Mike Leach was a force of nature, and that means there was both beauty and blight. He would commit dazzling acts of intellect and display maddening stubbornness. Leach's players marveled at how fun he made football, yet at times he seemed to be cavalier about their health and wasn't shy about lambasting them (and their "fat little girlfriends") verbally.
Controversy followed Mike Leach, who died Monday night at age 61, and so did victories. He was a brilliant coach, an innovative schemer of offensive football and an eclectic thinker who loved to hold court on the most mundane of topics.
It was the latter trait that most endeared him to the populace, and to that subset of the populace who chronicle sports for a living. Sometimes they didn't even realize that by filibustering with highly entertaining treatises on grasshoppers, mascot fights and the best Halloween candy, he never got around to answering the football questions. He steadfastly refused to discuss injuries; once when asked after a game about quarterback Luke Falk, who had been carted off the field with an apparent head injury, he replied flippantly, "Healthy as can be. Rested him in the second half."
