Coaches have a knack for embellishing stories on occasion. If we're being honest, we're all guilty of it in some form or another.
After hearing Mike Leach share pretty epic story on The Jim Rome Show yesterday, one might think that some of the truth was stretched...but if you're familiar with Leach, odds are much better than there's more truth to his story than fiction.
On the show yesterday, Leach shared a story about back when he co-hosted a radio program on Sirius XM with Jack Arute called "The College Football Playbook," which he would do from the privacy of his home in Key West.
Leach started the story by warning Rome and his audience, "I’ve never told anybody this - I might even get in trouble for it.”
“I’m out there and it’s really hot, and it’s humid there too...and it’s a little just sort of fenced in deal and there’s a little bitty pool - because in Key West pools are mainly to cool off - so they’re not big pools. So I’m sitting back there, and so I jump in the pool to kind of cool off, because it was cool to talk on the radio outside. And then I was also getting FedEx’s every week, to prep me for the game I was broadcasting. So I get in the pool, and I get out and I’ve got my board shorts on, so then pretty soon every time I get out of the pool I’m sitting on the lawn chair and I got these wet board shorts on so it’s like sitting in a diaper the whole time, you know.”
“So you know nobody is around, fence around, so I think ‘What the heck, I’m taking these things off. So I don’t have anything on, and I get up and I pace, I’m a pacer, I’m pacing right now. And then talking with my hands on air making just really profound points on radio, and I’m very proud of all the brilliant things I’m saying. Then I don’t have a stitch on, and through the gate here comes the Fed Ex guy...here comes the FedEx guy watching me pace around naked, talking on the radio about football and all this, and he’s all like ‘What the hell?’ and then he hands me the FedEx, and of course I can’t break the conversation I have to keep talking."
"The funny thing was, I’ve seen him every week, he never said anything, it was like ‘oh well another day.’ But yup, sure enough.”
“The part of that I am proud of was I didn’t break stride. I mean my hand was still going as I was talking, I didn’t break sentence, I didn’t pause, I didn’t hesitate, I continued to pontificate about football non-stitch hand off with the FedEx and quick head nod to that guy and didn’t even pause, so that’s the one portion I was proud of in that moment.”
Stories like these are the reason why I firmly believe some network needs to lock Leach up for a recurring story time segment some day. Ratings would be through the roof, and we'd all get to enjoy stories like this on the regular.
Listen to the full interview here.