Leach Eligible for HOF

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fmlizard said:
I'm not sure what to say about Leach in the HoF

Record-wise he's the pass-wacky version of Glen Mason or PJ Fleck

But he was famous and could be considered a significant innovator in the game
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As a coach Mike's coaching always seemed like "when his system worked it worked" but that's it.

He never seemed to be able to balance his system / incorporate other coach's input to make up for the downsides.

Granted ... it worked more often than it didn't.
 

A_Slab_of_Bacon said:
As a coach Mike's coaching always seemed like "when his system worked it worked" but that's it.

He never seemed to be able to balance his system / incorporate other coach's input to make up for the downsides.

Granted ... it worked more often than it didn't.
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I think the Air Raid system is the basis for most modern offenses - especially in college football. I don't know the exact amount of that is attributed to Mike Leach personally, but I don't think when you evaluate the impact of that offense it makes sense to just look at Mike Leach's teams he personally coached.
 





fmlizard said:
I'm not sure what to say about Leach in the HoF

Record-wise he's the pass-wacky version of Glen Mason or PJ Fleck

But he was famous and could be considered a significant innovator in the game
Click to expand...

Record-wise, Fleck is a good comparison to Leach. Mason? Mmmm... no. Not so much.

According to their respective Wiki pages...

Fleck's career record is 86-61. By my sometimes shaky arithmetic, that's a winning percentage of .585 (which is in the same ballpark as Leach's).
en.wikipedia.org

P. J. Fleck - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Glen Mason's career record is 123-121-1. That looks to me to be a winning percentage of just a hair above .500 — which is not really close to Leach or to Fleck.
en.wikipedia.org

Glen Mason - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 



RememberMurray said:
Record-wise, Fleck is a good comparison to Leach. Mason? Mmmm... no. Not so much.

According to their respective Wiki pages...

Fleck's career record is 86-61. By my sometimes shaky arithmetic, that's a winning percentage of .585 (which is in the same ballpark as Leach's).
en.wikipedia.org

P. J. Fleck - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Glen Mason's career record is 123-121-1. That looks to me to be a winning percentage of just a hair above .500 — which is not really close to Leach or to Fleck.
en.wikipedia.org

Glen Mason - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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And it feels like PJ's teams won those games that Glen's teams .... even when close were miles away from winning ...

On the other end of the spectrum, I also think for much of Glen's time the non conference teams / lower level teams were SO BAD. These days I think even some cupcake non conference teams that we play ... they look so much better coached / way closer to the P5 level.

South Dakota State and the like look like good / well coached teams. Way more complete teams than we saw in the Mason era.
 

Bob_Loblaw said:
I think the Air Raid system is the basis for most modern offenses - especially in college football. I don't know the exact amount of that is attributed to Mike Leach personally, but I don't think when you evaluate the impact of that offense it makes sense to just look at Mike Leach's teams he personally coached.
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Leach gets a ton of credit for the work done by earlier coaches like Mouse Davis who developed the run-and-shoot at Portland State in the mid-1970s that featured two QBs who played in the pros: June Jones and Neil Lomax. Hal Mumme was doing pretty much the same thing at Kentucky with Tim Couch at QB in the late-1990s before Leach became a head coach. I think what separates Leach from those two (and earlier pioneers like high school coach Glen Ellison and half of the coaches in the early days of the American Football League). Leach was a good interview. Add to that all the pirate BS and somehow people think that's enough to make some room for him.
 

Selective memory for a coach who had a lot of charisma...nevermind how he treated players...as long as he wins games and is funny...
Another example of the f'd up values
 

Soon2B8 said:
Selective memory for a coach who had a lot of charisma...nevermind how he treated players...as long as he wins games and is funny...
Another example of the f'd up values
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If you're talking about Craig James' kid, Leach was 100% in the right.

I SO wanted Leach here when we hired Jerry Kill, but the administration at the U is too risk averse.
 



disco said:
I SO wanted Leach here when we hired Jerry Kill, but the administration at the U is too risk averse.
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His mother was from hinckley you know, so that practically made him one of us. It’s a shame the admin were a bunch of invertebrates, because I wanted to see the pirate’s air raid gopher offense.
 


Bob_Loblaw said:
I think the Air Raid system is the basis for most modern offenses - especially in college football. I don't know the exact amount of that is attributed to Mike Leach personally, but I don't think when you evaluate the impact of that offense it makes sense to just look at Mike Leach's teams he personally coached.
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Hal Mumme is the guy but leach taking it to Oklahoma as OC kind of legitimized it forever.


The tree off of mumme is leach, dykes

The tree of of leach is massive
Dykes also has a bit of a tree
 

50PoundHead said:
Leach gets a ton of credit for the work done by earlier coaches like Mouse Davis who developed the run-and-shoot at Portland State in the mid-1970s that featured two QBs who played in the pros: June Jones and Neil Lomax. Hal Mumme was doing pretty much the same thing at Kentucky with Tim Couch at QB in the late-1990s before Leach became a head coach. I think what separates Leach from those two (and earlier pioneers like high school coach Glen Ellison and half of the coaches in the early days of the American Football League). Leach was a good interview. Add to that all the pirate BS and somehow people think that's enough to make some room for him.
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They’re similar in some ways but the route concepts between mouse Davis and Hal mumme are different
 

Some guy said:
Hal Mumme is the guy but leach taking it to Oklahoma as OC kind of legitimized it forever.


The tree off of mumme is leach, dykes

The tree of of leach is massive
Dykes also has a bit of a tree
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Dana Holgerson, too. He's now Nebraska OC, we see him in October.

That general coaching tree also includes Art Briles and Kliff Kingsbury to a certain degree.
 

tjgopher said:
Dana Holgerson, too. He's now Nebraska OC, we see him in October.

That general coaching tree also includes Art Briles and Kliff Kingsbury to a certain degree.
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I think holgerson is part of the dykes branch
Briles and kingsbury worked for leach or played for leach. I could be wrong about Helgerson

But holgerson actually played for mumme at Iowa Wesleyan
 


Some guy said:
I think holgerson is part of the dykes branch
Briles and kingsbury worked for leach or played for leach. I could be wrong about Helgerson

But holgerson actually played for mumme at Iowa Wesleyan
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Holgerson played for Mumme at Iowa Wesleyan and then was an assistant coach for Mumme at Valdosta State.
 

WAGopher said:
I’m kind of a traditionalist and don’t like historic rules changes to allow one person in. If they want to create a special one time honor, like Originator of the Air Raid Offense, so be it. But don’t group him in with others who actually won enough to be inducted.
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That said, setting an arbitrary win percentage for a coach to get into the Hall of Fame is stupid anyway.

Why 60%? What's magical about that?

What other Hall of Fame does that? To make the Baseball Hall of Fame you have to have a career batting average of .300? A running back must average 5.5 yards per carry to make the Football Hall? Nope.

Golf has a few weird criteria for its Hall, but most Halls just let the merits speak for themselves.

For example, a guy like Leach winning 59% of his games at Texas Tech, Washington State, and Mississippi State is far more impressive (to me) than say John Cooper winning 72% of his games at Ohio State, right?

Yet, Cooper makes it into the Hall easily and Leach doesn't based on a silly, arbitrary 60% win rule?

Paths to greatness have many different variables.

I would eliminate the winning percentage altogether.

Some coaches take over downtrodden programs and it takes awhile to build. At only 11 or 12 games per year it doesn't take too many 3 or 4 win "rebuilding" seasons to knock you out of 60%. Seems like a strange criterion to make it arbitrarily 60%.

And, for traditionalists, there are several coaches in the Hall of Fame with career records below .600 already. The .600 winning percentage wasn't strictly enforced until the mid-2000s.
 

tjgopher said:
That said, setting an arbitrary win percentage for a coach to get into the Hall of Fame is stupid anyway.

Why 60%? What's magical about that?

What other Hall of Fame does that? To make the Baseball Hall of Fame you have to have a career batting average of .300? A running back must average 5.5 yards per carry to make the Football Hall? Nope.

Golf has a few weird criteria for its Hall, but most Halls just let the merits speak for themselves.

For example, a guy like Leach winning 59% of his games at Texas Tech, Washington State, and Mississippi State is far more impressive (to me) than say John Cooper winning 72% of his games at Ohio State, right?

Yet, Cooper makes it into the Hall easily and Leach doesn't based on a silly, arbitrary 60% win rule?

Paths to greatness have many different variables.

I would eliminate the winning percentage altogether.

Some coaches take over downtrodden programs and it takes awhile to build. At only 11 or 12 games per year it doesn't take too many 3 or 4 win "rebuilding" seasons to knock you out of 60%. Seems like a strange criterion to make it arbitrarily 60%.

And, for traditionalists, there are several coaches in the Hall of Fame with career records below .600 already. The .600 winning percentage wasn't strictly enforced until the mid-2000s.
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I agree with how limiting arbitrary numbers can be. Greatness is always measured by numbers and the Hall of Fame should also be for coaches that truly made a difference for the game. But changing a win percentage by half a point just doesn’t seem right so there must be a better way. Mike Leach brought a unique personality, popularized an offense and was a character in every sense of the word. He should be in the HOF. Maybe in death he’ll even modernize the HOF rules to honor the greats.
 

I think Leach should be in the HOF. But, what I'd really like is for the Gophers to go 10 and 2 this year and get PJ over the 60% barrier and then keep stacking wins going forward..

I agree 60% is a silly arbitrary number that doesn't factor where you coach.

I certainly do not want Iowa to beat Minnesota head to head or in the standings but I think Ferentz is a HOF coach...that is without any research...just perception.
 

WAGopher said:
I agree with how limiting arbitrary numbers can be. Greatness is always measured by numbers and the Hall of Fame should also be for coaches that truly made a difference for the game. But changing a win percentage by half a point just doesn’t seem right so there must be a better way. Mike Leach brought a unique personality, popularized an offense and was a character in every sense of the word. He should be in the HOF. Maybe in death he’ll even modernize the HOF rules to honor the greats.
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My suggestion is the better way is to eliminate the silly arbitrary number. It seems they added that requirement in the mid-2000s. No reason to keep it.

Leach either is or isn't a Hall of Famer...either way winning 59.6% instead of 60.0% should not be a determining and especially not an eliminating factor.
 
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tjgopher said:
That said, setting an arbitrary win percentage for a coach to get into the Hall of Fame is stupid anyway.

Why 60%? What's magical about that?

What other Hall of Fame does that? To make the Baseball Hall of Fame you have to have a career batting average of .300? A running back must average 5.5 yards per carry to make the Football Hall? Nope.

Golf has a few weird criteria for its Hall, but most Halls just let the merits speak for themselves.

For example, a guy like Leach winning 59% of his games at Texas Tech, Washington State, and Mississippi State is far more impressive (to me) than say John Cooper winning 72% of his games at Ohio State, right?

Yet, Cooper makes it into the Hall easily and Leach doesn't based on a silly, arbitrary 60% win rule?

Paths to greatness have many different variables.

I would eliminate the winning percentage altogether.

Some coaches take over downtrodden programs and it takes awhile to build. At only 11 or 12 games per year it doesn't take too many 3 or 4 win "rebuilding" seasons to knock you out of 60%. Seems like a strange criterion to make it arbitrarily 60%.

And, for traditionalists, there are several coaches in the Hall of Fame with career records below .600 already. The .600 winning percentage wasn't strictly enforced until the mid-2000s.
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I agree Obi-Wan
 

tjgopher said:
That said, setting an arbitrary win percentage for a coach to get into the Hall of Fame is stupid anyway.

Why 60%? What's magical about that?

What other Hall of Fame does that? To make the Baseball Hall of Fame you have to have a career batting average of .300? A running back must average 5.5 yards per carry to make the Football Hall? Nope.

Golf has a few weird criteria for its Hall, but most Halls just let the merits speak for themselves.

For example, a guy like Leach winning 59% of his games at Texas Tech, Washington State, and Mississippi State is far more impressive (to me) than say John Cooper winning 72% of his games at Ohio State, right?

Yet, Cooper makes it into the Hall easily and Leach doesn't based on a silly, arbitrary 60% win rule?

Paths to greatness have many different variables.

I would eliminate the winning percentage altogether.

Some coaches take over downtrodden programs and it takes awhile to build. At only 11 or 12 games per year it doesn't take too many 3 or 4 win "rebuilding" seasons to knock you out of 60%. Seems like a strange criterion to make it arbitrarily 60%.

And, for traditionalists, there are several coaches in the Hall of Fame with career records below .600 already. The .600 winning percentage wasn't strictly enforced until the mid-2000s.
Click to expand...
 

tjgopher said:
My suggestion is the better way is to eliminate the silly arbitrary number. It seems they added that requirement in the mid-2000s. No reason to keep it.

Leach either is or isn't a Hall of Famer...either way winning 59.6% instead of 60.0% should not be a determining and especially not an eliminating factor.
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They "Moved the Goalposts".
 


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