Leach Trapped In A Closet of His Own Making

If you’re thinking that the Mike Leach “I did not kidnap, I merely secluded a player in a closet” story sounds weird, you’re terribly unfamiliar with Mike Leach. Leach is a friend of Donald Trump, has an unnatural fascination with pirates, runs the pass-happiest offense is college football, once picked a kicker based on a halftime contest, and occasionally does the weather on Lubbock television. He’s weird. You should be used to it by now.

He’s also successful, and the combination may be finally working against him. Leach comes with a high drama quotient: he banned Twitter accounts for players this year, accused them of listening to “their fat little girlfriends” after a loss to Texas A&M, and now has done something somewhere between outright imprisonment of a player and putting them in a closet for their own good. That just covers this year, as past years have included accusing Big 12 officials of conspiring against the Red Raiders, open stumping for open coaching gigs, and public mocking of NFL coaches for questioning his ability to prepare qbs for the pros.

Leach is undoubtedly the most successful coach in Texas Tech’s history, but eight and nine win seasons have become routine, and routine gets taken for granted very, very quickly when combined with constant theatricality and low-level controversy. (Oh, and he locked the son of an ESPN broadcaster in a closet in a dispute over a concussion in a year filled with concussion awareness stories. That probably doesn’t help, either.)