Mike Leach, innovative football coach at Three Colleges, dies at 61

Leach was hired by Texas Tech in late 1999 and his teams posted an 84-43 record.

In 2020, shortly after leaving Washington State for Mississippi State, Leach shared a coronavirus-related meme on Twitter, which he later deleted, featuring an image of an older white woman holding knitting needles. Its caption: After being in quarantine with her husband for 2 weeks, Gertrude decided to knit him a scarf.

But it wasn’t a scarf; it was a noose that evoked the Deep South’s history of lynching black people. Leach apologized and the university assigned him to sensitivity training.

Defensive lineman Fabien Lovett, who is black, transferred to Florida State, saying the Leachs’ apology was disingenuous and that the universities’ response was inadequate.

Leach is survived by his wife, Sharon (Smith) Leach; his daughters Janeen Clark, Kimberly Betty and Kiersten Leach; his son, Cody; his father; his sisters, Lindsey Andrus, Mary Quackenbush and Cara Williams; his brother, Tim; and six grandchildren.

Leach was also known for his off-field football interests. He taught a course at Mississippi State on the connection between football and the Revolutionary War. In addition to his autobiography, he wrote Geronimo: Leadership Strategies of an American Warrior (2015, with Buddy Levy).

Fascinated by pirates, he kept a talking life-size model in his office and carried the buccaneer theme into lectures to his players. After the overtime loss, he talked to his team about the Pirates for three hours. When interviewed on 60 Minutes in 2008, he recounted another lecture he had given.

I brought his sword, this replica pirate sword, and I said how are you going to swing this sword? Leach said as he wielded the weapon. He asked the players if they were going to use it out of control, blindly or accurately. He noted how even the most scrappy pirates sharpen and polish their swords, then compared it to the way players work out in weight rooms.

Your body, he said, is your sword.