The appellation “American original” is thrown around excessively and cheaply, but it absolutely fits the late Mike Leach, who died Tuesday due to complications from a heart condition. There has never been another college football coach like him, and there will never be one like him now that he’s gone. The Mississippi State coach’s profession is more drab today because of his loss.
Leach was eccentric, brilliant, fearless, funny, sometimes mean, always unconventional. In a time when coaches are increasingly (and boringly) homogenous, he came out of an irregular mold that was broken immediately upon his arrival.