Who's in charge here?

Today is January 2nd and up until a few days ago, I was looking forward to watching my Texas Tech Red Raiders play in the Alamo Bowl. It had been a bit disappointing as far as prestige goes, and it wasn't my hoped for match up with the Badgers, but I was still ready to see them whip 50 points on a Big Ten team. And maybe they will, but I will not be able to enjoy it because the best thing to ever happen to Texas Tech football, Mike Leach, was fired by Tech on Wednesday.

The public reason has centered on Leach's treatment of injured sophomore receiver Adam James, son of ESPN announcer Craig James. When I first heard of the suspension, I was in complete agreement with Lou Holtz on a pre-game show. He said it didn't make any sense and that there had to be other reasons that we are not hearing about. The first version out there, was that he had locked the kid in a dark closet for 3 hours. It was certainly made to seem like a hazing type of thing. As a clearer picture emerged about what had really happened, it was put forth by Tech that the real problem was not the act so much as Leach's refusal to apologize for it, presumably to the kid and more importantly, Craig James. A significant spin by the Tech administrators was that if only Mike had signed the apology, everything would be just fine. But Leach maintains that promise was never made. And it seems he had good reason to think Tech was going to fire him anyway.

When you look at it from that perspective, it does seem a bit wacky to hinge the question of whether or not to fire Leach on the basis of him apologizing to one particular parent over his treatment of a player when there was nothing even resembling physical abuse, and even psychological abuse would be debatable. Early on in the whole thing, one or two guys mentioned the "bitter" negotiations on his contract last winter. But I thought, "No way, they're all adults. That's negotiations. Who doesn't try and get all they can?"

Turns out I couldn't have been more wrong. The Dallas Morning News filed a freedom of information request last spring and got a bunch of emails that had been sent to Chancellor Kent Hance that all pertained to Leach and his contract. You don't see the replies, or anything from Hance, but the ones from big supporter Jim Sowell are certainly revealing. I think the most significant aspect of them is the degree of comfort he displays in attacking the guy who was unarguably the most popular figure ever in Texas Tech football (and I grew up watching Donny Anderson, EJ Hollub and Dave Parks.) He rips Leach in each and every email. He's not so hot. He's not done that well, he hasn't sold out the stadium consistently, he hasn't won a national championship (when he compared his salary to Oklahoma's Stoops and Texas' Brown.) Well I'd like to point out to Mr. Sowell what it is he did do. He made me proud to be from Texas Tech. He made Texas Tech notable to the point that I didn't have to constantly correct acquaintances that I didn't go to Texas Christian or Texas A&M, and that, no, I really didn't care if The University of Texas won another national championship because I didn't go there and don't really like them. He made Texas Tech football so exciting that people who were neutral began to adopt them. Sowell lives in Texas so I doubt he saw this much, but I can tell you people outside of Texas saw Leach and the Red Raiders as new and exciting. They got respect ( particularly when they scored 31 unanswered points on Minnesota,) and let me tell you that was always in short supply around here. But his biggest accomplishment was taking two and three star recruits and then going on to beat the teams who were getting the four and five star recruits. And THAT put us in position to get the four and five star recruits we could NEVER get before. Perhaps somebody should point out to Mr. Sowell that it has been, shall we say "challenging," to recruit great athletes to Lubbock. My favorite Leach story is one from a profile the NY Times did early in his Tech career. That year every single player on the squads that he faced from Texas, Texas A&M and Oklahoma had turned him down for a scholarship at Tech. He couldn't say that in recent years. Let's hope they never have to say it again. It will be interesting to see what this does to this year's recruiting class, considered Tech's best ever. Did they think that was an accident?

But what is painfully obvious from the emails is that a lot of it was about the contract. Sowell's tone in his letters are proof to me that he thought he had a like mind at the other end of the computer. You'd never write such things to somebody you even thought they might disagree. And if the demeanor of the letters isn't bad enough, Sowell seems to take the negotiations very personally. At one point Leach (or his agents) try to include a restructuring of the now infamous $800,000 bonus due on 12/31/09. They are trying to pull it into the contract extension and turn it into a deferred compensation instrument. Sowell goes ballistic and rants about a completion bonus being a not-so-completed bonus and declares that Leach has lost all "credibility" with him. But also in amongst the rants are repeated whines about the money. When Kent Hance said in recent interviews that the $800,000 bonus was at no time, part of the consideration to fire Leach, I did a spit take.

What I got from the emails is that Sowell, and Myers and probably Hance, were extremely resentful of Leach because of all the personal popularity he enjoyed and the cult of personality threat that he presented to them. He used it (perhaps, like a club) during the negotiations and they hated it. It put them in a position where they had to sign him, and he knew it. The newest and hottest addition to Tech traditions, pirate paraphernalia, was most identified with the coach, not the school. It was the coach who was featured on the cover of The New York Times Magazine, not the University. 60 Minutes did not do a segment on the Tech athletic department. When Texas Monthly did a story on the success of UT athletics, it had the entire staff on the cover (Texas Inc.) This fall the cover was a giant eye-patched portrait with LEACH, in what is likely the largest legally permissible font size, plastered edge to edge. If you were to quiz casual fans in every non-Big Twelve state, Leach would be the most recognized or known, including Stoops or Brown. And all this popularity was the problem. That's what made Tech sign a deal they couldn't live with. They either really couldn't afford it, or they simply couldn't live with paying it to Leach. The old saying is that whenever somebody like Hance declares that "it's not about the money" you can rest assured, it's about the money. But in this case I think the money was secondary to the power. I think the situation bears more than a little resemblance to the Green Bay/Brett Favre situation of two years ago. You've got a guy who is an employee of the organization who has succeeded in elevating his profile and perceived influence far above anybody else in the organization, including his bosses in particular. This employee holds all the cards in any negotiation. The fans worship him and see his happiness and continued employment by the organization as crucial. His bosses think otherwise. The question they keep asking themselves is, "Who's in charge here?" And increasingly the answer was, the employee. Then it becomes a matter of time. How long are they willing to live with that situation? They'd lived with it long enough, fans be damned.