Mississippi State's Mike Leach discusses past Tiger Stadium experience and more on SEC teleconference

Leach made his weekly appearance on the SEC Teleconference on Wednesday

On Wednesday, Mississippi State head coach Mike Leach made the first of his weekly appearances this season on the Southeastern Conference teleconference. Here is everything Leach said, from grandmothers flipping him off on his first trip to LSU, to how the Bulldog mascot fares as compared to others in the SEC.

OPENING STATEMENT: “Let’s just stick with the questions. As thrilled as I’d be to comment on everything, they can go ahead and ask me a question and we’ll roll from there.”

ON HIS IMPRESSIONS OF SLOPPY PLAY IN OTHER GAMES EARLY THIS SEASON AND WHAT HE’S LEARNED: “You know, they’re a lot like games are every year. I think people focus on more specific ones a little more with less teams playing in this day in age. And then, I come in and sometimes my wife is screaming at the television. So sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s bad. To me, to be honest with you, more than anything the sloppy play here and there just looks like a first-games type of deal. It’s just as you’re trying to build a team, you improve as the season goes. You try to avoid as many of those mishaps as you can. And we’ve also, some of those games, used a situation or two for examples. ‘Let’s avoid this’, or, ‘Let’s make sure we do that’ type of thing. I don’t know. It’s always a challenge to make sure you’ve got everything addressed. As you play, you go back and watch film and find several things you didn’t have addressed.”

ON WHAT HE REMEMBERS ABOUT HIS FIRST GAME AT TIGER STADIUM IN 1998 WHEN HE WAS AN ASSISTANT AT KENTUCKY: “That was one of the most thrilling and competitive games ever. As a matter of fact, I wrote about it in my book, Swing Your Sword. It was like – and I think still as far as on the road and that type of thing – maybe the best gameday environment as far as traveling to it. That’s the deal. As the bus pulled up, there were little, old ladies with their grandchildren flipping off our bus. As you get closer, they start rocking your bus. Then the history and tradition of that stadium – it’s utterly outstanding. I looked up there at the dorms trying to imagine what it would’ve been like to live in the dorms they had in the stadium back in the day. Trying to think about the history of what the old H-shaped goal post was. I went by the Tiger and made sure somebody else was closer to the tiger than me so that if the tiger escaped he’d get to them before he got to me. It’s a fantastic place.”

ON WHAT HE THINKS IT’LL BE LIKE WITH SO FEW FANS SATURDAY: “I don’t know. It kind of seems to me like a spring game or spring scrimmage in a way except for that doesn’t really change anything as far as the teams. I don’t have to wait for a guy to get to the sideline to yell at him if I don’t like what I see you know. He’ll be able to hear me out there on the field. To the teams, I think it’s extremely meaningful and it’s going to be from start to finish. So I think it’ll have all the thrill of that as well as on TV. I don’t know what’ll happen or what’ll unfold. Obviously the doctors have to do what’s best, but I’m cautiously optimistic that maybe we can have full stadiums before the end of the season.”

ON HOW HIS AIR RAID OFFENSE HAS CHANGED THROUGH THE YEARS: “You know it’s hard to keep track a little bit. I’d say it’s pretty similar but I kind of forget what we added when or what we emphasized where and that type of thing. I’d say it’s quite similar. Because the goal has been to try to attack the field and put it in everybody’s hands.”

ON TRANSITIONING TO A NEW TEAM WITH GUYS HE DIDN’T RECRUIT: “The biggest thing is you try to kind of tell what you want to do on the field – show it, illustrated it, teach it, get people as good at it as you possibly can. Some jump onboard and some aren’t necessarily all in. You try to get them all in. If they don’t get all in, you try to encourage them to go find something else to do. But really it’s keep teaching it because people have success when they get excited and when they get excited, it gets contagious. I think you try to get a flow. The worst thing you can do is have way too much in there, so kind of keep it kind of basic.”

ON ERROLL THOMPSON: “Really good player. Very intense. He’s one of those guys I think actually helps the practice. He’s got really good instincts. He’s built good and runs well, but beyond that, he’s got really good instincts for the ball. Then he’s also a very steady guy. He’s very steady and looks very steady, but more explosive than people would think.”

ON HOW THE MISSISSIPPI STATE BULLDOG WOULD MATCH UP IN A MASCOT WAR IN THE SEC: “I think pretty good. There’s a lot of bulldogs around the country. Bulldogs and tigers are, let’s be honest, it’s a little overused. It’s kind of like the first name ‘Mike’ that I heard years ago we passed up the name ‘John’ for the most overused name. Bulldogs are a little bit like that but the reason everybody wants to be a bulldog or tiger is they’re pretty good mascots. I think it’s a pretty good mascot. It is more creative though, if we’re being honest, than in Canada where you have six teams and two of them are called the Roughriders. So I think we’re doing OK.”

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