Leach Fired
 

per ESPN

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/bowls0...ory?id=4781981


CBSsportsline linked article as well:
http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/story/12724022
LUBBOCK, Texas -- Texas Tech has fired football coach Mike Leach.

The school handed a termination letter to Leach's attorney, Ted Liggett, on Wednesday just before the two sides were to appear in a Lubbock, Texas, courtroom for a hearing on the coach's suspension.

Liggett says the letter says Leach is "terminated with cause effective immediately."

Leach was suspended by the university on Monday while the school investigated allegations that he mistreated an injured player.

Receiver Adam James alleges Leach twice confined him to small, dark spaces during practice after the player was diagnosed with a concussion.

Texas Tech plays Michigan State on Saturday in the Alamo Bowl in San Antonio.

Bring him in.

Done before that $800,000 kicked in tomorrow.

Wow, Mangino and Leach both fired. Time to get the band back together Bob!

holy shit that was fast

why did they resign the guy when it is obvious they didn't like or want him?

Leach or mangino in the nfl next year? Or both? Or neither?

The only reason Texas Tech got good at football was because of him, and they fired him over $800,000 and some made up BS? Enjoy your fade back into football obscurity.

Hopefully this ends the Texas Tech problem that has been plaguing all our teams.

Yep...stupid move IMO.

What a monumentally stupid move. Welcome back to irrelevancy.

Not ALL our teams :p

Wow

But don't they owe him $400K for each of the remaining 4 years left on his contract, or does that go away when "with cause" is added?

How about Leach for OC next year?

Can he coach anything but the spread?

I think he had better receivers.

Mizzou had the good fortune of not playing them the past couple years.

Bill Snyder and Bo Pelini can rest a bit easier tonight.

Only if he promises to lock Cassel up by himself in a dark closet.

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I'm sure nobody will taunt Adam James around campus.

this

Maybe he pulled a NFL player trick and turned into a gigantic asshole once he got paid.

he probably pissed off some boosters at a function.

My thoughts exactly after reading the lengthy email from Graham Harrell. It seems as though Leach was in the wrong for putting him in the electrical closet. After reading several of the emails it seems like cutting him and pulling his scholarship would have been the way to go.

In the end Leach is going to come out smelling like roses and signing a new contract. I would be very surprised if he is out of work very long.

He is already being talked about here in PHX as an option to replace Dennis Erickson at ASU. Right now it is just a radio guy or two, but I would not be surprised to see it pick up steam.

There's your OC....print 'em

Craig James for HC!11

What college openings exist? It's not like he couldn't pick his next job among just about any opening. Too bad KU didn't wait on their hire. I can't image he'd hate staying in the Big 12 and kick TT's ass twice a year.

I'm jus hoping that TT doesn't offer the job to Sonny Dykes.

Cincinatti hire a replacement yet?

You think he'll stay at Tech? I wonder.

have a feeling there are more facts yet to come to the light of day here. This might get interesting or it might all go away with a settlement and a hush-deal.

You can't treat American citizens, especially college student athletes, like POW's and NOT expect to get fired.

Leach is a ****ing dumbass.

It amazes me that TT hired Bobby Knight and fired Mike Leach. WTF?

Sweet Nebraska could never beat him

lets lock Craig James' kid in a closet!

Brilliant!

The guy deserved to be fired for that, regardless how much of an idiot AJ is

And this is the same school that hired Bobby Knight .... :shake:

Most of those letters submitted from coaches and former team members certainly paint James as a huge problem. I don't understand why they just didn't kick him off the team and take away his scholarship.

On the other hand, some of those letters may have upset the school administration even more because it talked about "punishing" players for a lack of effort. Not the best word to use. Way too similar to hazing.

In any case putting a kid in a darkened shed was pretty dumb.

I wasn't aware that Bobby Knight stuck his players in dark locked rooms for hours on end while under guard.

Enlighten me.

I'm sure Adam James was a pampered little ****...no question about that.

Exactly. Whatever else Leach might have on his side is trumped by this one idiotic, inforgivable action.

Knight favored choking over mental abuse.

Interesting plays on words:

Light of day: which you don't want to see with a concussion.

Hush-deal: NCAA "Death Penalty" SMU team, on which Craig James had played.

Leach is going to be a rich man after his lawyers feed on TT.

Personally, I'd take that over mental abuse.

At least I can fight back if someone tries to punch or choke me.

Locked in a dark room under guard?

That is ****ED UP.

It is clear you are a Leach supporter.
If you think TT doesn't have access to attorney fire-power equal to or greater than Leach think again. These actions aren't taken by TT they are taken by the TT attorneys.
Leach may come out with some money but IMHO it will be less than the value of his contract including the $800k he was due tomorrow.

That was called detention, back in the day.:evil:

Damn, my team just got BAD quick.

Yup, the prick brought this on himself. I haven't bothered reading much about the whole situation but from what I've seen/read he got what he deserved.

I'd hope if he tried something like that with one of my boys they would have told him to pack sand up his ass.

What confuses me, is how can you fire someone over allegations? Seems to me, the investigation hasn't concluded, evidenced by..."while the school investigated allegations."

Let that be a lesson to everyone, don't lock people in electrical closets.

Because they have to pay him 800k.

If the allegations are true it's pretty hard to believe how people stick up for Leech. Not only what he did was stupid it was also a crime.

Boy, I'm glad I wasn't around in those days.

He wasn't locked in a room. He was told he had to stay in the room, which is right off the practice field, so he would be near the team while they practiced. He wasn't locked in the room. He was told if he left the room and left practice he would be suspended or kicked off the team. The reason the room was dark, I don't think it has been clarified how dark, was because James claimed to have light sensitivity issues, so he was told to go into the equipment room rather then stay out in the Texas sun. The guard was a graduate/training assistant.

Also, Craig James is a slimeball that got paid tens of thousands of dollars to play football at SMU. He was one of the reasons their entire program got the death penalty.

After the contract negotiations and contentious relationship he had with the school and the girlfriend comments earlier this year etc., this was always coming.

TT was just waiting for something else to happen so they could deliver the killshot.

Similar to Bobby Knight and IU...all they did was wait for something, anything to get rid of him and voila.
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It's no problem. Kids will always fall over themselves to go to Lubbock, TX. Who wouldn't?

Have you got a link for this information?

How are you possibly capable of pretending that there is no comparison possible between Bobby Knight and Mike Leach. Knight reportedly did all of the following in his career:

• Punched and choked IU's Sports Information Director
• Assaulted a police officer in PR
• Fined for various game outbusts including throwing the chair, hitting a phone on the scorers table, pulling his team off the court duing a exhibition game
• Told rape victims to "relax and enjoy it" on national TV
• Kicked his own son (or his chair) during a game
• Head-butted his own player
• Choked his own player during a practice
• Physically threatened his own AD
• Phsically threatend and threw a potted plant at his own office assistant
• Threw his own assistant coach out of his chair
• Grabbed a random student shaking him for saying "what's up knight" or some such
• Was restrained by police to keep him from going after a heckling fan (while at TT)
• Fired a shotgun toward a hunter he was arguing with

Mike Leach is far from having the ugly record that Bob Knight had when he was hired at TT.

Locking someone in a closet is a crime? My brother should have gone to jail several years before he actually did. Stupid, yes, but a crime?
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I have read it from about ten thousand different sources over the last few days. I am not going to go to the trouble to dig it all up. A local news station even did a segment on these tiny "closets." That is online as well.

This looks a lot more like an easy excuse to do what the AD wanted to do last year. That's fine. But let's not make this into something so abhorrent (even in the worst possible scenario) that TT can't employ someone who has that history of behavior.

A kid doing it to another kid is not remotely the same as a person who is an authority figure over you doing it to you.

The great white hope! :)

You can't hold people aginst there will and plus wasn't he locked in for a few hours? That certainly is a crime.

Leach is a dumb ass he should have just sent james to the film room to study during practice. Then no one would have complained and he would have kept him out of sunlight.

Why did they want him gone? He was winning more games than losing.

Wow, are you related to Leach or something?

Talk about rationalizing.

:facepalm:

omg though, lets be honest...

it was a ****ing equipiment room...or a closet...omg

he was locked in a dark room for 3 hours!?

oh geez, that's life threatening!

I would have laid down and taken a nap...

From what I've read (emails from players and coaches) Adam James is a whining primadona. My guess is that Leach had enough of what he thought was AJ's efforts to get special treatment, so rather than let him leave to go sit down and relax while the rest of the team was standing and praticing, he had did what was necessary to respond to the complain (get him out of the sun) but told him to stand in the room like all of his teammates were doing through the rest of practice.

That seems pretty likely and not very unreasonable. Unless there was a medical reason for him to not even be out there in the first place. Which it seems obviously to be untrue.

He had a concussion you stupid ****

He wasn't even physically locked in the room as far as I can tell. He was "isolated" in a dark room. Isolated in the sense that he was told he would be suspended or kicked off the team if he left the room while the team was practicing.

Apparently during last year's contract negotiations, Leach's agent went over the head of the University President and AD and emailed members of the board of reagents in an effort to gain leverage in the negotiations. Pissed people off and ultimately backfired.

http://www.doubletnation.com/2009/2/...mike-leach-and

and?

Pretty sure he wasn't told he couldn't sleep because of a mild concussion.

I'd nap the shit out of that dark room...use my pads as a pillow...beats the shit out of being scout team at practice.

And this is acceptable treatment of a concussed individual? Leach has the service of a top-notch medical staff. He should have turned the athlete over to the medical staff instead of trying to make an example out of him. Instead it is Leach being made an example. I'll bet Leach won't try to make an example out of a concussed kid at his next job.

AND it was guarded.

Why are you making light of this incident?

It's ****ing bullshit and the coach deserved to be fired.

PERIOD.

You CANNOT having coaches on a university campus treating students in this manner.

Uhhh..

http://www.lubbockonline.com/stories...40556326.shtml

Maybe the truth will come out eventually... but this seems to be a lot different than the Mangino situation. When the floodgates opened it seemed like all the past players spoke out against Mangino. In this situation you have one player alleging something against a coach, and most of the former players and coaches are backing the coach and talking about the player's past histrionics.

I also don't think this is even close to the worst thing that goes on in collegiate practices, in any sport. I'm not sure if it's even that big of a deal, but we don't know all the details. But that's a different discussion.

Yeah, players attending practice is downright awful.

According to an anonymous source he wasn't allowed to lean against anything or sit. At one point it was deemed the electrical closed was too loud so they took him to an office in the press box and removed all the furniture in the room so he couldn't sit. It is also reported by the same source that he was caught sitting on a cooler in the first closet and the coolers were removed so he couldn't sit. No link. It was reported on the radio as I drove in this morning.

Proof?

I'm pretty ****ing sure if this guy wanted to sit, he could have sat...or if he wanted to leave, he could have left...