'Call Anytime': What Mike Leach Meant to Me and All of Us
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I stood next to one of the WAFB Channel 9 desktop computers in 2020 right before COVID hit, sending out interview requests for a feature story I was working on for Washington State quarterback Anthony Gordon.
I was close to logging off and calling it a day as I looked at the football communications contact information at Mississippi State. Mike Leach had recently been hired as the head coach there and while I thought it would be fantastic to be able to quote him in the story, I was certain as a college student that my interview request would not be worthy of his entertainment.
"The answer is always no unless you try," my internship supervisor, Steve Schneider, told me.
It made me nervous, but I sent it anyway. If I recall correctly, it took less than one day for Brandon Langlois to get back to me and tell me the request had been accepted.
Leach called in the coming days over which I had unfortunately suffered a major ankle sprain that made me unable to walk for several months. I did my best to stall him by talking about Gardner Minshew as I desperately tried to hop over to my laptop. The front door wouldn't come unlocked. I finally had to admit that I had tripped over my German Shepherd puppy and sprained my ankle and that it would be a moment before I could get to what I was using to record the interview.
I anticipated this would be irritating to one of college football's most prominent figures, but he didn't mind at all, instead asking me what my dog's name was, how I came up with it and plenty of off-the-wall questions about animals in general before I finally got to my laptop.
I tried not to take up too much of his time as I asked what I needed for additional context on Gordon. During the interview when we were talking about how underrated Gordon was, he made one comment to me that has stuck in my mind ever since -- "if journalists know so much about the recruiting rankings and football, why don't we just ask them what to do on third down?"
At first glance, it's easy to see how a journalist on the other end of the line might take that offensively. Instead, it only made me curious. At the end of the call, he asked me what my story was as a person and wished me the best of luck.
That might sound like the end, but instead, it was the beginning of a rabbit hole I went into that ultimately changed my perception on life, the sport and the ways of going about things as a reporter.
The Air Raid offense is unique in multiple ways, but one of those is that it has an official online certification program that is incredibly time-intensive and detailed, but lays out the entire offense.
I had not ever fathomed going into coaching or really even learning a ton about it before, but I could not get Leach's comment from the interview out of my head. There were only high school and college coaches -- all of which were male -- that had completed this certification program. I knew it was odd for me to enter it because I had zero experience and didn't have much in common with the group that had come up through this certification at all, but I just had to know what to do on third down.
I spent a lot of the COVID era learning the Air Raid to a point it admittedly almost affected my grades in college. It wasn't long before I became obsessed with the mentality behind it and the approach that it took to football.
Going through it taught me how much I truly did not know about the inner workings of an offense and made me realize how coaches can get so upset with the media over some of the questions they ask and how unintelligent we can come off in some of our analysis of games without ever even taking the time to ask about certain plays.
I was only part of the way through the course whenever I finally worked up the nerve to text Leach and tell him that I had done all of this and had developed an interest in coaching. Whenever I did, I was convinced he or anyone else would not take me seriously and brush me off (though I hoped it would be in a let-down-easy manner).
Instead, he replied and said we could get on a call that I never thought would be the start of what altered my trajectory.
***
I'd never wanted to get out of the elevator and make my way over to the concourse of Tiger Stadium more than the day that Mike Leach called me while I was in the press box before an LSU game.
And there's no question I was shaking in my shoes when I finally ran out far enough away to answer it on its final ring. The first thing I did was apologize for how winded I was, annoyed at myself at the fact I once again had something going on after kicking off my last conversation with him having to hop across a parking lot.
Just like the first time, Leach didn't have the slightest bit of annoyance. I didn't really know where I was going with it and told him that I had been setting aside a lot of time to learn the offense that he ran and that I had interest in calling its plays on a sideline myself. But I also explained that I had not a single connection and no direction as to how to get started at all.
He laid out the outline of a path for how to get started without any hesitation and listed off coaches -- both male and female -- that would be worth reaching out to. And at the tail-end of the call, much to my surprise said, "if you'd like to come out to Starkville and see how we do things, this is Dave Emerick's contact information and we can set something up."
That's exactly what I did and Emerick got back to me quickly, setting up a couple of days in March that year for me to come out and watch practice, sit in an offensive meeting and have a little bit of time to meet with Leach on the final day.
I couldn't have enjoyed my time out there more and wrote out a list of questions to ask about plays and ways of setting up practice to make sure I didn't stumble through that one-on-one conversation with Leach and walked away gaining a lot from it.
Outside of football, he asked me a lot of things about living in Baton Rouge and being at LSU. And I still have never gotten to the bottom of how exactly he found the story I wrote when I interviewed Ted Bundy's lawyer about a year before, but in that meeting, I think he had more questions for me about that than I did about formations and how many different ways you could use the mesh concept.
I walked away from that visit to Mississippi State with a freshly excited mindset and a huge appreciation for Leach as a person and just how much he never perceived himself as being too good for anyone despite just how legendary he was.
The last thing he said to me when I left that day was "call anytime" and some of the people I'd crossed paths with said they hoped to see me again. I had this odd feeling that I would somehow be back there in Leo Seal, even though I had no idea how that could plausibly ever work out.
***
I was rejected for every graduate assistant position that had anything to do with coaching that I submitted as I was preparing to receive my diploma at LSU.
There were times that the non-responses or the amount times I was flat out told "no" was discouraging. I had a timeline on when I had to move out of my apartment and realized that at least for that time, it was not going to work out for me.
As I was looking for jobs, I noticed this one that I'm currently writing this story for was open. There were multiple pathways for me at that point with a lot of interest in Baton Rouge, but I saw returning to Starkville as the perfect compromise, even though I had only been there two times in my entire life.
As someone who had gotten a little burnt out, the Air Raid made me love football in a new way again. Of course, I wouldn't be joining the coaching staff there or anything of that measure in this role, but I knew I could still make the most of attending practice and learning from Leach in any opportunity that he would allow me to sit in on.
With little hesitation, I entered the interview process and secured the position. There was little available on the rental market, but in the last three days on my lease in Baton Rouge, I managed to rent the only one of two houses for rent sight unseen.
Leach and I had done one interview in that time frame, had texted back and forth about the baseball team winning a national title and were closer at that point. He was looking forward to me coming to Starkville and once again was happy to help in any way possible.
***
I've never felt more welcomed and appreciated by an entire group of people than when I first set foot on the Bulldogs practice field as a reporter covering the team.
I got there as early as I could in my first year on the beat for just about every practice or football-related event there was. Most of my time was spent doing interviews and creating story ideas but also continuing to take notes and observe practice in the way a coach would.
There was a wide level of positive response for some of the in-depth stories I did on the Air Raid itself and I found that knowing the inner workings helped the nature and quality of the work I was putting out.
Over time, I had the opportunity to sit in on another offensive meeting and continued to grow my relationship with Leach. Our conversations ranged from everything between the best places to find internet -- since it took weeks for mine to get set up and I virtually had no phone signal with Verizon -- to football-related matters and how things were coming with the team.
By the end of that first season, I was hearing from Leach on a weekly basis and myself and my staff writer, Elizabeth Keen, were attending the "Dawg Talk" radio show every week with my German Shepherd Dog, Mouse.
Mike was always a bit afraid of Mouse but he took pictures with her and and fed her the "people food" they had there anyway every time we came by. One of the last times he saw her, he said that he thought she was "outstanding" but there was no doubt that he was always braced for what he referred to as my "attack dog" to bite the hell out him.
(I never told him that she had actually done that to a few people)
Not too long after he met Mouse, he started sending me a lot of questions about pets every week and talked about a cat he had growing up named "Tigger" that he says was between 30 and 50 pounds. Around then, myself and Elizabeth had discovered a litter of stray kittens around the MSU practice facility.
We walked up to Mike after one night of "Dawg Talk" and asked if we could put out cans of food for them to try to catch them because we felt bad for them. He told me that if we caught them that he wanted one of them and texted me after with a compliment on one of the stories we had recently released and how happy he was with how we were covering the team.
We headed to CVS and then set out cat food around the facility, eventually capturing a tiny gray kitten that we called "Mort" after the character from Madagascar because of her huge eyes.
When I took Mort back to my house, I was unaware that Mike had never talked to his wife, Sharon, about bringing said cat home. After a week or so of Mort staying in my house with an affinity for sleeping in pizza boxes and trying to walk on my keyboard while I was writing articles, we met Mike at Leo Seal so that he could take her home.
Mort became "Maggie" that night and apparently was not much of a joy on the car ride to her new home. But she quickly settled into her new surroundings and "went in playful attack mode" during the night. Maggie was named after "Maggie May" by Rod Stewart, Leach told me. He asked me if I knew the song and I said that I did, something I think he was a little surprised by considering my age.
I was sent consistent updates on her and it wasn't long before Leach told me he wanted more four to five more cats, especially the one that was yellow like "Tigger" that we were never able to catch. There were people who told me that Leach had gone to searching for the yellow kitten in his spare time throughout the day, but it ended up proving too elusive in the couple more times I did see it.
Leach decided he wanted to add a dog to the family later on and I would like to think must have thought of me as a pretty solid source of animal advice as I fielded what must have been 10 questions per day about dogs and sent out multiple emails for available puppies before he ultimately found a black Labrador Retriever.
It was a much more tame option than some of the exotic animals he said he wanted to keep as pets, and I will neither confirm nor deny that we ever had an elaborate conversation on how to illegally get a Lynx into the state of Mississippi.
***
Not too far removed from the same time frame, I made what some jokingly called a "pilgrimage" to Mount Pleasant, Iowa to Iowa Wesleyan. This is what's largely known by those who run the Air Raid as the birthplace of the offense and where Mike Leach and Hal Mumme first came together.
I took the nine-hour drive there to do a feature story on the school and to explore potential graduate assistant opportunities. Before I went, Leach and I were on a phone call about something or another and he told me to expect to pretty much be in one huge cornfield.
That is precisely what it was and while it was about the size of a community college and nothing even close to what MSU has in Starkville, it felt like Christmas Day to be able to stand in Leach's former office and to simply physically be where it all began.
I had some conversations with the coaches and staff there about potentially coming on as a graduate assistant or something similar and how that could potentially work. Things were not set in stone fully, but I certainly had a lead and the makings of a potential opportunity for the first time ever.
Later down the line when it looked like more of a possibility, I asked Leach to get on a call and discuss where I was in my journalism career and life and if it was a good idea for me to go if I were able to get things finalized. There was no better person to call, since I was essentially looking have even a small role in where this offense really came to life.
He told me to try it for a year, and from that point on, I did everything I could to set it up to where I would join IW as a GA ahead of the 2022 season. Mumme was very helpful as well through this process, though it ultimately fell through as the coaching staff there went in separate directions and other factors affected it.
While I was going through this, Leach sent me a quote from Gandhi that he said reminded him of me and to not be afraid or worry about what others think as someone who admired me.
Throughout some of the rough times I had with work and life over the past year, thinking about that text message and the fact I had gained the respect and admiration of the person I think of as a mentor was one of the things that helped me keep going.
***
The 2022 season didn't quite look professionally as I had imagined. I got laid off by NBC extremely unexpectedly in the offseason and financially had to shift some things around.
Instead of just MSU, I covered multiple teams and had the experience of being in New Orleans for a lot of Tulane's historic season. Because of the circumstances and all of the traveling I did, I wasn't able to be around MSU quite as frequently as the previous year.
I had worried about that creating some distance with Leach or that he might be disappointed after the doors he had opened for me and the relationship we had built. There wasn't any of that though, just text messages asking if I had moved and what I was up to these days to which I responded that I was still based in Starkville and that I promised to be back at all times that I could.
And if anything, he had become intrigued by Tulane's accomplishments and genuinely wanted to hear about the Green Wave's success and what had "made them so good."
As he never fails to do as a person who will be forever known as a national treasure, Leach consistently gave me plenty to work with in press conferences and interviews. We talked about the team's ascension to No. 16 in the rankings and his first Egg Bowl win and there was no shortage of enthusiasm.
I was in Cincinnati when he got that victory over Ole Miss and told him I'd see him for the bowl game whenever media opportunities got underway for it.
***
There was a nagging feeling in the early days of December that I couldn't shake that I should call Leach. He seemed to be fine, but there were rumors going around that he was going to step down as the head coach due to health reasons.
I don't usually buy into things like this, but there was concern over the lingering cough that he had. Some time around 8 p.m. roughly two weeks ago when Oktibbeha County was under a tornado watch, Leach called.
I asked him if something was seriously wrong and if he'd be gone next year, saying I'd mostly dismissed the rumors. He said not to be concerned and that he had the flu for a while and that it had developed into pneumonia that "you get once in about every five years."
He was about to have to get off of the phone but that he still had a second. I had admittedly not been doing well mentally around this time and asked for life advice, if the path I was pursuing was ultimately worth staying on.
Leach told me stories about some of the career journeys he had watched people around him take and told me to take away from it what I thought applied but not to think too far into it.
Before we got disconnected due to poor phone signal in the weather, I suddenly felt compelled to tell him just how much he had changed my life, though I'm sure he already recognized it.
For the first time ever, I admitted how afraid I initially was of ever reaching out to him and told him everything about how he had changed the way I thought about methods of doing my job, what ethics truly are and just how different things may have played out for me if I had never decided to write about Anthony Gordon.
He told me that he appreciated everything I had done and that the effort I had put in had never gone unnoticed. Then he proceeded to give what was probably the most compelling speech on life I've heard in a while which ended in simple fashion and with what I never could have predicted would be the last words he ever spoke to me. They were familiar ones.
"You've got your whole life ahead of you, kid. Call anytime."
***
Tuesday, Dec. 13 marks Day 1 of the rest of my life ahead of me while knowing that I will no longer be able to call Mike Leach any time. No one else will have the ability to either.
But this is not about me.
The silver lining is that there are thousands of stories just like this one that have been published to social media and the internet since the moment it was announced Sunday that Mike Leach had been transported to UMCC and was in critical condition. You don't have to do much looking to find those.
The takeaway from all of this is that Leach affected countless lives of people he both did and did not cross paths with and that no one was ever too small for him. Even when things got busy, he would make the time for just about anyone and was probably more intrigued about getting to know things about other people he met than they were just to get the time of day from him.
When we think about college football coaches, especially someone of this magnitude who revolutionized the sport in a historical manner, it's easy to imagine they would be very prideful or only talk to a certain group of people. That couldn't be more opposite of him.
There will never be another Mike Leach and that's what is hurting so many of us today.
But I hope that we all come away from this celebrating not only his immense impact, but how truly rare and special it is to have someone to call any time.
