Mike Leach and his innovative offense have been all the rage for much of this season. He'll be profiled Sunday night on "60 Minutes" and on Friday he brought an 11-1 Texas Tech team to the Cotton Bowl to play a middle-of-the-road Southeastern Conference team.
The result? The Red Raiders got smoked by Mississippi, 47-34.
Tom Kirkendall raises the question: Is Leach really a good coach or is he a coach who knows how to work the system?
Leach has a 76-39 record in nine seasons at Lubbock, which works out to a 66% winning percentage. But Kirkendall points out that Leach's record is padded by his 29-5 (85.2%) regular season record against non-Big 12 opponents.
Only five of those 34 nonconference games have been against other BCS-conference teams. The last time that Tech even played a nonconference regular season game against a BCS-conference opponent was in 2003.
Strip away those nonconference games and Leach's Big 12 Conference record is 42-30 (58.3%). And in the games that really matter — against Texas and Oklahoma — Leach's teams are only 4-14.
So maybe that pounding Tech took against Mississippi wasn't that surprising.
Mike Leach, hmmmm. Well it is obvious to me that they spent little time practicing for Miss. I mean with Leach having to to keep his resume in top shape, and Herrell and Crabtree figuring out how to spend their NFL bonus money, who had time for game prep?
Posted by: Me | January 03, 2009 at 06:42 AM
I believe there is some merit to the OOC schedule. However, OU and UT have dominated everyone over the last 10 years, so that's not really fair.
Posted by: TTECH | January 03, 2009 at 11:54 AM
What about OU and UT's OOC schedule? Looks pretty similar to Tech's.
Posted by: Merket | January 03, 2009 at 12:09 PM
The Big 12 has the system figured out. Snyder set the precedent when he went out and scheduled four cupcakes at the beginning of every year. Go 4-0, beat a couple of conference opponents and you'll find yourself in the top 10 before you've actually hit the meat of your schedule. If the Pac 10 would employ this same strategy they'd find themselves with 2 BCS teams and 9 bowl qualified teams. Just like the SEC and Big 12. Big 12 South is 0-2 so far and will be lucky to find themselves 1-3 before it's all done.
Posted by: jswinn | January 03, 2009 at 05:46 PM