duke having an offense they called ‘Air Ball,’ so Mike came to me and said, ‘We’ve got to call our offense ‘Air Raid.’ ”

(h/t abajournal.com)

It’s a good thing he wasn’t asked about the hookers.

Craig James gets caught in a lie about hiring a PR firm to combat Mike Leach and then defends himself by telling another lie about the timing of the hiring.

There’s really no way ESPN could bring James back after all of this, is there?

Friday morning buffet

Congrats, you made it!  Now have some football.

• Quayvon Hicks thinks Zander Ogletree is a “great man”… just not a big man.  (Seeing as Hicks just won a state title in the discus throw, I’m not gonna argue with him.)
• North Carolina’s ACC peers aren’t very happy with its Butch Davis-era NCAA violations.
• Michael Elkon confirms that I made a good decision not to listen to the absurd Buzz Bissinger debate (using the term loosely) about banning college football.
• But I sure as hell would have tuned in for this:  Leach said, “I would have massacred those people. I would have loved to been part of that debate.”
• Mark Richt has some thoughtful observations about concussion safety and where football might be headed as a result.
• Boise State may be having second thoughts about joining the Big East, in part because the TV money may not be there.
• Years after the demise of the Blue-Gray Game, it looks like Montgomery will be hosting a new “College Football All Star Game”.
• Derek Dooley, Roy Adams and Adolf Hitler.  Who says Tennessee football isn’t fun?