Tell me a Mike Leach story: MSU outside receivers coach Steve Spurrier, Jr.

Steve Spurrier, Jr., recounts his first experience learning Leach's offensive style

Intermittently over the next few days and weeks, Cowbell Corner is hoping to share stories from some of those associated with Mississippi State head coach Mike Leach. If you missed it earlier this week, you can CLICK HERE to read how an out-of-the-blue letter from running backs coach Eric Mele has led to Mele working for Leach for years. Here, Mississippi State outside receivers coach Steve Spurrier, Jr., tells of one of his first-ever experiences learning the Leach offensive style.

"One of the best stories I like to tell is, my tie to Coach Leach starts with Oklahoma in 1999. When I got hired as receivers coach and Coach (Bob) Stoops, who came from Florida as defensive coordinator and brought me up there…We all get there and we’re all recruiting and we all spend a month or so doing that. Then when it’s time to get ready for spring ball, we all sit around and start meeting and talk about what we have to do to get ready for the spring. So we have our first offensive meeting. We all know each other. We’d been there a couple months. But we walk in the room. It’s me, Jonathan Hayes the tight ends coach, Cale Gundy is the running backs coach, Mark Mangino is the offensive line coach and Coach Leach (is offensive coordinator). We get in there and said, ‘Do you have a playbook?’ He says, ‘No.’ We said, ‘Do you have anything in writing, written down?’ He goes, ‘No. I’ve got nothing written down at all.’ We go, ‘Do you have any tape we can watch?’ He says, ‘Sure. Here’s a bunch of tape.’ It’s from (Leach’s stint as an assistant at) Kentucky and it’s (quarterback) Tim Couch and a bunch of good receivers and they’re all running all over the place. We have all kinds of questions, then he gets up and he starts drawing on the board. And Coach Leach was the quarterbacks coach at Kentucky. He had a coordinator title or something, but he really didn’t have much of a track record. We didn’t know much about him. Nobody did. We were like, ‘Well what do you want to do?’ He says, ‘Let’s start drawing it up.’ And he’s left-handed, so when he draws, every now and then he’ll rub (what he’s drawn) with his hand and he’ll draw a play here and then another one over here, and we all looked around like, ‘What are we doing?’ It was interesting. It was, ‘We’re going to be in this set. The running back is going to run this way." Cale Gundy, the running backs coach, was kind of particular about protections and how are we going to block this front and how are we going to handle this look. (Leach) said, ‘Listen. You go over here and this guy is going to go over here and the quarterback is going to come back and just throw to the open guy.’ We go, ‘Excuse me?’ I’ll never forget it. It was interesting just looking at all the other coaches and just looking around like, ‘What are we doing?’ We got out there and started practicing and Coach Leach went out and found Josh Heupel. We brought him in to be the QB and that year, we had the lead in every game we played. I think we finished the year 7-5, but had the lead in every game we played. Then the next year, (Leach) takes the Texas Tech job. And we actually win the national championship (at Oklahoma) the year he leaves, which was interesting. But yeah, that first year watching him draw on the board was very unique. But again, we got out there and started playing and the QB started making decisions and hitting guys. But it was, that was a fun year to be a part of."