The Eleventy Billionth Blog

Being a Leach Means Never Having to Say Sorry

 Mike Leach. Where to start? I could start with the hairstyle that even Vince Gill, the originator, gave up several years ago. I could start with the insane pirate thing he came up with, or the "fat little girlfriends" comment.

But all that is quirky and harmless. But it's this new stuff that has everyone up in a tizzy, and has me aching to point out the heart of the matter:

Mike Leach is a bad example to his players, and other players on other college teams.

It's not just that he allegedly pooh-poohed medical advice and sought to humiliate Craig James, although Leach says he was doing him a favor. Putting him in a dark shed/electrical closet/media room/Hanoi Hilton/luxury suite/outhouse/hen house/dog house may have been his way of keeping him out of the sun he said he needed to avoid as part of his treatment for a slight concussion, but that wasn't how he and his family perceived it.

And that is the point where Leach, as a coach, should be checking his ego. After all, isn't that what teamwork is about? Last I checked, a coach is part of the team as well. If this is still the case, a whole lot of this could've been mitigated by a simple apology.

Leach says that the school wouldn't tell you who complained. How many athletes get sent to solitary when they are injured, Leach? He couldn't maybe remember on your own that he sent Craig James' kid to the hole one time when he came to practice with sunglasses on and complaining of a concussion? Were there that many that he's just a blur in a long line?

So let's say we give Leach the benefit of the doubt, though, and say maybe he couldn't remember which one of his players had a concussion this season and was sent to a dark shed/electrical closet/media room/Hanoi Hilton/luxury suite/outhouse/hen house/dog house. He had no clue who it was, so he couldn't apologize directly.

That still doesn't mean he couldn't say, "Please tell the family I'm sorry for the misunderstanding, and find out if there's some way we can work this out." 

Instead, he lawyers up and has the guy give the media a tour of the dark shed/electrical closet/media room/Hanoi Hilton/luxury suite/outhouse/hen house/dog house, and then proceed to slander the student athlete who levied the complaint to begin with.

Maybe Craig James is a helicopter parent. Maybe Adam James just isn't that good, and is inconsequential to the program in the grand scheme of things. 

But none of that really matters. What matters is that Leach began looking out for himself, and not his team. Some might argue that by fighting to coach the Alamo Bowl game, he is looking out for his team. Maybe so.

But it also sends a message to his players. Suspensions can be circumvented. Punishment and apologies are for people who can't figure out how to throw someone under the bus and move on. If someone tells you that you're suspended for your actions, don't man up - lawyer up. You'll be back on the field by morning.

Football - from the NFL right down to the high school level - has been a case study in medical negligence when it comes to head trauma. It took a lot of time and convincing to make the NFL take concussions seriously, and that's hopefully trickling down to the collegiate level. Even just two concussions in a short span of time can do grievous harm, possibly even death. 

So this was Leach's opportunity to do something good. He could've easily said to the family, "I'm sorry there was this misunderstanding about the injury. When I did what I did, I thought I was helping. Why don't we work together to promote some awareness of concussions and what coaches SHOULD do in response to one?" 

That would've been a response that would have made all of this a non-story. It would have been a story with a productive ending. 

But instead, we have a mess. And ultimately, Tech's program will suffer the most. If Leach stays, there will always be those parents that steer their kids to other schools, other programs, because they're unsure of the well being of their child. That seed of doubt has been planted. 

If he goes, the program loses the one coach who can make that quirky Lubbock situation work and draw decent talent over to that corner of the world, and then coax out offensive wonderment.

And all because being a Leach means never having to say you're sorry.

Update: Local Texas sources are now reporting that  Texas Tech fired Mike Leach this morning.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Dallas ABC affilate WFAA verified that this video, shot by Adam James, is real. What do you think?

I'll Get Off My Lazy Ass, Soon ...

I promise. But in the meantime, I give you this picture of Pete Delkus and the Wintry Apocalypse. Presented without - ahem - comment. 

Tell me what you think it looks like.

 

If They Asked Me (And They Won't)

Rod Dreher is leaving the Dallas Morning News for Philly, where there are all manner of colorful people for him to hide from, and a whole new group of people who haven't heard him kvetch about brown people that come to his door for Halloween candy.

We'll miss him terribly. 

That being said, there is a right of center job to be had at the DMN. I'm sure they're busy hugging Mark Davis or something, but if I was Keven Ann Willey, I'd be looking at someone else who writes for them occasionally, and is much better informed, and probably very likely to rile up a whole lot of people just like Rod could.

Trey Garrison. Trey and I agree on a handful of things ideologically, but I will say this: The man knows his stuff. And he can write. And he admits when he's wrong, which keeps him from being punched a lot. 

So seriously. Trey. I know you have his number. Call him. If you do, I might even start reading the opinion section again. 

Wherein a Vaguely Nauseous Feeling Settles In

 

I will admit - I have been a fairly vocal critic of the Dallas Morning News, the paper of record for my city. But I've never really talked about why, but today - upon learning something that left me with that day-after-four-Mambo-Taxis feeling - I feel as if I must.

Every young journalist (well, at least in the past) dreams of moving up to a large metro daily. You toil in smaller cities. You even do some time in community journalism, at some small-town paper, but eventually, you think, you'll get that call-up. 

Think of it as slogging away in the farm team before Ron Washington calls you and asks you to come play short stop for the Rangers. 

Well, when I got that call, I was excited. I'd worked hard my entire career to work at a big daily. Granted, it was a editing a weekly section that everyone was mocking at the time, but to me, that was a challenge. If I could get my coverage area to buy in, if I could turn it around, I'd consider my venture a success.

The pay was infinitesimal. I wagered that with my savings I could survive a year. After that, I'd re-evaluate. Within a year, I had another job, won in part because of that DMN experience on my resume - and I'd like to think that I did accomplish my goal of making my section less mock-worthy.

It's no secret that the DMN - along with the rest of the industry - is hurting. As I've said before, I think that it has less to do with any perceived political leanings and more to do with the negligence when it came to being early adopters of the Web. If newspapers - singly or collectively - had worked harder in the beginning to monetize online news, perhaps this slump would be a different story all together. People at that time were used to paying for a newspaper to get their news, or waiting for the local television news - likely, they'd be comfortable with paying for news online, too. Instead, newspapers by and large treated the Internet as a fad for basement dwelling nerd herders. 

And now they flounder, trying to tread water in quicksand while simultaneously figuring out how to get online readers to pay for something they've been getting for free for decades. Some newspapers have been more successful than others at doing this. But since there's no cohesive effort to monetize sites, it's like running down to Wal-Mart for milk because it's cheaper than Target. Why pay for content from newspaper A when I can look at newspaper B and get that information?

But the Dallas Morning News' latest restructuring effort, where sales staff are named GM's of sections and oversee senior editors, makes me wholly uncomfortable. I frequently yell at the dead tree product as if it was a live person, but never have I had a visceral reaction to a decision like I had today. 

I literally wanted to puke. 

I know times are tough. I know newspapering appears to be a dying art. But this? This is rearranging deck chairs at the most obvious level. Instead of looking at the issues pulling the paper down, the powers that be create more bureaucracy, and more ways for their readers to question their ethics.

Instead of this, why not rid yourselves of employees that refuse to pick up more than one oar? You have a whole passel of Metro columnists that don't do much or any reporting. You have a bloated editorial staff that could be shuffled to cover things people care about. You can't decimate a newsroom without a gut check, and I do not think that gut check has been performed.

I worked for a guy who was in sales once. When it became obvious that he felt ad sales should dictate content,  I was eventually faced with three choices: Battle every day, give in, or quit.

I tried number one for a while, till it landed me in the hospital. After that, number three became my choice. 

I just hope that my former co-workers at the DMN aren't faced with the same three choices.