I'm about to hop on a plane so I wont be transcribing coach Mike Leach's entire teleconference, but I've jotted down the highlights:

-- Leach confirmed that Sebastian LaRue, Jordan Dascalo and Wes Concepcion are no longer on the team. LaRue's departure leaves an already thin secondary a little thinner, and Dascalo and Concepcion were the only two punters listed on the roster, so that will be something to watch this spring.

-- Leach said that while he would ideally like to start spring practice a little earlier, he doesn't want to break the schedule up to accommodate spring break.

-- He heaped praise on Luke Falk for his performance last year, calling his play "… as impressive as any freshman I've ever dealt with" and saying that, "Luke's five games as a freshman are probably better than any freshman in history."

That being said, he said that Falk will split first-team reps with redshirt freshman Peyton Bender and that Falk isn't necessarily the presumed starter.

-- I asked him a bit about Alex Grinch and what the new defensive coordinator should expect during his first practices in charge of an entire side of the ball. Leach said secondary and offensive line coach are the best assistant positions to prepare someone to become a coordinator.

"You have to be mindful of the technique at your position but also broaden it out so you're seeing the big picture," he said.

Leach said that in the time he's spent with Grinch so far he's been very impressed. "Every time you talk to him he's talking about teaching. How do we teach this how do we teach that."

-- Leach said there are three main things he hopes to accomplish each spring: 1) "Evaluating your talent because none of it stayed the same. The vast majority improved and developed and you need to plug new faces in to where they can best impact the team." 2) "Arm them with as many skills and things as you can within the context of their role so they can continue to develop their skills over the summer." 3) Experiment with new stuff. This is the least important of the three, according to Leach.

-- I asked Leach what the characteristic that will define Grinch's style will be. Here is his answer: "At Missouri what really allowed them to excel in the SEC, and one thing impressive about Missouri, you know the SEC and not the conference as a whole, but you saw the same stuff I did and a lot of it was kind of fan-based rather than conference based but the SEC insulted their intelligence to even have Missouri in the conference. And then what have they done they've won the East the past two years and I think the biggest place they improved was their defensive identity and unifying that and there was a sense that Mizzou wasn't going to stop these SEC offenses and that proved to be false."

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