First, read the FanShot I quickly posted last night (or check out FWST's Dwain Price blog-post about Leach's comments yesterday). Second, watch the video from NewsChannel 11 after the jump for the full effect of Captain Mike Leach's comments about the fat little girlfriends, as well as his thoughts on Dumb and Dumber. You should be completely caught up at this point. Here's the money-quote:
"No, I am not aplogizing to any of them. Absolutely not. You know we closed up that little room over there as coaches, and as coaches we failed to get through to (the players). It was a failure on the part of coaches and players. As coaches we failed to get through to them, and as coaches we failed to make our coaching points and our points more compelling than their fat little girlfriends. Now their fat little girlfriends have some obvious advantages. For one thing, their fat little girlfriends are telling them what they want to hear, which is 'how great you are,' and 'how easy it's going to be.' And we had a bunch of people who wanted to win the football game, but nobody wanted to play the football game. That defies every level of work ethic that exists with regard to football. As coaches we have to solve our failure on reaching them and the players have to listen. I am willing to go to fairly amazing lengths to make that happen.''
After a bad loss, and I think the TAMU game qualifies as a bad loss more so than the UH game, this is Leach's attempt to get the attention of his team and staff. I think a coach gets one or two bites at the apple each year to motivate his team in some form or fashion and this is Leach's bite at the apple. Leach wasn't happy after the game on Saturday and he's not happy now. I would imagine that he doesn't want a happy or content team for the remainder of the week.
Yes, the quote is humorous and it's entertaining, but I'm focusing on the the last two lines:
"As coaches we have to solve our failure on reaching them and the players have to listen. I am willing to go to fairly amazing lengths to make that happen."
I don't know if there's a disconnect, and I would expect that Leach would say that after getting their tails handed to them last week, that there is a disconnect from what the staff is discussing to what happens on the field, but I'm more interested as to what Leach is going to do to further get the attention of his team.
There's plenty of voices here on DTN and I'm sure we'll find some that are offended by Leach's quotes about the girlfriends or women in general, but since my Mom called and broke the news to me last night and she thought it was funny (background, my Mom is not what you would call football savvy), then I think I get a pass if I get a kick out of it as well.
Never a dull moment.
From a motivation standpoint, I'm focusing on these last two lines and I hope like hell that this serves notice to the rest of the team that listening to those who tell you how great they, are perhaps now listening to the staff about what they need to do to win.
Video after the jump.
Promised video: