Steven Sipple: Bill Moos offers unique perspective on Mike Leach, a man Moos once hired – and always respected and enjoyed
Late Monday night, Bill Moos texted me a photo of him standing with one arm around Mike Leach.
They wore cargo shorts, T-shirts, and ball caps. They both held a drink. They had life by the tail.
“Bahamas 2018,” Moos wrote.
Moos, the former Nebraska athletic director, is a master storyteller with an incredible sense of humor. You probably can imagine his conversations with the unfiltered Leach, who Moos hired at Washington State following the 2011 season. They were together at WSU until 2017 before Moos came to NU.
Moos in February of 2020 shared some Leach stories with me when I worked as a columnist for the Lincoln Journal Star.
On this Tuesday, the first since Leach’s passing Monday night, it makes sense to reprise those stories. It’s a day of sadness, as most of us simply weren’t ready for Leach to move on. Moos’ stories, though, add some levity. Moos embraces levity, as did Leach.
So, on with the stories:
Moos always went to Leach’s office … for good reason
Moos stayed in touch with Leach almost exclusively via text messages — because Moos said it always was difficult to get the coach off the phone.
Along those lines, Moos never called a meeting with Leach in the athletic director’s office. Instead, Moos would go to Leach’s office.
“That way I could leave,” Moos says. “Otherwise, it might last four hours. He’d talk about Hollywood and politics and whatever else.”
Moos recalled one night when he got stuck on the phone with Leach. The athletic director was watching the 1993 Western film “Tombstone” for “maybe the 57th time,” he said. But he needed to talk to Leach about a matter.
“So, I called him at 11:30 p.m.,” Moos says. “I told him, ‘Mike, I just have one quick thing here. …'”
But Leach wanted to talk about authors. He wondered whom Moos liked better, Ernest Hemingway or F. Scott Fitzgerald. Moos humored the coach — “‘The Old Man and the Sea’ is great, and you can’t go wrong with ‘The Great Gatsby” — and Leach just went on and on.
“If you and I were hanging around, we’d rather be with Hemingway,” Leach concluded.
The coach then talked about a pirate sword he gave actor Matthew McConaughey as a wedding gift.
“You know what I love about pirates?” Leach told Moos. “It’s that they come from all different cultures, kind of like a football team. You’ve got thieves, gypsies, people with physical deficiencies. …”
On and on.
“I look outside and the sun’s coming up,” Moos recalled. “The garbage trucks are coming down the street. I hadn’t slept. …”
Leach kept unique hours
Leach never got to work before 1 p.m., Moos said.
“He had a recliner at the end of his bed in his bedroom with a little table there,” Moos said. “He’d break down film. His wife would come in around 3 and bring him a sandwich. He’d sleep until noon, then walk to work while learning Spanish (on headphones) as he walked through a garbanzo bean field.
“His coaches knew their staff meeting would be at 2, and sometimes that was delayed.”
The secret of Leach’s note card
You ever wonder what was on the small note card that Leach held on the sideline?
The card was a football field, and wherever the ball was thrown, Leach would put a dot there, Moos said.
“If we’re throwing too many times over toward the left hash, he sees that tendency and adjusts. It’s just a bunch of dots!” Moos said.
No ankle injuries for a reason
Leach, upon taking the Washington State job, had an immediate request: a sandpit in the team’s training area.
“I told him, ‘If you don’t mind me asking: Why do you need a sandpit?'” Moos said.
Leach told him that NFL great Walter Payton used to train by running river deltas to strengthen his ankles.
“We had one in within three weeks,” Moos said, “and I don’t ever remember an ankle injury.”
But Leach had other things in mind for the sandpit.
“You always have guys who think they’re tough and get in fights around campus,” he told Moos. “So, we have a Fight Night. We have a knock-down dummy that keeps popping back up. We put it in the sandpit with the guy who got in the fight and made him go 12 rounds. I haven’t seen a guy make it three yet. …”
Try dancing around in the sand with your hands in a fighting position and you’ll know why.
The coach’s three main rules
Along those lines, Leach had three main rules: no drugs, no stealing and no putting your hands on a woman.
“A guy who steals, you can’t trust him when he comes up to the line of scrimmage,” Leach told Moos. “And a guy who hits a woman is a coward.”
The dreaded Tower of London
Moos greatly appreciated that Leach emphasized academics. Hence the Tower of London.
“The kid who misses class takes a cement brick block and holds it above his head with the whole rest of the team running behind him through campus — during the middle of the school day,” Moos recalled. “The kid then ends up on the fourth floor of Todd Hall in the English Literature area. He has to go in and recite Shakespeare in an English class.”
Yes, that happened — but only once, Moos noted proudly.
Moos is on a roll
Moos gets on a roll, recalling the player who forgot to turn in a term paper.
You perhaps have heard this story, but it’s still fun to ponder, especially in a society that’s generally gone soft.
Leach never did go soft.
“Mike puts a desk at the 50-yard line, and the kid’s writing his term paper while practice is going on around him,” Moos said. “Balls are literally bouncing off the desk … I loved it. But our leading receiver quit because he couldn’t handle it all. I mean, there had been no discipline in the program.”
Leach changed that. He had low tolerance for shiftless souls.
Leach goes 55-47 at Washington State
Back to the sandpit. Moos heard from professors who were concerned about inhumane treatment of players.
“Mike didn’t give a sh–,” Moos recalled. “I told him, ‘You have a lot of eyeballs on that thing.’ He responded, ‘Well, those eyeballs are going to like the scoreboard someday.'”
Leach was 55-47 in eight seasons at Washington State, including 36-36 in the Pac-12, before taking over Mississippi State’s program and going 19-17 and 11-15.
In the four seasons before Leach arrived at WSU, the Cougars were 9-40.
Moos had message for detractors
Leach didn’t turn things around immediately in Pullman, going only 12-25 in his first three seasons.
“I’m hearing from fans, ‘Get this clown out of here, and by the way you have to go, too,'” Moos recalled. “I’m an alum. I came to save the place!”
Washington State’s president at the time, the late Elson Floyd, had Moos’ back.
“So, as the nasty emails and letters came in, I sent them to our development office marked ‘NBT file,'” Moos says.
NBT file?
“No bowl tickets,” Moos said proudly. “Because when we do get good, I’m not going to forget.”
He didn’t forget.
“We go 8-4 and I hear (from fans), ‘Bill, I’m so sorry. …'”
He didn’t care. No bowl game tickets for you!
Yes, Leach loved it.
“He knew I supported him right to the hilt,” Moos said.
Right to the end.
