‘He loved the Palouse.’ Mike Leach’s legacy remembered during game between coach’s former Washington State, Texas Tech programs
PULLMAN – From Washington State’s standpoint, there was nothing particularly memorable about a nonconference game against SMU in 2010.
The Cougars fell 35-21 to the Mustangs in Dallas – the first of eight consecutive losses for a team that finished with a bleak 2-10 record under third-year coach Paul Wulff.
But Jack Thompson still remembers one aspect of the game in vivid detail.
On more than one occasion, the CBS color commentator for WSU-SMU professed his love for Pullman, noting the natural beauty of the Palouse and expanding on why he admired what the Cougars were trying to build amid a dark time for the Pac-12 program.
“He said, ‘Have you ever been to the Palouse? That place is beautiful,’ ” recalled Thompson, the star WSU quarterback affectionately nicknamed the “the Throwin’ Samoan” during his college career. “I’m going, ‘Is he doing an audition here or something like that?’ I couldn’t believe it.”
The real audition came roughly one year later when the same color commentator met up with WSU Athletic Director Bill Moos in Key West, Florida, about the school’s coaching vacancy. Mike Leach was formally hired on Nov. 30, 2011, and spent the next eight years rebuilding the once-moribund Cougars program into a consistent winner that routinely appeared in the AP rankings and competed for Pac-12 division titles.
“Then a year or so later, he’s our head coach,” Thompson said, “and boy, he did the number for us.”
In fitting fashion, Leach, who died from heart complications on Dec. 12, 2022, was inducted into WSU’s Athletic Hall of Fame on Friday, one day before the programs he’s most closely linked to – WSU and Texas Tech – met in a nonconference game at Gesa Field.
Leach’s wife, Sharon, was in attendance for Friday’s ceremony, along with a few of his children, who also joined their mother during a halftime ceremony Saturday.
The late coach’s son Cody, now a “special teams fellow” at Mississippi State – Leach’s final college stop before his unexpected death – submitted an acceptance video that was played Friday night.
“I know he would’ve been extremely honored,” Cody Leach said in the video. “As a guy who grew up Cody, Wyoming, the small town of Pullman with its down-to-earth people made Washington State the perfect fit for him. He loved the Palouse and getting to walk to work when he wanted.”
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A handful of former Leach players – linebacker Jeremiah Allison, offensive linemen Liam Ryan and Joe Dahl, and wide receiver Brandon Arconado among them – were in attendance and symbols of the coach’s eight-year stint on the Palouse were seen on the field and throughout a large crowd in Pullman.
One tribute included black decals on the back of both WSU and Texas Tech helmets, depicting a pirate skull and crossing swords – homages to the coach who routinely expressed his affinity for pirates and titled his first book “Swing your Sword.”
“You get a chance to see his impact on the program from a winning standpoint to the type of players that come in, to people going all across the country being proud to don that Washington State logo,” Allison said. “He was the guy who in my opinion got it back on track to where it should be and you can tell in the win column.”
Flint Minshew, the father of former WSU quarterback and Pac-12 Offensive Player of the Year Gardner Minshew, made a detour in Pullman on Saturday before traveling through to Southern California on Sunday morning to watch his son start for the Las Vegas Raiders against the Los Angeles Chargers in the NFL season opener.
Making the trip with extended family members and friends from Mississippi, Flint Minshew wore a crimson hat with a black shirt that depicted crossing pirate swords threading the classic WSU logo.
“I tell people, he absolutely changed (Gardner’s) life,” Flint Minshew said of Leach. “Changed his whole trajectory. Leach was one of the few guys to believe in him and he was still a resource to Gardner (before he died).”
After amassing an 84-43 record over 10 seasons at Texas Tech, Leach spent eight years in Pullman, going 55-47 with a 43-21 mark in the last five years. Leach’s teams went to bowl games in six of his final seven seasons and won a school-record 11 games during Minshew’s historic 2018 season.
“Just for the opportunity he gave me, I’m always thankful for him,” said Arconado, a former walk-on receiver who had 1,109 receiving yards and seven touchdowns during a breakout 2019 receiver. “It’s such a big deal because he’s turned this program around. As far as Texas Tech, same thing. So this game is huge and I’m glad they’re doing that then.
“It’s a big honor. It’s very exciting, but very sad. Very bittersweet.”
Arconado’s last encounter with Leach came during a funeral for former WSU inside receivers coach Dave Nichol in McKinney, Texas, in 2022. The trip included a memorable visit to popular fast food joint In-N-Out Burger.
“He was just devouring it. Eating the paper and everything,” said Arconado, who attended Saturday’s game with friend Avery Fulton, a Texas Tech graduate, and wore a graphic T-shirt that featured six images of Leach.
“I was like, this guy must really love In-N-Out. Didn’t even talk, just devouring it. So that was a funny moment.”
Humorous stories involving the quirky, offbeat football coach were shared and replayed throughout the festivities in Pullman.
When Minshew arrived in Pullman, teammates used a unique mobile app to play a prank on the new quarterback and WSU’s head coach.
“They had some app that I would think you were calling me and you would think I was calling you,” Flint Minshew said. “Then they would just end up talking for an hour or so on the phone and neither one of them had called the other one.”
Arconado lived with Art Leach, the coach’s nephew, and recalled the WSU coach routinely asking his roommate to fill up his car with fuel.
“So Art would go fill up his car with gas and it was $38 and some change,” Arconado said. “He comes back and tells him and Leach pulls two 20s out of his pocket and was looking, looking for change and asks him, ‘Can anyone break a 20?’ It’s like, it’s a dollar and some change, it’s your nephew, just give him the 20.”
Leach’s impact on the players he coached often stretched beyond the boundaries of the football field.
Allison, a Los Angeles native, was initially leaning toward playing at UCLA coming out of Dorsey High School, but expressed his desire in pursuing a law degree during recruiting visits with Leach.
“(People) were like, ‘How did he manage to get you from UCLA?’ ” Allison said. “He told me things I needed to hear, not that I wanted to hear, and they knew law school was important to me.
“So he said, ‘You come play with me and I guarantee law school will be in your future.’ ”
Allison graduated from Mitchell Hamline School of Law in 2020 and recently was hired as an associate counsel for the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings.
“It was one of those things where when I chose to step away from the game and start my law school route, he wrote letter of recommendations, talked with law schools on my behalf and even in law school, he made sure he kept my mental where it needed to be to make sure I got through that tough time,” Allison said.
Thompson, who wrapped up an NFL career with the Cincinnati Bengals and Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1984, said he was envious of quarterbacks who got a chance to play in Leach’s vaunted Air Raid offense, known to produce anywhere from 400-700 passing yards in a given game.
“He was like 40 years too late,” Thompson said. “His offense, it revolutionized the game of football. Spreading the football, making the defense cover the whole field, thinking like that.
“I loved the hell out of it, and I’m so blessed he came and took it to another level.”