Hoop Masters Blog

Mike Leach and Unconventional Wisdom November 15, 2008

Mike Leach and Unconventional Wisdom

Posted by Brian McCormick on November 15, 2008

Texas Tech football coach Mike Leach is probably my favorite coach in any sport. Besides being unconventional, he’s hilarious. His office is decorated like a pirate ship. That’s awesome.

Michael Lewis’ Moneyball is one of my favorite sports books. I’ve written articles based on it and I think I wrote a graduate school paper based on it.

Reading an old N.Y. Times article written by Lewis about Leach, then, is pure fun.

Leach changes the way you look at football.

Leach remains on the outside; like all innovators in sports, he finds himself in an uncertain social position. He has committed a faux pas: he has suggested by his methods that there is more going on out there on the (unlevel) field of play than his competitors realize, which reflects badly on them. He steals some glory from the guy who is born with advantages and uses them to become a champion.

I said the same thing about the UCLA SpecialOlympics program when I was in college. We did more as volunteer college students than the paid staff in our area, so they tried to stop us because we reflected poorly on them. We forced them to work harder.

People, and coaches included, like the status quo. People defend the current basketball system at length because they profit from it. If the system changes, or if players developed differently succeeded, they would have to change to stay relevant, and change is hard. It’s much easier to latch onto a mediocre system with which you are familiar, even if you think it is flawed, than to change it.

Leach’s agent says:

“He makes them nervous,” O’Hagan says. “They don’t like coaching against him; they’d rather coach against another version of themselves. It’s not that they don’t like him. But privately they haven’t accepted him. You know how you can tell? Because when you’re talking to them Monday morning, and you say, Did you see the play Leach ran on third and 26, they dismiss it immediately. Dismissive is the word. They dismiss him out of hand. And you know why? Because he’s not doing things because that’s the way they’ve always been done. It’s like he’s been given this chessboard, and all the pieces but none of the rules, and he’s trying to figure out where all the chess pieces should go. From scratch!”

I stopped working basketball camps because I had the same reactions. Coaches dismissed my questions or points as soon as I made them because they were different. Before I published my book, people on the yahoo coaches’ board thought I was a lunatic and automatically disagreed with every point that I made.

I question things. I don’t think crossing your feet on defense is wrong and I don’t think defenders should look at a player’s stomach. This is just crazy talk to most coaches. I think static stretching and running miles are useless for basketball, which goes against the old school approach. I don’t think you need height to win. I hate the shell drill. Heck, I hate 90% of the drills that you see at a normal practice. Zig-zag drills are a waste of time – I have a whole set of drills that I call “time wasters” that include such standards as the three-man weave. So, I’m crazy: Crazy like a pirate…

I just do not understand doing things because that’s the way they have always been done. I don’t believe a drill is good because Billy Donovan does it. I don’t think it matters what offense you run. I think the coaches that get on message forums and try to copy a play, drill or system exactly as someone else does it are unimaginative and probably not very good coaches. Just because Vance Walberg has his guard cut one way when this happens does not mean that you can’t tweak it to fit your personnel – the whole offense will not fall apart if you adjust to the players on your team. It’s not an all or nothing proposition.

I think we spend far too much time worrying about the incidentals of coaching – what play should I run? what’s a good press break for a 2-2-1? is a 2-3 better than a 3-2? – rather than the important aspects of coaching – communication skills, motivation, emotional intelligence, motor skill learning.

I don’t understand why so many people fear change. Without change, there is no growth. Without growth, life stagnates, and when it stagnates, it dies.