Mike Leach has passed away

[bigboxes]

Dont believe Mike was really that overweight. He was def no BB at Illinois. I think the take home here is, this could happen to any of us, any day, any place. Live your life while you still can and enjoy the hell out of it.

He was in terrible shape. At least 50 lbs overweight. Look at Heupel. You'd never guess he was once an athlete. You don't have to maintain your playing weight, but you need to take care of yourself.

 

[AVeritas]

Genetics play a large part in all this. I'd bet there was a history of heart issues in Leach's gene pool.

 

[moralvictories]

Old neighbor lady who checked in at a svelte 300lbs + once went to her doctor seeking help getting some $$$ from her employer for getting hurt on the job...Doctor told her "You didn't hurt your back because of your job, you hurt you back because you're 150lbs over weight" Ooooooh man did that cause a shit storm. I guess you're not allowed to say that stuff anymore, weird. Thought that is why people went to the doctor, to find out what the problem is and how to fix it.

The doctor can't even be honest about the cause of the problem because someone's feelers might get hurt.

 

[huntered]

yea you're right

better that nobody try

silly me for suggesting the public become more accountable for our society's health as a whole

God forbid someone here look out for their fellow man

silly

 

[keilwitzg]

RIP Pirate 🏴‍☠️
He was one of the great ones, he will be missed. Peace be with his family, team, and loved ones…

 

[CoastGuard2018]

From what I read pneumonia can place a acute stress on the heart and lead to heart attack or heart failure. . Sounds like he was battling it much of the season.

 

[dinglefritz]

he had a massive coranary and you think cpr could have saved him?

We don’t know for sure that that is the case. A friend of the family said that but that’s not from an autopsy. That said with the statement that he had been suffering from heart failure for a while it’s unlikely that CPR would have saved.him. The percentage of people who are actually survive once CPR is started is actually fairly low but especially for cardiac rhythm problems it can be miraculous.

 

[CoastGuard2018]

He was in terrible shape. At least 50 lbs overweight. Look at Heupel. You'd never guess he was once an athlete. You don't have to maintain your playing weight, but you need to take care of yourself.

In fairness it oftentimes can be genetic or hereditary as well.knew a marathon runner who had clogged arteries at 49 and a number of examples in the sports world.

 

[dinglefritz]

In fairness it oftentimes can be genetic or hereditary as well.knew a marathon runner who had clogged arteries at 49 and a number of examples in the sports world.

A large part of it is genetics. About 10 + years ago my brother who is skinny as a rail developed a viral myocarditis from a respiratory virus. It led to his heart stopping several times, cardiomyopathy, pacemakers, heart failure etc….all from the common cold.

Lots of potential factors can lead to heart failure.

 

[redfanusa]

Such an innovator and colorful character. Prayers for his family and friends. Taken too young.

 

[hephusker]

he had a massive coranary and you think cpr could have saved him?

Might have. They got him back it seems cardiac wise but I would bet he was 'brain dead' on EEG due to low cerebral blood flow. Most people arrest due to the irregular heart rate that develops from the "heart attack" - get heart rate back and you have a chance to fix the vessels and the heart itself.

 

[king_kong_]

We don’t know for sure that that is the case. A friend of the family said that but that’s not from an autopsy. That said with the statement that he had been suffering from heart failure for a while it’s unlikely that CPR would have saved.him. The percentage of people who are actually survive once CPR is started is actually fairly low but especially for cardiac rhythm problems it can be miraculous.

I had hoped you of all people would support my CPR certification crusade!

 

[dinglefritz]

I had hoped you of all people would support my CPR certification crusade!

You don’t know if CPR would have worked if you didn’t try. Personally I wouldn’t want to have to live with the thought that I might have saved a life if I had started CPR.

10-15 years ago my 90 year old mother-in-law had her heart stop about 2 hours flight time out after leaving Hawaii. Still with us and baking bread for all the holidays.

CPR is so easy and now they don’t even require that you breathe for them. The pressure on the chest can be enough to move some air in and out.

 

[Husker Hambone]

RIP Pirate 🏴‍☠️

 

[AVeritas]

Site of Mississippi State's upcoming bowl game.

 

[Redmich]

 

[tarheelhusker]

Thanks Pirate Mike !! RIP!

 

[planored]

He will be missed for sure! RIP

 

[GBRforLife1]

yea you're right

better that nobody try

silly me for suggesting the public become more accountable for our society's health as a whole

God forbid someone here look out for their fellow man

 

[GBRforLife1]

The world needs more pirates. Arrrgghhh. R.I.P.

 

[TheHuskerFreak]

Bill Moos: Made a great hire in Pullman to bring in Leach and save their dead program.
Made a bad hire in Lincoln and an even worse extension to kill the Nebraska program.

 

[phoenix4nu]

Bill Moos: Made a great hire in Pullman to bring in Leach and save their dead program.
Made a bad hire in Lincoln and an even worse extension to kill the Nebraska program.

Two great hires and one really bad extension.

 

[BigRedBugeaters]

Moos was on ESPNU radio yesterday talking about when he hired Leach. Was very entertaining

 

[moralvictories]

Bill Moos: Made a great hire in Pullman to bring in Leach and save their dead program.
Made a bad hire in Lincoln and an even worse extension to kill the Nebraska program.

On paper, Frost was the guy to hire. Coming off a 13-0 season at UCF, a former player, and most of the fans clamoring for him to be our next coach. Giving him an extension was stupid.

 

[TruHusker]

He was in terrible shape. At least 50 lbs overweight. Look at Heupel. You'd never guess he was once an athlete. You don't have to maintain your playing weight, but you need to take care of yourself.

Not sure this is true. Here is an article I just came across. He was a walker and worked out. Being over weight according to some charts is one thing, being obese is something else. He was not.

BY DAN WETZEL​ Back when he coached Washington State, Mike Leach preferred to walk to work, about a 3.5 mile trek. He was never much into driving a car. Walking (or biking or even rollerblading) felt right, and not just for the exercise, but for the randomness of life it could provide. ‌ He’d often use the time to call recruits, or friends, or boosters, or media, or whomever else popped into his forever-revving mind. He might have a single, simple question, but one hour and 14 topics later, he’d be describing the best taco he ever ate in Del Rio, Texas. That was Mike Leach. ‌ In the winter, when the snow would cover the ground, it wasn’t unusual for Leach to see some animal prints and decide to do some “tracking.” Maybe it was a deer, maybe a fox. He couldn’t help but wonder where they had gone. “I was just curious where this raccoon lived,” he once explained. ‌ This was, perhaps, the most Mike Leach trait that Mike Leach ever displayed. ‌ Capable of noticing something that others just zombie past yet also so endlessly curious that he would fully apply himself into discovery. Not knowing, or more specifically not at least trying to know, was just not possible for him, even if it meant the most famous guy in town was tromping through someone’s backyard in search of a critter. ‌ Leach passed away Monday night at age 61 following a recent health incident at his home in Starkville, where he coached Mississippi State the past three seasons. He’d battled pneumonia and other ailments all season. ‌ He leaves behind his wife Sharon, four grown children, a Bulldog team and a football community that loved him almost as much as he impacted them. ‌ Leach will be fondly remembered by fans as this colorful, eccentric character, a bolt of personality in what is too often an overly serious profession. ‌ His press conferences — just like any conversation with Leach — could flow into absurd topics from ranking which Pac-12 mascot could win a fight (“Just in terms of a beast alone, a [Colorado] Buffalo is going to be pretty hard to tangle with”) to wedding planning advice for the groom (“Stay out of the way”) to the existence of BigFoot (he wanted to believe but wasn’t optimistic). Occasionally he’d talk about his team’s third down conversion rate or something mundane like that. ‌ He had a law degree from Pepperdine and too much intelligence to just be content talking football. He seemed to spend large swaths of his day discussing pirates and military history and macroeconomics and how coffee should be consumed (“Black, it should taste horrible”) and Key West and politics and the importance of gravy at Thanksgiving and, man, you just never knew. ‌ He never did anything like anyone else. This was an innovative football mind who never really played football — he was a bench warmer as a high school junior in little Cody, Wyoming. A busy coach who found time to teach a class at Washington State — “Insurgent Warfare and Football Strategies.” ‌ During a stretch between jobs, he hosted a radio show on Sirius and decided to multitask by getting his workouts in during commercial breaks. That meant, say, hammering out a couple minutes of push-ups which left him gasping for breath as he returned to the air. ‌ If anything, the comedy act and self-deprecation took away from his impact on football. It is not too much to say that sport — from high school to the NFL — would not be played as it is if not for Leach. He was an architect of the Air Raid offense with his mentor, Hal Mumme. In the simplest terms, they tried to answer the age-old question: What if you just ran two-minute offense all the time? First it was as an assistant at small programs and big ones before Leach broke out on his own at Texas Tech, Washington State and Mississippi State. ‌ His thinking ran counter to everything — he once described how he ideally would have 10 players stretched equidistant from each other from one sideline to the other, with just the QB sitting back and picking his target. ‌ “It’d be unstoppable,” he declared, and while football rules prohibit the offensive line from spreading out that much, “The Spread” became mainstream because coaches watched his teams with a mix of curious horror and then awe. ‌ Some of its principles began to dominate the NFL — tempo, empty backfields, the value of the slot receiver, quarterbacks reading coverage at the line, going for it on fourth down and so on. ‌ Leach once spoke ambitiously about playing an entire game without calling a run, but even he never went that far. ‌ In his 21 seasons as a head coach, his teams delivered 13 seasons of 8 or more victories, a remarkable accomplishment since all three of his programs were among the least resourced in their leagues. ‌ Everyone always wondered if he and his system could win a championship, but he was too eccentric, and at times too controversial, for some schools' tastes. ‌ He pointed to the Super Bowl champs who ran some version of what he did as proof of concept. ‌ Leach was an American Original, a football savant, a guy who wouldn’t just run around barking motivational sayings — “be the hammer, never the nail” … “Swing Your Sword” — but lived it himself. ‌ He never played scared. He never shied away from being entertaining. He didn’t put on airs. He’d talk to anyone, anywhere for hours. ‌ He never seemed to consider whose sensibilities he offended, be it football or anything else. ‌ He just did it his way. ‌ Ask most football coaches what they would be doing for a living if they weren’t coaching football and you’ll likely be met by a confused look or some humble line about not being smart enough to do anything else. ‌ With Leach, it was the opposite. What would he do? How about asking what wouldn’t he do? ‌ Maybe he’d have been a lawyer or a politician or a scientist or a talk show host or a professor or maybe he’d just be that guy wandering around in the snow trying to find out where a raccoon slept because who wouldn’t want to know that? ‌ In many ways, it was all the same. A mind and a man too big for a game, now gone too soon for a sport, and a fan base near and far, that adored and appreciated him for it.​

 

[Laner2]

NSIAP, but I ran across this and felt it was appropriate to put here. Someone in the video said that Leach thought and communicated differently. Agree.

 

[Bugeater]

NSIAP, but I ran across this and felt it was appropriate to put here. Someone in the video said that Leach thought and communicated differently. Agree.

View embedded media

That was uplifting and tear inducing all at the same time.

 

[Kill Switch]

He was a unique personality that brought many offensive innovations to the fame. As a fan from an opposing team I did not "like" him because his offenses were a pain to defend. If our team planned the wrong scheme to defend that day the games could and a few times did get ugly.

I do think in the most recent years he did become somewhat of caricature of himself as some of his stories and rants did not seem to come as natural as when he was younger. It felt as though he was trying too hard to keep up with his pirate reputation.

RIP

 

[AVeritas]

Graham Harrell, WVU's o'coordinator and former Leach QB at TxT was on B12 XM radio this morning telling stories about Leach that were so funny they brought tears.

He said he often got calls from coach and hated to take them because they'd last an hour or more and were completely one-sided.

He said his play calls, "like run 618," had zero meaning other than a play, i.e. 6 didn't mean the six hole or 18 any particular set. it was all memorization.

Funny and worthy interview if you happen to catch it. My gosh, what an American treasure we've lost.