The Amarillo paper responds:
Hey, Team Leach, just let it go
It's been nearly five years and two head coaches since Mike Leach was fired as Texas Tech head football coach. He was fired just before the Alamo Bowl in December 2009 not so much for any role in the treatment of football player Adam James and his concussion, but for his insubordination, stubbornness and refusal to work with the Tech administration in any way to resolve the matter.
Leach basically forced Tech's hand, firing him days before he was due an $800,000 bonus. The firing initially had Tech fans vehement at Craig James, Adam's father, and the administration.
As things developed, Leach became less a sympathetic figure and Tech was less the villain. Basically, it was a marriage that had unraveled after 10 seasons. If it wasn't the Adam James controversy, something else would have developed soon to cause Leach's departure. It was a rocky relationship.
But now Leach is ensconced at Washington State for his third season, making a couple of million, and doing fairly well with a bowl trip last year for a rebuilding program. He has a new book on his hero, Geronimo. Life would seem to be good for him and his family in the Great Northwest.
Tech went through the up-and-down Tommy Tuberville tenure of three seasons with mostly a fractured fan base. Favorite son Kliff Kingsbury was hired, won the Holiday Bowl in his first season in 2013, and Tech has sold out its 2014 season ticket allotment for the first time in school history.
In other words, everyone has seemed to move on. Well, almost everyone.
A full-page advertisement in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal on Wednesday, from "Alumni and Fans of Texas Tech University," is urging Tech, now with a new chancellor to succeed the retiring Kent Hance, to pay Leach the $800,000.
It's an open letter to the Tech administration, where it concludes: "Texas had pride in honesty and integrity. Our word is our bond. Texas Tech signed a contract with Mike Leach and up to this point has refused to fulfill his contract.
"Let's do the right thing, the honorable thing. Don't hide behind sovereign immunity.
"Pay Mike Leach his entire salary for 2009."
The hard-core Leach supporters -- not fans of Leach, but Leach extremeists -- are by and large a strange bunch. They have been obsessed with this for nearly five years, putting feelings for Leach despite his constant job flirting year after year, above their feelings for Tech. Picture a cult leader, picture his followers. That about sums it up.
And a very good case can be made that the egotistical Leach knowingly violated his contract by taking the actions he did, and forfeited any future money. Yes, it was a nice contract, one negotiated by Hance at the last minute the year before to keep the coach in Lubbock.
Leach is doing fine. Tech is doing fine. Everyone seems to be doing fine except a small group still rooted in December 2009. Here's the reality of this: Nobody cares.