Mike Leach continued his conversation with the college football world on Friday. This time it was on the Dan Patrick show. He has appeared on the Jim Rome show, as well as ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt show. That was just the national shows he was on this week. Coach Leach also visited with multiple local sports shows across the country. It seemed like it was always the same. Interviewers wanted to talk about Craig James and what happened at Texas Tech. Apparently, the only media people that do not want to talk about the facts surrounding Mike Leach’s firing at Texas Tech are the ones that work in Lubbock, Texas. Kent Hance probably would not want them to.
So, why is this important? Mike Leach is not holding anything back and is calling out Craig James and Texas Tech. The interesting thing is that no one is even pretending to dispute Coach Leach’s version of the events that led up to his firing at Texas Tech. What exactly is he saying? Here is a sample from what he said on the Scott Van Pelt show. Keep in mind this was said on a national show on ESPN:
“Obviously the smearing and the passing along of misinformation definitely had a chilling effect. I think also as the information’s come out, everybody’s seen my position is entirely accurate, I think that’s clarified a lot of things. But when you have a national broadcaster, I think we all know who I’m talking about — he thinks he’s going to be senator — dissatisfied with his son’s playing time and used ESPN as a platform to fire a sitting head coach, then hired a PR firm before he even complains about everything, obviously there’s going to be some negative information passed around. It’s all proven to be false and I think the majority of people see it that way. I think that it’s all turned out well, but it’s unfortunate that I had to squander two years of my career just for kind of selfish personal interests.”
Scott Van Pelt did not challenge anything that Mike Leach said. Dan Patrick did not challenge anything Mike Leach said. Public opinion has come full circle. The alleged smear campaign against Mike Leach was effective for a while. Unfortunately, for Craig James, ESPN, and Texas Tech, the truth does not seem to even resemble the things that were being said about Mike Leach in early 2010.
There have been a few rumblings of a rumor that Texas Tech and Mike Leach might be working on a settlement. That could be an actual possibility. The reason is that even without going into a court room, Mike Leach has clearly won. In the court of public opinion, Texas Tech appears to have lied about Mike Leach and the events surrounding his firing. The university simply does not have any credibility in regards to the Adam James story.
One of the worst possible things that could happen for Texas Tech was for Mike Leach to get a coaching job at a major university. That happened when Bill Moos and Washington State hired Leach as their new head football coach. That prompted new interest in Coach Leach and what exactly happened in December of 2009. Only this time, Texas Tech wasn’t the only university with a dog in the fight.
With all the media buzz surrounding Washington State’s big hire, questions about Craig James and Texas Tech were bound to come up. That combined with Mike Leach’s book Swing Your Sword and Colonel Lee Lanning’s book Double T Double Cross, which multiple athletic directors requested a copy of, made the validity of Mike Leach’s claim hard to argue with.
It is a shame that it took the national media to finally expose what happened to Mike Leach at Texas Tech. The Lubbock media completely dropped the ball. They seem far more interested in protecting a government institution from the public than they do in protecting the public from the government institution. Texas Tech has asserted that it is in fact a part of the Texas government by virtue of claiming sovereign immunity. Yet the media has not shown any willingness to question that government institution while it allegedly slanders private citizens.
In fact the media has actually joined in on the name calling. Anyone like the facebook group Team Leach that questioned the truthfulness of Texas Tech’s claims was accused of having an agenda. The only agenda most of these people had was the agenda the media should have had: The truth. Instead the media called them “Leachers”, or not real Texas Tech fans. One of the Lubbock radio stations even went so far as to call for these people to be “throat punched”.
So maybe when the Lubbock media actually does get around to reporting what appears to be the truth about Mike Leach and Texas Tech, maybe they could also thank a few folks. There are plenty of regular people out there whether they are officially members of Team Leach or not that have kept asking questions and continued their agenda of finding the truth. Perhaps the media could start listening to some real people instead of bowing down to political appointees. Of course after everything that has come out and everything that they now know, they should be asking this question: Why do Kent Hance and company still have jobs?
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