There is good news for all of us that love the sport of college football who were hoping that somehow the late Mike Leach would make it to the College Football Hall of Fame.
Brett McMurphy reported this on his X account earlier today.
Great news for Mike Leach fans: College Football Hall of Fame will lower win percentage in 2027 for coaches from 60 to 59.5 percent, which will make the former Mississippi State/Texas Tech/Washington State coach eligible to join the hall
— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) May 29, 2025
We applaud this move. Leach finished his college head coaching career with a 158-107 record at Texas Tech, Washington State and Mississippi State. All are proud programs with passionate fan bases that love their programs. None won the location lottery. All have been overshadowed by other major programs in their own states.
Given Leach’s impact on the sport at large in all ways otherwise (as laid out below), it’s just fine to grade him (and others) on the curve a bit. If anyone is against Leach going into the Hall of Fame, it’s for personal reasons. Nobody that loves and understands the game would seriously believe he does not belong.
Now, the rules don’t prevent a vote on his inclusion. It would shock many if he didn’t scoot right in.
THERE WILL NEVER BE ANOTHER LEACH
In the sultry haze of a Mississippi dusk, where the air hangs heavy with the scent of magnolia a man named Mike Leach, a figure carved from the raw clay of American eccentricity, left us too soon on December 12, 2022.
A pirate in a world of buttoned-up coaches, ever the swashbuckling underdog, Leach was one of a kind.
His life, a sprawling stage of triumphs and tempests, unfolded like a southern gothic story—full of passion, contradiction, and a relentless hunger for the sublime. To study Leach was to wander through a gallery of vivid scenes, each painted with the colors of his unyielding spirit, his Air Raid offense, and his quixotic heart.
Born in Susanville, California, on March 9, 1961, to Frank and Sandra Leach, young Mike was a wanderer from the start, his family drifting like tumbleweeds across the West until they settled in Cody, Wyoming. There, beneath the wide Wyoming sky, he was shaped by the rugged individualism of the frontier and the quiet piety of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. An Eagle Scout by 1975, he carried the discipline of the wild into his bones, though an ankle injury in high school kept him from suiting up. That’s right, Leach was one of those rare college coaches who never actually played the game. Perhaps that’s what gave him his common sense and simplistic approach that on the surface seemed so complex and chaotic. His offensive philosophy dripped of the teachings of Sun Tzu- make them thing too hard to stop what is coming… over and over and over in different ways.
Leach played rugby at Brigham Young and studied the offense off pass game legend LaVell Edwards while he was there. Edwards scheme planted the seeds of the modern day air raid which former Kentucky and Valdosta State head coach Hal Mumme began using with Leach by his side. Leach then took it a step further as the head coach at Texas Tech, Washington State and Mississippi State. Even in the rough and tumble SEC during his time with the Bulldogs, his system was good for seven or eight wins, including several where the opponent probably had better players top to bottom. Even if the MSU defense was pretty salty during his run in Starkville and contributed in a big way to the winning that was done there, many of the other big bad defensive units in the SEC were exposed constantly by his scheme.
His legend is also about as much as who he was off the field. A lifelong knowledge-seeker, Leach’s press conferences were always one verbal twist away from journeying off into what could only be described as a collegiate-level lecture on everything from wedding advice to the Pac-12 mascots personified. I mean, what other college football coach would care enough to dig into the magical powers of a Sun Devil while pondering how the mystical creature would match-up in a fight against a Bear?
He was a man who lived unapologetically, as if always sailing under a pirate’s flag. He is missed daily.
