Mississippi State Football: Mike Leach exactly who program needs
Firing Joe Moorhead created a negative media circus around Mississippi State football and Mike Leach is exactly who the Bulldogs need.
From Apple Cup to Egg Bowl, Mike Leach left one fierce rivalry to join another, taking the head coaching job at Mississippi State just a week after the Bulldogs parted ways with Joe Moorhead.
Mississippi State needed a home run hire after the Moorhead debacle ended in an abrupt firing after a couple of seasons and the Bulldogs got just that with Leach deciding to leave Washington State to lead the program in Starkville. He goes from one small college town to another and he’ll fit right in.
You have to be a special kind of coach in order to fit in with the culture at Mississippi State and that’s why Moorhead didn’t work out — he didn’t try to fit in.
Leach will be the kind of coach that embraces the culture like he did in Pullman and at Texas Tech before that. He’ll learn the ins and outs of the program and assimilate better than Moorhead did.
Not only does he bring a unique personality to Starkville, but he also totes with him a solid coaching record and loads of experience with winning programs. He turned Texas Tech into a winner when he was there, going 84-43 in 10 seasons, even making it to the Cotton Bowl in 2008 during an 11-2 campaign.
And then at Washington State, he went 3-9 in two of his first three seasons and then made five straight bowl games, capped off with a rough 6-7 season in 2019 after losing Gardner Minshew.
Mississippi State has had a rough go of things on the offensive side of the ball and the hire of Moorhead was supposed to fix that. You can bet that Leach’s presence will fix the offensive woes like it did in Pullman. He had one of the best offenses in college football with the air-raid attack and turned multiple lower-level transfers into elite quarterbacks.
This is exactly what Mississippi State needs.
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The Bulldogs will also have one heck of an Egg Bowl matchup with two of the bigger personalities in college football with Leach vs. Lane Kiffin. It just doesn’t get better than this.