North Star: Continuing Life in the Loss of a Mentor

How life goes on after the loss of a mentor: my personal journey after the death of Mike Leach.

Just about everyone goes through a phase, usually young in life, where they're fascinated with finding constellations in the night sky. And perhaps the most notable of those is the Big Dipper.

The Big Dipper is special in its own way because it features the North Star. Whether we realize it or not, we all have our North Star in a human being and there is nothing quite like when you lose yours. It feels as if the sky has gone black when yours disappears.

In December of 2022, my sky turned to darkness and I was more unsure than I had ever been. When Mike Leach died unexpectedly, I had no idea where to turn. I had become so closely identified to the Air Raid offense, hardly run anymore in its purest form, and so aligned with his ideology that, in a way, I felt backed away in my own corner by myself when he was gone.

When I wrote "Call Anytime" -- which was really just a coping mechanism of sorts -- I never expected it to take off and receive as much national attention as it did. 

There was an outpouring of text messages, TV and radio requests. In a way, it seemed almost selfish at the time to go on any of them because I felt as if I were somehow receiving undeserved attention because of a mentor's death. It induced an odd level of panic, guilt (however irrational) and a need to carry on an offense and a legacy either alone to with a small and loyal following.

My first instinct was to do whatever it took. And what I mean by that was to write anything, to do anything, to talk to anyone who was interested to do whatever the path demanded to make sure that Leach's version of the offense stayed alive in the exact form in which he had run it all his life.

At the same time, I knew I was not qualified to do such. Outside of helping out at 7-on-7 tournaments, I have never coached football at any level and I've got some hurdles to cross and some additional learning to do if I ever do so.

When I once again failed to land a job, I felt like I had failed in a way and overwhelmed at the fact that I could not fix a problem that I had invented in my own head. I truly thought it was my calling to make sure that there were several teams out there on every level of football that did things Mike's way and that if it were not to continue immediately, that I had done something wrong and that I had let something die that I loved so much.

***

I thought I was okay when I was headed home to Starkville after Christmas and the holidays. Things were going to be alright, I was going to be okay and I was going to cover the new Mississippi State on-site to the best of my potential.

When I walked through the doors of 11 Rosebay Drive, the first house I had ever rented on my own that I once treasured and loved so much, something came over me.

Mike was gone. He really was gone and he was never coming back. My feelings of being okay were not real, they were a delayed response and for the first time ever roughly a month after, my mind finally began to process the death of Mike Leach and it was nothing short of harrowing.

People joke about and use the term of "mental breakdown" loosely these days. I had before too, but I never had experienced a real one. The first three days in, I couldn't be in my own home without crying nonstop to the point I was consistently dehydrated and my eyes were nearly swollen shut.

Between the death of Leach and finding my dog Mouse that he loved so much dead and surrounded by her six-week-old puppies just a few months or so earlier, the place mentally wreaked of and represented death to me.

It wasn't long before I knew I had to get out. It wasn't just me. either. My therapist referred me to a psychiatrist because I physically could not stop shaking because my anxiety overall and reaction to the situation had grown so badly to the point my entire body would shake without me even realizing it. I also in the same time period was diagnosed with the most severe form of combined ADHD that made me almost completely unable to complete tasks and as someone who has always been an overdriven workaholic, I felt like a failure when I did not think I had done enough work.

***

I left Starkville in late January. I miss it some days, but moving to New Orleans was the right move and is something I will never forget.

A few weeks in, I was finally able to set "Swing Your Sword" on my desk in my apartment and feel a sense of ambition and inspiration rather than insurmountable grief.

Some have reached out on coaching offers and I have crafted several ideas around Mike and his special way of running an offense that I will later turn into articles that I'm excited for all of you to read.

But in the same time period, I have finally found the level of healthy work-life balance that I had needed for the entirety of college and before when I sat in front of my laptop in search of a dopamine hit from social media reaction to writing too many articles every day, identifying with an industry as opposed to who I was as a person.

And while I am guilty of going back through hundreds of me and Mike's text messages on a regular basis and at times feeling alone in certain aspects, I have finally found me and who I truly am.

***

There's something special about finding a low-lit city where you can see the clear night sky and every star in the universe with ease. Starkville, Mississippi is one of those.

But at the end of the day, our hearts and our identities outside of our jobs are who we are as human beings. And perhaps, that is the true North Star to follow and maybe carrying on the legacy of a person is not trying to continue their career, but to evolve into all of the aspects of that person that you cherished so much and to allow other people to experience what you love so much about that individual through you.

The sky only turns dark forever if you let it.