The more you say, the greater the chance you’ll get in hot water
A GRIP ON SPORTS • No matter who you are, if you talk enough these days you are going to say something that ticks someone off. It’s a given. Guaranteed. Why? Because, thanks to proliferation of mass and social media, anything anyone in Eastern Washington says can be in Eastern Sumatra in a blink. Nothing is secret. And everyone gets offended. Read on.
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• Mike Leach enjoys pontificating. We all know that. Maybe not about the state of his football team, per se, but on just about everything else. Ask him about dating advice, he has something to say. Ask him about the best place to eat barbecue in East Texas, he has something to say. Ask him about politics, potatoes or pocket battleships, you’ll get an interesting answer. Which means, sooner or later he’ll say something that offends someone. Can’t avoid it. It’s the reason why most college football coaches are about as tight-lipped as General Eisenhower before D-Day. If you don’t say anything, you don’t tick anyone off. Yet, oftentimes, it’s the innocuous statements that cause the most troubles. And Leach finds himself in the middle of a tempest for some innocuous statements he made last year. A tempest with an epicenter in New Jersey, where the Cougars just happen to play this Saturday. Funny, as far as I can tell, Leach’s comments last year weren’t coaxed out of him, he volunteered them. And what he was trying to say made sense. Jacob Thorpe details the original comments – from last year, mind you – in his Pac-12 notebook this morning. What Leach seemed to be saying, at the time, is there are a lot of star athletes in New Jersey high schools. It’s just the depth of the talent makes its harder to evaluate them then it does in, Kentucky, say, the place Leach was coaching when he last watched a lot of New Jersey high school football. It’s a statement you could make about a lot of places. Look, the depth of high school talent varies from state to state, from region to region. You watch a high school game in Houston or Orlando or Anaheim and you are going to see guys coming off the bench with as much talent as players in other parts of the country. I remember talking with Greg Trent, the former WSU middle linebacker who, while undersized, was pretty darn good. But he wasn’t a star in high school. Far from it. By his estimation there were a handful of guys on his high school’s defense that were better than him. And he started for the Cougars for years. (By the way, Trent’s high school had about a dozen full-time coaches paid for by booster funds. They were not teachers.) Watching a Greg Trent play high school football, you could get an idea of how he would be in college because he was playing with and against, basically, nothing but college players. It’s an easier evaluation than, say, watching Will Derting running around for Okanogan back in the day, knocking down 5-foot-7, 135-pound running backs in the Caribou Trail League or wherever. That seems to be the thrust of what Leach was saying. You could argue that was his job back then, as an assistant coach, to watch exceptional kids against non-exceptional kids and then to project their college career. Project right, and you had done your job. Project wrong and you would be out of a job. No matter. What Leach said went into notebooks and memory banks back East, waiting for yesterday to explode on the Pac-12 coaches’ conference call. Given the opportunity, Leach tried to clarify his comments. Of course, he blamed the messenger – using the time-honored term “... taken out of context ...” – before making sure to praise New Jersey high school football. Reading the stories this morning, Leach’s attempt to mollify the Jersey crowds – after watching years of “The Sopranos,” I understand; I wouldn’t want to have Jersey people mad at me – didn’t seem to work. It rarely does these days. Say something that angers folks and they want blood. Even if what you said was innocuous and they interpreted it wrong. They still want blood. Even if you explain. They still want blood. So Saturday at the state college of New Jersey, Mike Leach will face a bunch of angry folks. Guess what they’ll want? The only way for Leach to shut them up is for his football team to step up and win the game.
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• WSU: Besides his Pac-12 notebook, Jacob has his conference power rankings as well as practice notes – Luke Falk practiced and looked sharp – and his morning links. Jacob will hold a live chat today. Maybe this Pac-12 Networks special on Elson Floyd will come up. ... So you want to know how people in New Jersey are reacting to Leach’s comments? I searched the net and found a whole bunch of stories about the tempest in a coffee pot. ... I also found stories related to the football game, but there are fewer of them. ... Stanford suffered a big injury on the defensive line. ... California has changed its practice schedule. ... Here’s one guy’s top 25. ... Utah needs great play out of its quarterback to keep winning. ... Is Vernon Adams the next Russell Wilson? ... No one seems happy with the first week of Pac-12 play. Or of ASU’s play.
• EWU: The Eagles felt they played OK, but not good enough against Oregon. So they aren’t satisfied. Jim Allen has more in this story. He also has a morning post with links. ... A former Eagle running back is back to being a running back. ... John Kreifels’ suspension is national news.
• Seahawks: With the NFL season opening this week, the person most in the spotlight in Seattle is someone who isn’t even practicing. Kam Chancellor is considered by some the most foolish man in sports for his continuing holdout. ... Part of the Hawks’ problem with Chancellor is the way they’ve built their roster for the future. ... Seattle needs some young players to step up each year. ... Fred Jackson seems to fit in perfectly with this team. ... Michael Bennett has fun, but plays hard. ... OK, yesterday was not a good day in New England. Not only did ESPN’s Outside the Lines and magazine do a number on the Pats, so did Sports Illustrated. A double whammy that gets to the core of the matter of Deflategate and all the other gates.
• Mariners: The M’s rallied from a tough start yesterday. But the problem was the Rangers just kept scoring. The result was a 9-6 win for Texas. ... The M’s called up four more players with Tacoma’s season done. The four did not include Mike Zunino. I wonder what that means. ... The M’s 2016 schedule is out. You can start planning what games you are going to miss now.
• Sounders: Sigi Schmid is having some medical issues. He was not at training again yesterday and won’t be coaching this weekend.
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• I’m sure I ticked off at least seven people with my post today. It was a good day. Until later ...
