Mike Leach Quotes Both Strange and Thoughtful

On3 imageby:Dan Morrison04/28/22

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Mike Leach has always been a unique figure in college football. He is credited as an early innovator of the Air Raid offense, alongside his mentor, Hal Mumme. Today, Leach is one of the last remaining purists of the Air Raid. Texas Tech hired Mike Leach in 2000, setting him down the path he’s still on today as a head coach. There, Leach turned the program into one of the best in the Big 12, giving them their best success in the 21st century. Things ended ugly there, though, as Leach and his staff reportedly mishandled a concussion, and Leach was fired. He landed on his feet, though, taking the Washington State job a couple of years later. He turned around Wazzu, then took the Mississippi State job, where he stands now, to prove his Air Raid in the SEC.

Over the years, Mike Leach has developed a reputation for being eccentric and controversial. Still, in all of the weirdness that comes with the Pirate, are some amazing quotes.

10 Best Quotes From Mike Leach

  1. “Enjoy what you do, though, is an oversimplification. If you’re ever really good at anything, you don’t enjoy it all of the time because there’s a chase and a challenge to it that goes beyond enjoyment.”
  2. “Freedom of speech should be wide open as long as it doesn’t incite violence.”
  3. “ESPN wants to scrutinize everyone, but if they’re scrutinized, they run and hide.”
  4. “We waste a lot of time with that, and then we worry about the Kardashians. How can it be that we laugh at England’s obsession with the royal family? At least the royal family has college degrees or military service.
  5. “I know they’re creative, I know they’re going to come up with something, who knows what they’ll come up with? Is this really worth me not getting up and going to class?”
  6. “If you aren’t focused on what’s right here in front of you if you’re daydreaming about what might be, you really aren’t focused at all.”
  7. “The most important quality in a recruiter is persistence. You want a guy who is willing to make hundreds of phone calls, who is a good conversationalist, and has the ability to establish relationships with people.”
  8. “I bordered on great in dodge ball.”
  9. “If you get into a fight, don’t take your helmet off…We’re looking for smart players, not dumb ones. In the interest of time, don’t get in any more fights today.”
  10. “Sometimes a pirate beats a soldier.”

Inspirational Quotes From Leach

  • “Well, you’re going to be dead in a hundred years anyway, so live dangerously.”
  • “If you’re not loaded down with reasons why something won’t work, the reasons why it can work become much clearer.”
  • “You go out and do the best you can and hope it works. You just try to improve.”

Leadership Quotes From Mike Leach

  • “You’re either coaching it or allowing it to happen.”
  • “I think the most important thing is confidence. A lot of people think they’re confident, but if you think about it, most people aren’t.”
  • “There’s going to be times a guy’s having a tough day or tough series or something like that, but you’re not going to have the ability to develop through it unless you stick with it … There are times where you’ve got to make a change, but I don’t think changing for the sake of changing is necessarily the (proper approach). You’ve invested a certain amount of time in developing a guy, in giving him reps, so I think generally the thing to do if he’s having a bad day is to settle him down, not switch him out.”
  • “I don’t even remember what I said. I hope whatever I said was cute and clever, and maybe even a tiny bit humorous. I hope it wasn’t mindless babble, and if it was, hopefully, everyone will forget about it pretty quick.”

Funny Quotes From Leach

  • “After the game, that fella came up and needed some advice on candy, and so I did what I could to help him out.”
  • “LSU would be a good place to stand during a lightning storm.”
  • “I’ve said this one time before. If anybody could do it, we wouldn’t go around the country recruiting these guys to play quarterback. We’d just go to 7-Eleven and pull the guys out of there. There’s a lot of guys at 7-Eleven who’d like to play quarterback.”
  • “It’s a little like breakfast; you eat ham and eggs. As coaches and players, we’re like the ham. You see, the chicken’s involved but the pig’s committed. We’re like the pig, they’re like the chicken. They’re involved, but everything we have rides on this.”
  • “I’m a big fan of pirates in general.”

Team Attitude Quotes From Mike Leach

  • “Distributing the ball to all the different skill players is our biggest emphasis. We’re not a team that hands it to one guy and throws it to two. We want all five skill positions to touch the ball.”
  • “There’s nothing balanced about the 50% run, 50% pass because that’s 50% stupid.”
  • “Cal was playing harder than we were, so we sort of had a get-in-touch-with-your-feelings kind of conversation, where everybody got kind, fuzzy-gooey feelings for each other, and our intensity increased.”
  • “Therapeutic milieu, which is more than worrying about the patient, the medicines, and the surgeries; it’s about creating the environment around the patient to be able to maximize their health.”

Success Quotes From Leach

  • “Any stuff on that is so closely guarded. I don’t know if you saw Harry Potter, but in the basement of this building, it’s guarded by serpents and wild dogs and things like that, and you can go try to find the secret to that, but the chances of survival — always a risk.”
  • “Never confuse activity with results. However, when we do have staff meetings, we go as long as it takes to accomplish the task.”
  • “Well, outside of Lubbock, expectations aren’t very high. But, it’s ok, we play in Lubbock a lot this season.”
  • “The Rose Bowl (in response to a question asking what bowl he wanted his 7-5 team to attend).”
  • “It’s kind of like doing surgery with a chainsaw instead of a scalpel. We had pieces and parts flying everywhere. It turned out in our favor. We’ve got to clean it up next time around.”