Mike Leach going classless on ESPN right now...

• osu99

  Awesome...Calling out Craig James and his kid. Threw out "lazy" and "entitled." What a nut.
• osu99

  supposedly the whole interview will air at 1 am tonight on the CFB show.
• darbypitcher22

  

  I'll be tuning in for this
• jordo212000

  

  awesome haha
• osu99

  here it comes again boys. lol
• darbypitcher22

  

  hmmm... this is pretty interesting....
• osu99

  also called Craig James meddling and calling in all the time. wonder if this is in reference to Craig calling because his kid was put in a closet?
• osu99

  this is the same conspiracy theory coach who blamed the Browns for Crabtree's fall in the '09 draft. who knows what really happened but this guys is a nut in my opinion.
• ZeroCool

  receivers coach said the kid was lazy and thought he deserved preferential treatment. my guess is that espn will spin it in a way that favors their employee.
• killdeer

  

  when I first heard this story I thought...."This would not be News, if it were not for Craig James....."
• Azubuike24

  

  To be honest, what does Mike Leach have to hide here? The guy is notorious for saying how it is, and acting accordingly. He's been fired from the program he pretty much built, has taken to all-time high levels and will see only a fraction of the money he was scheduled to earn. The guy can build a program to this level, that's a fact. He might be odd and in some cases, unhireable, but that won't stop him from finding a job elsewhere. The only thing that I got from this interview is the guy is defending himself and stating the ugly truth about this kid and his father. I'm not saying Leach is completely faultless, but lets face it, the guy got railroaded by a school and administration that realized this was their chance to get rid of a "problem" they believed they had for quite sometime.
  
  If he's indeed going to sue, whoever it might be, I'm sure he's been advised not to talk about any of this stuff. That doesn't matter, especially when your goal is to get the truth out there and clear your name (not of the label "oddball", but of such nasty allegations). I'm in Leach's corner here, even though it seems many aren't. This will go down as a BIG MISTAKE for Texas Tech University...especially their football program, which had finally established some relevancy. They will go back to obscurity with a line of schools in their immediate region who would love to take their place (TCU, SMU, numerous other Big 12 programs).
• Manhattan Buckeye

  My guess is both sides are a little in the wrong, Leach has always been a free spirit and probably "ground the gears" of the TT brass with his arrogance. James seems as if he has been coddled, I watched the video of him in his "closet", so he could take pictures of himself (with a chair in the background), hell, just play brickbreaker for a few hours, that's what I do on a long flight.
• Turf Warden

  Mike Leach is a good football coach, there is no denying that. His teams are certainly exciting and fun to watch, but.......he locked a concussed kid in a storage shed! No one, not Leach or his attorney/reps is disputing that! I don't care HOW you try to paint that picture, there is NO EXCUSE for that...NONE...PERIOD!
• tk421

  

  Turf Warden wrote: Mike Leach is a good football coach, there is no denying that. His teams are certainly exciting and fun to watch, but.......he locked a concussed kid in a storage shed! No one, not Leach or his attorney/reps is disputing that! I don't care HOW you try to paint that picture, there is NO EXCUSE for that...NONE...PERIOD!

  It wasn't a storage shed. The room is big enough to hold press meetings. It's not like he was in a tiny shed unable to move.
• DaBrowns41

  Well, I mean Craig James is pretty much worthless.
• osu99

  He talked about putting the kid in a dark place in another article I read ccrunner. I think it's kind of odd he says Craig James took up all this time but as the head football coach don't you need to put your foot down and tell the guy enough already? It sounds like Leach wanted to run this kid off and it backfired.
• thedynasty1998

  

  I hope Craig James gets fired.
• thedynasty1998

  

  Who cares how long? The kid wasn't locked in there. He was sent their during practice. People need to quit acting like he was put in a cage without food and water.
• osu99

  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/01/sports/ncaafootball/01leach.html?ref=sports
  
  The whole thing continues being he said she said. It seems to me from the info that's been provided that Leach was trying to play mind games with this kid and it backfired. He could have told the kid to go home, he could have told him to hang in the training room but didn't. It was a power trip.
• thedynasty1998

  

  I definitely blame Craig James.
  
  I love what Leach said about James, along the lines of, I had to spend more time dealing with Craig James than all the other parents combined.
• charliehustle14

  Craig James always seemed like a whiny bitch to me....even before all of this.
  
  I love Leach's attitude. I would play for that man in a heartbeat. You'll get as much out of him as you give to him. I also love that he doesn't hold anything back in both his words and coaching philosophy.
• Skyhook79

  

  Craig James admitted to being at 70 to 80% of TT's practices during the off season. What College dad does that?
  Add that to the fact that he was calling Adminstrators and Boosters during the season.
  
  They should rename the Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl to the Craig James Armed Forces Bowl.
  
  Also he doesn't come off as "classless" to me in this interview.
  
  http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=4787194
• Red_Skin_Pride

  

  ccrunner609 wrote: After reading that article, Craig James sounds like a little whiny bitch parent of some JH kid that is learning life isnt fair and their kid isnt the best player in the world.
  
  If James was pressuring Leach and talking to administrators I dont blame Leach for anything. If the TT administrators even talked to James I blame them. THere is a chain of command that should be followed. Why didnt James just go to Leach?
  
  Sounds like James got to some boosters also.

  Sounds to me a lot like a certain Buckeye parent that always whines about the coach when something happens with his kid. We've seen how counter-productive that whole situation can be, and it's a shame that it cost Leach his job. I'm not saying it's right to lock a kid in a room if that's what happened, but the administrator on ESPN said the other day one of the things they disliked the most was that Leach gave the James kid "a good cussing"...Lol are we seriously to the point that we're gonna start getting coaches in trouble for cussing?? If so, Jon Gruden has no shot to coach anywhere in college football. He'd be fired after the first practice!
• osu99

  A couple thoughts on this.
  
  1) Mike Leach is obviously an independent thinker so why doesn't he tell Craig James to get lost in the nicest way possible? Craig James works for ESPN sure but when you think about hearing expert insight at ESPN do you ever say "Oh man I can't wait to see what Craig James has to say about this?" Herbie, Corso and Fowler are the go to guys at ESPN with the most clout, not James.
  
  2) I'm assuming this isn't the first player under Leach to have a concussion in all of his years of coaching. Was this a standard practice to isolate players after a concussion?
• devil1197

  The TTech trainer came out and said that James totally lied about the circumstances of the room he was placed in and how he was treated.