Posted on 12/30/2009 10:27:47 AM PST by rintense
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."
(Excerpt) Read more at sports.espn.go.com ...
But that has been happening for 50 years - that isn’t anything new.
Mike will be missed by plenty of my fellow Longhorn Fans here in Austin as well as college football fans across the country as Coach Leach is the only NCAA football coach who made honest comments to the press.
While Mack Brown who is making five million dollars a year can only say “Their boys played their hearts out and they are a tough bunch and we wish them luck,” Coach Leach would say, “We lost because we played like crap and our players are paying to much attention to their fat girlfriends.”
Come to think of it, I would rather have a coach that makes one million a year and never goes to the BCS Championship Game but dogs on his players for having fat girlfriends than have a coach that make five million, wins championships but never says anything funny.
How is any of this relevant?
There are two relevant facts: 1) Did James have a concussion? 2) Knowing this, did Leach banish him to a shed where he was forced to stand in darkness?
If either or both of these things did not happen, Leach is being railroaded.
If they are both true, his actions are indefensible.
The Top 10% Rule has made things much more difficult for kids to get into UT Austin.
With my grades, SAT and class rank, I was accepted to UT 25 years ago and today with those same grades, SAT and class rank, I would be rejected.
My son got into UT last year by class rank and he went to the top high school in Austin but he had to bust his butt and maintain a GPA above 3.50 in AP classes even to have a shot at UT.
Moreover, the enrollment at UT Austin has remained the same for 30 years while the population of the state has increased.
That is not to say that Tech is not a good school. It is actually a damn fine school and better than A&M.
As I tell my nephew who is now at TT “It is better to be a Sand Aggie than a Damn A&M Aggie.”
When did they change the 10% rule, was it this past year? That is such a horrible let down - pandering to the subpar students....so sad.
If they don’t want to play, let ‘em pack their bags and go home.
And for all those people pretending that the standing in a darkened room for 2 or 3 hours (depending upon who's telling the story) isn't punishment, why did Coach Leach cuss the kid out first?
Leach admitted to "locking" the kid up, cussing him out and refused to sign a statement which had such outlandish ideas as allowing a physician to be the determinant of a kid's medical condition.
Several hours in a darkened room, without furniture, by yourself, and making sure you don’t lean on anything? Yeah, I’d call it hazing.
“Good idea:
Someone shows personal weakness so just give up on him”
If you mean by cutting him, you’re giving up on him, absolutely. Too much talent and too much heart to waste on someone who doesn’t want to work at the college level. Cutting him would have sent a message and would have avoided the hazing.
From what I've read, this happened a day or so after the diagnosis of a slight concussion by the team doctor. If so, James was out of 'danger' window. And yes, I've had a concussion- two, in fact. The first 24 hrs are critical.
Oh, and, even if there wasn't anything to sit on, did poor baby James not even think of sitting on the floor? How cruel!!! /s
No wonder this country is being taken over by metrosexual, limp wristed wusses.
He wasnt by himself. He was told he needed a dark cool place, so Leach sent him there with a trainer, a GA, and an undergrad.
And if you knew anything, you’d know that concussion victims need to stay upright.
I’d call it common sense.
Is running stairs hazing? How about track laps? Bear crawls? Log rolls? Pushups? Up Downs? These are all far more physically difficult than standing in a room. And when I was in football, we did these punishments all the time by ourselves, so singling out a player is definitely a way of life in football.
The reports I saw said that the staff who were checking on James were not to let him sit or lean. Spin this how you want, it was foolish. On all sides. There’s no hero here. Only egos. The one large difference being that one was a direct employee of the university with accountability. That one got fired.
The whole problem here is Craig James doesn’t want to face the fact that he raised a girl instead of a man.
You spin it how you want, darlin’. It wasn’t foolish enough to get him fired, plain and simple.
Yep. Craig must be very proud of the daughter he raised.
We’re a country turning hard-nosed football players into candy assed girls, all because daddy can accept his son’s failure. This will only fuel more fires in football programs.
No need to add charming appellations in your reply to me, tensey. It wasn’t foolish enough to get him fired. His response to the incident was foolish enough to get him fired.
Laughable. His response? So its not the action but now how he responded? Wow.
"The main thing is the facts were pretty well undisputed," Texas Tech Chancellor Kent Hance said in an ESPN interview Wednesday. "Mike [Leach] acknowledged that he had [James] locked up, he acknowledged that he had given him a pretty good cussing and did not work with us to try to solve the problem."I wanted to solve the problem, so did the athletic director and the president. But Mike was adamant that he wasn’t going to have anyone second-guessing him, and it just went downhill."
Hance felt he had no choice but to fire Leach when the coach refused to write a letter apologizing for his actions against Adam James.
Really? You’re believing ‘facts’ on ESPN? You do realize Leach’s ‘facts’ are contrary to the claims made by James? Have you bothered to watch any of the video coming out of Lubbock? Or are you just going to believe ESPN?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.