Mike Leach is ready to give the TV booth a whirl. Why not? He’s a football coach between jobs.
That’s about as much conformity as you’ll ever get out of Leach.
And trust me, he will coach again at the NCAA top Div. I level.
“Oh, I plan to coach again,” said the former Texas Tech coach who created quite a national brouhaha with his discipline of a player with a concussion eight months ago — and was fired.
“No, I haven’t turned down anything; nothing has been open. There are only like 118 of these jobs out there.”
Leach and his family recently moved to Key West, Fla., which makes perfect sense — “arrrgh!” — if you’re a pirate at heart, which he is. He sold the car and bought a small fleet of bicycles.
In two weeks, he will make his broadcasting debut on CBS College Sports Network (Saturday night, Sept. 11) for the North Carolina State-Central Florida game in Orlando, Fla.
Up his alley or what?
“I think it will be,” Leach replied. “At least, we’re getting ready to find out.”
The TV booth is something very different for him, and Leach likes different.
“In my retirement year, I’ve tried to do and see things that I hadn’t done or seen,” he said, rattling off a few names of the fun and famous on his recent social calendar.
He spent time with “Friday Night Lights” movie director Peter Berg, who is now in pre-production for “Battleship”, an adaptation of the board game by the same name.
“These guys are remarkably like a football coaching staff,” Leach said. “I mean, from a standpoint that they have big meetings around a table, different coordinators and whatnot.
“I hung out a while with Matthew McConaughey … (then) went to France for two weeks and was a consultant to a football team over there.”
Not just any team, either, but Flash de La Courneuve, an area just north of Paris, and recognized by the NFL for keeping alive American football abroad.
He also spent five days at the training camps of the Giants, Jets and Eagles.
And, oh, yeah, he has a book coming out in early 2011. It’s not likely to be called “Guns Up.”
“It was a great 10 years, and now it’s time to move on,” he said of the Red Raiders.
All in all, Leach remains well-read, well-traveled, well-spoken, liable to say anything. CBS execs are ready to tap in to that.
“You don’t watch a lot of TV here in Key West,” Leach said. “You ride your bikes, you go for walks. Lots of interesting people doing interesting things.”
He has become an Ernest Hemingway aficionado. He knows all the stories about all the wives, the notorious drinking, the once lost manuscripts in Key West.
He is scheduled to work with Roger Twibell, a veteran broadcaster also new to CBS College Sports Football Network.
“He’ll be my adult supervision,” said Leach, “given that I’ve never done this before.”
Leach doesn’t take his responsibility lightly.
“I didn’t sit by the telephone, thinking, ‘Gee, TV is going call any second now.’ I didn’t do that,” he said. “It was more I didn’t rule TV out.
“But it’s not lost on me, either, that people go to school to study broadcasting, and they work hard to develop their skills. Out of respect to the profession, I want to learn and develop my skills (through) practice, and do it in a short amount of time.”
OK, is network TV ready for a fresh-faced eccentric?
“I don’t know, shoot, I just call it like I see it,” Leach replied dryly. “Hopefully, nobody gets upset.”
