The Pirate Has Landed: Raw footage of Mike Leach’s Starkville arrival portends things

This afternoon, the news broke that Mississippi State had hired Mike Leach away from Washington State, and, this evening, the Bulldogs’ new head football coach had landed in Starkville, where he was greeted with fanfare he greeted with his own reaction.

I’m not sure what I expected, nor am I sure what Leach expected, but this is what everybody got, and it’s difficult– perhaps very difficult for some– to be more excited about the 2020 SEC football season.

Immediately following the announcement of the new hiring, I asked Mississippi State football superfan Stingray Steve for a comment, which invitation he declined.

UPDATE: Alternate angle in extended footage now available here:

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Previously
Washington State’s 2019 football season already a flop
Is it time to worry about Mike Leach’s allegiances in the event of a Planet-of-the-Apes situation?
Mike Leach: Selling Bigfoot, buying aliens
Mike Leach Prefers Solo Cougars
Mike Leach: Prospective time traveler
Mike Leach officially ushers in the 2015 college football season
Cougar dating tips from Mike Leach
Mike Leach Favors Cougars

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Washington State’s 2019 football season already a flop

The Washington State Cougars have showed plenty of promise in recent seasons, but it still feels as though they haven’t quite reached their potential ceiling, particularly in big games. It appears Las Vegas agrees, forecasting an eight-win season coming off of last year’s 11-2 record. Does that, likely largely a reflection of the departure of star quarterback Gardner Minshew, mean that the 2019 season already is a flop? We go live to Cougar correspondent Mike Leach:

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Previously
Is it time to worry about Mike Leach’s allegiances in the event of a Planet-of-the-Apes situation?
Mike Leach: Selling Bigfoot, buying aliens
Mike Leach Prefers Solo Cougars
Mike Leach: Prospective time traveler
Mike Leach officially ushers in the 2015 college football season
Cougar dating tips from Mike Leach
Mike Leach Favors Cougars

Is it time to worry about Mike Leach’s allegiances in the event of a Planet-of-the-Apes situation?

leach monkey

I only saw one of the Planet of the Apes movies, and I don’t remember it very well, but I take the basic premise to be that monkeys get their act together and fight humans for control of Earth. It’s not implausible to think that our planet, sick and tired of humans’ environmentally destructive habits, might rise up against us, and monkeys seem as good a candidate as any to lead the charge of nature’s backlash. When that happens, it probably means our time as a species is up, and, assuming we haven’t invested sufficiently in space travel, we’ll need to transition quickly from long-term goals to short-term ones. That means banding together to stave off the simian attack as long as possible. Humans uniting on anything seems like a long-shot these days, but if we can manage that, I like our chances.

Mike Leach, head football coach at Washington State, has me worried though. On June 1, without additional comment, he tweeted a video comprised of a few different clips of monkeys attacking people. When I saw it, I figured he simply was spreading some standard-issue viral web content just like anyone else would. Nothing to worry about. I didn’t even watch the whole video at that time, because I don’t like thinking about monkey attacks.

What’s a little bit concerning, though, is that Coach Leach just retweeted his own tweet of the video, and I watched it all this time. Again, there’s no comment from him with the tweet, but it has me worried, because it makes me think he thinks the activities depicted in the video are funny or good, and that’s a bad sign for humans in a battle of humans against monkeys. Coach Leach is the type of guy we need on our side if we want to win. Granted, the monkeys will be lobbying hard to sign him to their team because he represents their best chance of developing an air attack (besides just jumping out of trees onto our heads), so we need to keep that in mind regardless.

On the other hand, this may be a warning from Coach Leach about the danger of monkey attacks, and that’s how I’m going to choose to interpret it, because he has good judgment and monkey attacks are dangerous. Be safe out there.

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Previously
Mike Leach: Selling Bigfoot, buying aliens
Mike Leach Prefers Solo Cougars
Mike Leach: Prospective time traveler
Mike Leach officially ushers in the 2015 college football season
Cougar dating tips from Mike Leach
Mike Leach Favors Cougars

Mike Leach: Selling Bigfoot, buying aliens

More specifically, Washington State head football coach Mike Leach doesn’t think Bigfoot is out there, but hopes he is, and “take[s] the biblical” approach when it comes to aliens:

Coach Leach isn’t a big “lightning striking mud” guy, though, whatever that is.

After listening to and watching Leach for years, I think the thing that comes through most for me from moments like these is that it’s clear that he has fairly well-formulated thoughts about a variety of subjects outside of football. Some coaches have a comedic vein and can improvise quips that will garner broader attention. By contrast, Leach rarely appears to be improvising. He isn’t hunting a quick laugh. Instead, he’s sharing his real thoughts on non-football topics, and it’s his ability and willingness to do that– when his peers are incapable of or unwilling to do so– that makes him compelling. He’s someone who’s good at being a football coach, but he seemingly doesn’t require the total life subjection and destruction necessary for most people to get to or near that point. People like that are harder to spot in the football coaching ranks than a sasquatch in the wild.

College football’s officially back.

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Previously
Mike Leach Prefers Solo Cougars
Mike Leach: Prospective time traveler
Mike Leach officially ushers in the 2015 college football season
Cougar dating tips from Mike Leach
Mike Leach Favors Cougars

Mike Leach Prefers Solo Cougars

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We all know Washington State head football coach Mike Leach to be a sensible and worldly man, and that’s true even when it comes to the selection of his team’s captain. In an age when most teams send out four or more captains (plus honorary captains) to handle the game’s preliminary procedural matters, Leach prefers a simpler and more direct approach:

Makes sense to me. According to contemporary reports, Morrow readied himself for the show like the future D-I football captain he would become by watching lots of film: “Jamal did not come to the show unprepared. A week prior, he watched every Price is Right episode he could get his hands on.” He ended up winning “almost $2,000 worth of clothes.” (If you’re a TV weirdo, here‘s some kind of hyper-detailed breakdown of the episode.) The NCAA investigative report on whether this constituted an improper benefit remains outstanding.

At this time, our staff has been unable to locate video of Morrow’s appearance on “The Price is Right,” but we did find this visual still and commend Morrow’s attire.

Morrow took the over on the price of a Toyota Corolla on the show in 2013 and the over on his BAC in his own car in 2016.

Our staff also has been unable to locate coin toss results for the 2016 season, but, under Leach and Morrow, Washington State has won five games in a row and is undefeated (4-0) in conference play. Only two currently ranked opponents– Colorado and Washington– remain on their schedule. They play Oregon State this Saturday night on ESPN2.

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Previously
Mike Leach: Prospective time traveler
Mike Leach officially ushers in the 2015 college football season
Cougar dating tips from Mike Leach
Mike Leach Favors Cougars

Mike Leach: Prospective time traveler

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We usually try to kick off the college football season with a sprinkling of wisdom from Mike Leach, but we’ve been a bit slow off the ball this year. Thankfully for our sake, Leach delivered a good comment earlier this week.

He’s back, and with the Washington State Cougars winning four straight after dropping their first two games, so is his team and, with it, college football.

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Previously
Mike Leach officially ushers in the 2015 college football season
Cougar dating tips from Mike Leach
Mike Leach Favors Cougars

2013 college football bowl schedule

Before getting to the 2013-14 college football bowl schedule and associated predictions and operations, a note on sponsored discourse. In this post-Musburger-for-all-the-Tostitos world, it is an unremarkable fact that the bowl games are not merely sponsored football contests but business entities in and of themselves, the sponsorship-style nomenclature– e.g., “the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl”– a mere reflection of the game’s less overtly monied past. Even the ostensible bastion of postseason intercollegiate purity now is known as “the Rose Bowl Game presented by Vizio.”

When a bowl game is a business, and not merely a happening, there is an associated shift in the commercial advertising language referential to that business. The NFL’s decision to prohibit the use of “Super Bowl” by non-league advertisers, who now must offer you late-January deals on new televisions for watching “the big game,” provides a rough analogy.

I understand and accept the logic behind a business’ desire to control its portrayal in other business’ advertisements and insist on inclusion of a game’s full, sponsored title in that portrayal. What I do not understand is why the news media plays along. This week, I heard a local sports talk show talk about talking about Georgia’s appearance in “the Taxslayer dot com Gator Bowl,” and that’s far from the only example. I understand that some of the sponsors have integrated their names into the bowl games’ names in such a way that it’s difficult– or, where the sponsor’s name and the bowl’s name are one and the same, impossible– to say the bowl’s name without saying the sponsor’s name as well (e.g., the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl and the Capital One Bowl, respectively). “Taxslayer dot com” is a mouthful, though, and everybody already knows the Gator Bowl. “The Rose Bowl Game presented by Vizio” is ridiculous to say, and things like “the Allstate Sugar Bowl,” “FedEx Orange Bowl,” and “Tostitos Fiesta Bowl” simply are superfluous. Why the sports news media feels obligated to append these sponsor names when discussing the bowls is beyond me, and you won’t find us doing it here, unless it’s something humorous like the Beef O’Brady Bowl or the RealOakFurniture.com Bowl.

Onto the bowl schedule, which begins this Saturday.Ā Ā  Continue reading

College Football Week 5: POLL

pollingThe first BCS rankings still aren’t out, and Google doesn’t know when that’ll happen, which means that we’re still in the wild frontier of polling. Every poll is equally legitimate right now, including this one, which is the only one that will accept your vote without making you buy nonnegotiable class B stock in KIA. Cast your burden-free vote below.

Click to vote

Cougar dating tips from Mike Leach

leachForget what you read at Kim’s Hallmark. We all know that fall makes a great time to jump into the dating scene. But what if you’re a guy in need of a little help with planning a first date? If you’re a Washington State student looking to hit the ground running in Pullman, you’re in luck.

We already know that WSU head coach Mike Leach likes the cougars, but this is a generous helping of advice even by his standards. At Monday’s press conference, Leach opined on first-date strategy in Pullman:

Try to have somewhere where there’s not salad, because girls will try to show off and act like all they eat is salad, so try to put them somewhere where they’re in a position where they have to put real food in their mouth. They want to do that thing where they only pick at salads and stuff like that, so once you get past that, because that’s sort of a speed bump in the whole thing, you want to get past that immediately. I would go to Black Cypress if you really want to make a good impression. If you want just good, solid food and aren’t as into the atmosphere, I’d go to Mongolian Fire, which I really like. So one of those two. But if you go to the moreĀ  high-end Black Cypress I’d talk to Nick beforehand because he has the menu and it’s all really good and I’d just instruct him that the point of this is to make her eat. Because Ā if you can make her eat she’ll talk. Other than that it’s all this pretention and stuff like that. The key thing is make her eat, then she’ll relax, then there’ll be some dialogue and you can get to know her and see if you’re interested in dating her beyond dinner. He’s got some great appetizers and he’ll come by and keep hitting you up – here’s this, try that – and I think it should work out reallyĀ well.

What did Leach do on his first date with his wife?

Went to A&W, had just finished a rugby game, went to A&W, had a coupon book, she said ‘what are you getting?’ She’s looking at the menu, ‘what looks good? what are you getting?’ I handed her the 2-for-1 coupon book, I said ‘I don’t know, but here’s the menu.’ Seems to me we got some kind of bacon hamburger thing. She got a rootbeer freeze. I do rememberĀ that.

Would he recommend the coupon book approach to others for a first date?

It worked for me. You’ll cut the weak out of the lineup right away if you do it that way. You’ll only be involved with committed people if they’re going to do the coupon book. It doesn’t hurt. If you’re just trying to dress your life up a little and pretend you have a relationship, then maybe you don’t want to use the coupon book if it’s some kind of a volume deal. But if you want to zero in on one or two, break out the coupon book, saw off the weak right off the top so you can get down the path to find the right one. It’s worked out pretty good, because I’ve been married … I can’t remember, a long time. 30 years orĀ something.

Tough to argue with that.

(HT: Laura)

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Mike Leach Favors Cougars

Tuesday Afternoon Inside Linebacker

tailSince “Monday Morning Quarterback” and “Tuesday Morning Quarterback” are taken and uninspired, and because I’m preempting my own exhaustion of “Monday“-themed alliterations, ALDLAND’s regular football/weekend roundup will move to Tuesday afternoons, which also permits incorporation of the Monday night NFL game. With week two of college football and week one of the NFL in the books, here goes:

College Football

Pregame:

  • Brendan and Physguy were in Ann Arbor for ESPN College Gameday, and the only evidence is a couple cryptic tweets from Brendan.

The games — No surprises:

  • I was able to find Michigan State’s game against South Florida on television in the Southeast, which may be thanks to USF’s participation in the game, but which also felt like finding a unicorn in the wild. MSU’s defense continues to outscore their offense, and that’s with three quarterbacks! Even Sparta only ever had two kings at once. Michigan State 21, South Florida 6.
  • I also found Vanderbilt-Austin Peay on TV, which is a reminder that it’s week two for the broadcasters as well. VU had no problem with its Middle Tennessee neighbors, winning 38-3.