Mike Leach, One of College Football’s Most Innovative Minds, Dies at 61

The Mississippi State coach helped revolutionize football’s passing offense and guided some of the game’s most prolific quarterbacks.

Mike Leach, one of college football’s most distinctive personalities and most innovative offensive minds, died Monday night of heart-related complications, his family announced. He was 61.

Leach had recently completed his third season as Mississippi State’s coach and was preparing his team for the ReliaQuest Bowl against Illinois on Jan. 2 in Tampa. He suffered a heart-related medical emergency at his Starkville home Sunday morning before being airlifted to the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson.

According to school officials and those close to the coach, Leach had dealt with pneumonia-like conditions during the 2022 football season, severe enough that several staff members suggested he step away for a few days. He refused. While continuing to battle a serious cough, those same sources said his condition had significantly improved over the past couple weeks.

The school announced Sunday that defensive coordinator Zach Arnett would lead the team in Leach’s absence.

Leach is survived by his wife, Sharon, his children Janeen, Kim, Cody and Kiersten, and three grandchildren. Born in Susanville, Calif., Leach was raised in Cody, Wyo. After graduating with honors from BYU in 1983, Leach earned a master’s degree from the U.S. Sports Academy and his juris doctor from Pepperdine University, where he graduated in the top third of his class.

On Saturday, Leach attended a bowl practice, a recruiting event and a holiday party with his son held at the Starkville home of Brian Hadad, a radio broadcaster for SuperTalk Mississippi. Leach arrived with Cody, mingled with the crowd for 45 minutes, ate a few sweet treats and then left. “He seemed in good spirits,” Hadad says.

Darren Carroll/Sports Illustrated

Leach is believed to be the first active SEC head football coach to die since Bo Rein was killed in a plane crash in January 1980, less than two months into his tenure at LSU. He is believed to be the first active FBS coach to die since Northwestern coach Randy Walker, who suffered a heart attack in June 2006 at age 52.

Mississippi State president Mark Keenum, interim athletic director Bracky Brett and other administrators visited Leach’s family at the hospital Monday afternoon. The school’s search for a permanent athletic director is being delayed despite final interviews being scheduled for this week.

A disciple of Hal Mumme’s Air Raid offense, Leach used the pass-happy scheme to win 158 games over a 21-season head-coaching span that included stops at Texas Tech and Washington State before Mississippi State. He helped revolutionize football’s passing offense, coaching some of the game’s most prolific quarterbacks as an assistant or head coach—Tim Couch at Kentucky, Kliff Kingsbury and Graham Harrell at Texas Tech, Gardner Minshew at Washington State and his latest QB, Will Rogers, who this season broke school records for career passing touchdowns and yards.

Away from the field, Leach was one of the most intriguing people in the college game. He was one of only a few major college head coaches who did not play college football, including Auburn coach Hugh Freeze, TCU’s Sonny Dykes and Missouri’s Eli Drinkwitz.

The only major college head coach with a law degree, he was unafraid to air his political views and was fond of deep debates over strong spirits that stretched long into the night. Leach was affectionately known as “The Pirate,” for his fascination with the 18th-century figures, his breezy persona and love affair with island life. Leach and his wife spent several months a year at a home they owned in Key West. He was such a regular at one Key West watering hole that his name was inscribed on a stool at Captain Tony’s Saloon, and locals often spotted a shirtless and shoeless Leach biking around the island.

Unlike many major college coaches, Leach dove into non-football-related discussions with regularity and few topics were off-limits—politics, the economy and human evolution; dinosaurs, Big Foot theories and grizzly bears. His news conferences often evolved into long-winded, humorous affairs, with his diatribes sometimes leaning on prominent historical figures or events.

On the field, he excelled at programs that were remote and short on historical success: Lubbock, Texas; Pullman, Wash.; and Starkville, Miss. He won at least eight games in 13 of 21 seasons, including 11–2 marks in 2008 (Texas Tech) and ’18 (Washington State) and an 8–4 record this season at Mississippi State that ended with the Bulldogs upsetting Ole Miss in the Egg Bowl.

His success is rooted in an offensive scheme that abandoned running the football and ignored time of possession, which he once famously claimed to be the most overrated statistic in the game. “There’s nothing balanced about the 50% run, 50% pass because that’s 50% stupid,” he said.

He became known just as much for his dry, comedic one-liners—Leachisms—as his team’s prolific passing attack.

“If you get into a fight, don’t take your helmet off. We’re looking for smart players, not dumb ones.”

“Well, you’re going to be dead in a hundred years anyway, so live dangerously.”

In a 2019 E:60 segment, ESPN’s Jeremy Schaap asked Leach how he would like to be remembered in his obituary. Replied Leach: “Well, that’s their problem. What do I care? I’m dead.”

After a loss against Alabama this season, in which Leach became so frustrated with his players’ inability to “use their hands” in blocking, he suggested human beings may begin to evolve without hands, like the dinosaurs. During a game against Auburn, Leach, so frustrated with his receivers, folded up chairs meant for them.

Coach Leach had a discussion with his receivers, and shortly after he took all of the chairs up. pic.twitter.com/8J6EVkDubz

— Jonathan Flippo⚜️ (@JonathanFlippo) November 6, 2022

Despite his quirky personality and pass-heavy schemes, Leach was known as a hard-nosed, traditional coach who ran his programs on discipline and peculiar tactics. At the conclusion of his 10th season at Texas Tech in December 2009, Leach was fired as a result of an investigation into alleged mistreatment of Adam James, the son of former Patriots running back and then ESPN analyst Craig James. Adam James suffered a concussion and was not cleared to practice. As a result, the James family said, Leach ordered Adam to stand in a dark equipment room.

Leach refused to apologize and was dismissed a day before Tech would have owed him an $800,000 tenure bonus. The multiple lawsuits Leach filed against the school and ESPN were dismissed.