Leach in lights
While his football team’s bye week meant more school time and less football time, Texas Tech coach Mike Leach was receiving quite a bit of airtime.
First he traveled to Bristol, Conn., and was featured on ESPN’s “Car Wash” Monday, which ran him through a gamut of the network’s daily programming.
Leach said he didn’t see any mascots roaming around ESPN, which is humorously portrayed in commercials, but he did meet football legend Mike Ditka and experienced a flashback to high school lunchtime.
“You go to the cafeteria and it’s literally like high school except it’s got a mixture of broadcasters and former professional athletes,” he said. “It was kind of impressive. They call it the campus, and it does have sort of a campus feel with maybe a campus with all kinds of cameras and computers.”
Overall, Leach said the experience was eye-opening as far as the depth that ESPN has in all facets of a major sports network. Not to mention walking by popular anchors and television personalities on a regular basis.
“More involved than you’d think,” Leach said. “More buildings than you think. More dimension than you’d think. More levels of media than you would think. As you walk around the building, you run in to all these familiar faces that you don’t know but you feel like you do because they’re in your living room all the time.”
Then there was his “Friday Night Lights” cameo that aired Wednesday. The scene was shot when Leach was in Austin for the game against Texas earlier this season.
Leach is introduced by asking Dillon East coach Eric Taylor, who is sitting at a gas station, how to get to Lubbock.
After Taylor gives directions, Leach recognizes him and decides to give him a classic-Leach pep talk.
“You’ve lost your inner pirate,” Leach says on the show. “Have you ever heard swing your sword, you’re supposed to swing your sword like this (waving hand firmly). You’re swinging yours like this (waving hand loosely).”
He goes on: “You’ve gotta find your inner pirate. A lot of times, things happen for a reason. We don’t know why God wants it that way, but you can’t make the best out of it until you get back your inner pirate.You might be the luckiest man alive and not even know it.”
And Leach walks into his SUV and drives away, leaving one more person befuddled by his unique words of wisdom — although this time it’s a fictional person.
Leach said it was scripted, however, there was some wiggle room with what he could add.
But some things didn’t make the cut, he said.
“Actually in the original stuff, there’s stuff about Napoleon, Daniel Boone, grizzly bears, raccoons, a bunch of stuff,” he said. “So we covered a lot of bases and then they picked from what they wanted.”
After being asked if his lines had some sort of meaning pertaining to what his team has gone through this season, Leach said that “inner-pirate” is “always tested.”
“If you don’t enjoy the battle and if you don’t enjoy going from one point to the next, you’re kind of in the wrong business,” he said. “Football is just designed to have one obstacle after the next and that’s why it exists to begin with. There’s gonna be ups and downs, but you gotta enjoy battling it every day.”
Making a Sharpe point
Tech defensive end Brandon Sharpe is second in the nation and the Big 12 Conference with 10.5 sacks this season, putting him just 3.5 off the school’s single-season sack record.
Leach said Sharpe had a “slow start” to the season and wondered where his sack total would be if his start was different. Sharpe had one sack through Tech’s first four games. He did miss the Texas game because of injury.
Then he had seven in his next three games, including four against Nebraska. Along with the whole defense, he disappeared against Texas A&M before recording 2.5 against Kansas.
“When you have to step up, like coach Leach said, when your name is called make sure you step up and perform because you might not have another opportunity to shine,” said cornerback Jamar Wall of Sharpe. “He’s done a great job of it obviously. You couldn’t ask for anything more from him.”
Leach said he believes Sharpe is even better than people think and still has more room to improve.
“There’s a level of timing and then as you have some success you see it and it’s reinforced in your mind a little bit and you keep rolling along and it gets better and better,” Leach said. “I think that’s happening with him right now, just the timing and visualization of what can happen if you do this technique and that technique real fast. I think as he gets rewarded more and more for it, I think he’ll improve more.”
Pleasant week off
Tech practiced on Saturday for the first time all week as Leach gave them Monday through Friday to rest and work on academics.
Tech receiver Alex Torres said while the week off helped some players freshen up, getting back on the field was much appreciated.
“On Saturday we came out and had basically a normal Tuesday practice for us and kind of got everyone back into the mix of things and everything,” he said. “I think it went really well.
Everyone’s tempo was really good. Everyone’s legs were feeling good. Overall, I thought it was a good practice on Saturday.”
Earlier this season, Leach talked about how the after-effect of bye weeks can be a mystery to some coaches with variables depending on the team’s performance at the time.
For Tech, it was probably right on time.
The Red Raiders climbed back into the race for second in the Big 12 Conference South Division with a win against Kansas after losing big to Texas A&M.
Now Tech hits the road again to face No. 17 Oklahoma State at 7 p.m. Saturday at Boone Pickens Stadium in Stillwater, Okla.
Torres said he believes players can tell if the bye week was beneficial or not during the first practice back, and by his estimation the most recent one seems more helpful than harmful.
Wall agreed.
“I think it went well, it was well needed,” he said. “I think we all got well-rested. We came out Saturday and you could see a difference. Everyone was running around like they were fresh. I think it was a good thing and that we needed it.“
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