Editor’s Note: With Texas Tech’s 1,000th game approaching on Saturday, The Avalanche-Journal is revisiting defining moments in Red Raiders football history.
The men doing the hiring at Texas Tech stepped way out of their comfort zone in December 1999 when they hired Mike Leach to succeed Spike Dykes.
They replaced a plain-spoken, boot-wearing Lubbock native with an unpredictably tangent-inclined, eccentric fellow from out West who went to school at BYU and Pepperdine.
They traded in an offensive approach that yielded two Doak Walker Award winners in the 1990s for what was behind door No.