For the record: Craig James didn’t get Mike Leach fired. Neither did his son or ESPN or anyone else on the periphery of Texas Tech’s football program.
A long, simmering history of events led to Leach’s dismissal, much of it the eccentric coach’s fault.
And Tech officials were still wrong to dismiss him Wednesday.
They were right to suspend him from the Alamo Bowl, as I wrote yesterday. He brazenly mishandled a situation with an injured player, Adam James, which no coach should do.
But his actions weren’t serious enough to result in his dismissal, at least on their own merits.
Unless they have information we’re not privy to, Tech officials instead used the embarrassing incident as a catalyst to fire a coach they barely tolerated in the best of times, as a string of internal e-mails indicate.
Not that we needed any inside evidence. The animosity between Leach and the administration has long been obvious.
Eccentric behavior, trolling for jobs and bucking the chain of command may be charming in newsprint, but it doesn’t play well with your bosses.
Still, Tech officials knew what they were getting into. From what I can tell, Leach hasn’t changed much in a decade as the most successful football coach in school history.
He won, graduated his players, didn’t attract the attention of the NCAA and still managed to generate controversy. In short, he was a lot like a basketball coach Tech once employed.
The difference between Leach’s situation and Bob Knight’s was that Gerald Myers liked Knight.
Leach was easy to like if you were a Raider fan or a sportswriter. He was funny, innovative and good copy. One of his faults is that, because he did a lot of good, he thought he could do or say whatever he wanted. He chose news conferences to criticize officials, his players and “their fat little girlfriends,” a remark that didn’t cost him as much grief as it should have, probably.
But, love him or hate him, that was the Pirate. At times he needed to be reined in. Tech did that with a suspension. In firing him, they went too far, but it wasn’t a knee jerk reaction. This was a long time coming, which still doesn’t make it right.
Story courtesy of www.dallasnews.com
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