By Harry King

LITTLE ROCK — Mike Leach stammers some and his delivery smacks of his high school days in Wyoming, but his punch lines and asides are worth the wait.

The former Texas Tech coach set the bar high Monday at the Little Rock Touchdown Club, providing an entertaining and welcome interlude to the Razorback chatter. Before Leach began, most of the 400 or so would have opted to hear Arkansas coach Bobby Petrino address the first meeting of the Northwest Arkansas TD Club in Springdale. He drew an estimated 550.

By the time Leach finished, however, they were glad they were in Little Rock. He delivered the sort of pearls that should work well on the CBS College Sports Network. Even with a borderline risqué item or two, he was so charming and disarming that nobody was offended.

Working with Roger Twibell, Leach’s first game is North Carolina State vs. Central Florida on Sept. 11.

“He has a point of view on life and football, and it’s something we wanted to capture in our games,” Steve Herbst, general manager of the network, said when Leach was hired.

If the network gives him time, Leach will deliver.

Through the years, Leach told the TD Club, he had always contended that the crowd at Little Rock was louder than anywhere else, including Ohio State and LSU. Oklahoma, too, is loud, he said, “because they bring everybody they can find, including the homeless.”

He was at Kentucky when Arkansas beat the Wildcats 27-20 at War Memorial Stadium in 1998 and he said he could remember the coach’s instructions — “Hit, hit, hit, hit, hit,” — reverberating through the stadium during pre-game warm-ups.

Those echoes, he figured out, made 45,000 sound like 240,000. And, the concrete is a “little bit like having a game in the neighbor’s basement.”

He mentioned his upcoming book and left blank why Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops had suggested the title: “I Believe Everybody Wants To See A Fan Man Naked.”

Leach provided some detail on his firing at Texas Tech and summed up the situation by saying there had been three chancellors and five presidents during his 10 years at the school and that he had a good relationship with two chancellors and four presidents — “What I think is a remarkably good batting average.”

He has a law degree and figured to be an attorney although “I didn’t have a great reason why,” but tried coaching because he didn’t want to get old and have regrets. One of five Division I coaches who did not play college football, his was a long and winding road. All part of a learning process, he said.

“Anybody who plays thinks they know how to coach,” he said. “Really, anybody who does anything thinks they know how to coach.”

Since being fired, he has done some odd jobs, including consulting work for an American football team in France. One of the perks, he said, was that hanging out with the locals, he didn’t have to ask directions in Paris.

Offensive balance, he said, is not 50-50 run-pass. It is making certain everybody touches the ball, whether it’s the wishbone or pass-pass-pass.

He also touched on three reasons why Heisman voters go for a particular player and suggested adding a fourth, “Who can whip all the other candidates.” In that case, he said, Ryan Mallett would win.

——
Harry King is sports columnist for Stephens Media’s Arkansas News Bureau. His e-mail address is hking@arkansasnews.com.