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The best Mike Leach Story you may or may not know...
Posted on 12/13/22 at 10:00 am
Posted on 12/13/22 at 10:00 am
The untold story of Mike Leach's 'lost' OU play script that fooled Texas
GOAT.
For those that prefer Youtube
quote:
Few rivalries in sports fuel as much hostility and pressure to win like college football's annual Red River Showdown between Oklahoma and Texas.
And through the years, those monumental stakes have led to some serious skullduggery. The most notable example came in 1972, when the Sooners spied on Texas' practices, allowing them to block a quick kick the Longhorns had secretly been working on en route to a victory.
Now, thanks to Mike Leach, the 1999 game can officially be added to that same legacy.
During pregame warm-ups of that year's Red River Showdown, an underhanded script outlining OU's opening offensive plays was spotted on the field by one of Texas' student assistants, who scooped it up and took it to Longhorns defensive coordinator Carl Reese. To the heavily favored Longhorns, it seemed as if they'd caught an enormous break.
"We were trying to figure out if it was authentic," Reese said. "We were in this state of, 'Can we believe this?'"
They shouldn't have.
It was a fake, part of a plot hatched by Leach, the Sooners' offensive coordinator, and consulted by the Longhorns, who quickly fell behind 17-0 before realizing they'd been duped.
GOAT.
For those that prefer Youtube
This post was edited on 12/13/22 at 10:06 am
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Posted on 12/13/22 at 10:05 am to Lonnie Utah
Legendary Story 
The best story of Leach I know that I heard from a friend who played at Southlake Carroll:
During the 2007 or 2008 offseason, there was a big Texas coaches clinic going on, where high school and college coaches in the state congregated. The keynote speaker was Kiefer Sutherland of "24" fame.
Supposedly at one point later in the conference, Carroll's head coach (Todd Dodge at the time I believe) and Kiefer were next to eachother in the bathroom waiting in line for the urinals and Leach walked in. Before it was Sutherland's turn to go, Mike Leach grabbed Kiefer by the front of his shirt, pinned him up against the wall and told him "Jack Bauer doesn't know shite about Red Raider Football!" Scared the shite out of Kiefer, and the whole bathroom was in shocked silence for about 3 seconds, and then everybody erupted in laughter.
Dude had the best, most wonderfully careless sense of humor. I'm going to miss the guy dearly.
The best story of Leach I know that I heard from a friend who played at Southlake Carroll:
During the 2007 or 2008 offseason, there was a big Texas coaches clinic going on, where high school and college coaches in the state congregated. The keynote speaker was Kiefer Sutherland of "24" fame.
Supposedly at one point later in the conference, Carroll's head coach (Todd Dodge at the time I believe) and Kiefer were next to eachother in the bathroom waiting in line for the urinals and Leach walked in. Before it was Sutherland's turn to go, Mike Leach grabbed Kiefer by the front of his shirt, pinned him up against the wall and told him "Jack Bauer doesn't know shite about Red Raider Football!" Scared the shite out of Kiefer, and the whole bathroom was in shocked silence for about 3 seconds, and then everybody erupted in laughter.
Dude had the best, most wonderfully careless sense of humor. I'm going to miss the guy dearly.
This post was edited on 12/13/22 at 10:07 am
Posted on 12/13/22 at 10:09 am to XWing atAliciousness
I've not heard that one.
Posted on 12/13/22 at 10:35 am to Lonnie Utah
The story he told about doing a live radio broadcast from his home in Key West is pretty funny. Signs for FedEx package naked.
quote:
So I’m sitting back there, and so I jump in the pool to kind of cool off, because it was cool to talk on the radio outside. And then I was also getting Fed Ex’s every week, to prep me for the game I was broadcasting. So I get in the pool, and I get out and I’ve got my board shorts on, so then pretty soon every time I get out of the pool I’m sitting on the lawn chair and I got these wet board shorts on so it’s like sitting in a diaper the whole time, you know.So you know nobody is around, fence around, so I think ‘What the heck, I’m taking these things off. And so I don’t have anything on, and I get up and I pace, I’m a pacer, I’m pacing right now. And then talking with my hands on air making just really profound points on radio, and I’m very proud of all the brilliant things I’m saying. And then I don’t have a stitch on, and through the gate here comes the Fed Ex guy, here comes the Fed Ex guy watching me pace around naked, talking on the radio about football and all this, and he’s like ‘What the hell?’ and then he hands me the Fed Ex, and of course I can’t break the conversation I have to keep talking. And the funny thing was, I’ve seen him every week, he never said anything, it was like ‘oh well another day.’ But yep, sure enough."
Posted on 12/13/22 at 10:54 am to Lonnie Utah
haha that's great
Posted on 12/13/22 at 10:57 am to Lonnie Utah
That is a great story!
I think I heard a story about Spurrier doing something very similar, leaving a fake series of plays somewhere before playing Tennessee or FSU.
I'm not 100% sure on that one, but it would make sense as Leach and Spurrier have many similarities.
EDIT: Yes, Spurrier pulled a similar trick before
ESPN link
As they say, great minds think alike!
I think I heard a story about Spurrier doing something very similar, leaving a fake series of plays somewhere before playing Tennessee or FSU.
I'm not 100% sure on that one, but it would make sense as Leach and Spurrier have many similarities.
EDIT: Yes, Spurrier pulled a similar trick before
ESPN link
quote:
Spurrier's fake play sheet
The night before the win over Tennessee, Spurrier was already doing his best to play mind games with the Vols.
While the team was in nearby Alcoa seeing a movie, Spurrier placed a dummy play sheet on the floor of the bathroom at the theater. It included the first 10 plays of the game, all bogus, with the first play being a reverse.
One of the assistant coaches found it and brought it back to Spurrier, who quickly told him to take it back, that he put it in there on purpose. A few minutes later, one of Florida's security officers again brought the sheet back to Spurrier.
"No, no, go put it back in there. I'm the one who left it," Spurrier told the officer.
A few years earlier, a "faxgate" scandal had erupted when former Tennessee assistant coach Jack Sells was caught by a Kinko's employee near UT's campus faxing diagrams and notes from Tennessee's playbook to then-Florida defensive coordinator Ron Zook.
"I was over there on the sideline waiting to hear one of those Tennessee boys across the field yelling, 'Reverse! Reverse!'" Spurrier said. "But I don't think they ever got it."
And, yes, Spurrier remembers precisely what play was on the dummy sheet: Zero Reverse Left.
"But we ran off tackle and faked the reverse," Spurrier said. "It didn't go very far, but anyway ..."
As they say, great minds think alike!
This post was edited on 12/13/22 at 11:01 am
Posted on 12/13/22 at 4:55 pm to Partha
^^ ^I'd never heard the Spurrier Story before.
Posted on 12/13/22 at 5:02 pm to idlewatcher
I don’t know if the family would do it, but live-streaming his funeral and eulogy and letting friends, coaches and former players tell funny Leach stories would be awesome
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