In the end, Ruffin McNeill never had a chance.
Despite an Alamo Bowl week where he managed to keep his team focused and
united amidst the most bizarre circumstances and an Alamo Bowl game where he
made some gutsy calls to get Texas Tech past a frisky, albeit depleted
Michigan State squad, replacing Mike Leach was never about how Texas Tech
felt about Ruffin McNeill’s chops as a head coach.
In the end, replacing Mike Leach was about replacing every facet,
idiosyncrasy and remembrance of Mike Leach. And unfortunately for McNeill,
there are no scraps in the scrapbook of Kent Hance, Gerald Myers, and Jim
Sowell.
When Leach’s suspension and then eventual termination went down a couple
weeks ago, I compared it to a couple getting one of those “it’s just a
matter of time” divorces:
…The symptoms were there all along, and the divorce is merely a result of varying dysfunction in both sides of the partnership. It goes like this — there’s usually a realization somewhere that both sides are together for the wrong reasons (Leach’s contract renegotiation in early 2009), some sort of event that bubbles all of the marital dirty laundry to the surface (hello Adam James), a weak attempt to try and Super Glue it together one more time (Texas Tech’s attempt to get Mike Leach to apologize to the James family), and then finally the axe comes down (start packing, Mike).
Well, like any divorce, both sides eventually need to pick up the pieces and
move on, and if you’re looking for an example where sports imitates the
psychology of real life relationships, look no further than Lubbock the last
ten days. As Mike Leach was busy filing lawsuits against the school and
maintaining his status as a top-ten trending topic on Twitter, Tech fans
were wringing their hands over the crumbling empire Leach left behind.
A vaunted recruiting class, maybe the best in the history of the school, all
of a sudden was a collection of high school free agents again. They, like
the Tech fan base, were (and probably still are) fearful that the Air Raid
spread offense would become a thing of the past. A coaching staff ready to
keep the foundation from crumbling was held in limbo while Jim Sowell
presumably pulled all the puppet strings on Kent Hance and Gerald Myers to
find a replacement for Leach.
The easy thing to do in the short term would have been to promote
McNeill…and if the Tech brass thought it was the right thing to do, it
would have happened within two days of the end of the season. For McNeill,
that call never came, and we shouldn’t be surprised.
Because after any acrimonious breakup, the next step is to rid yourself of
any reminders of that partnership gone awry. Unfortunately for McNeill and
whatever other Leach assistants are soon surfing monster.com, they were the
pictures on the wall reminding Hance, Myers, and Sowell of their ten-year
relationship with Mike Leach. The only thing missing is the three Tech
honchos splitting a bottle of red wine and playing a Keith Urban CD. Simply
put, Texas Tech’s leaders weren’t that into you, Mike Leach Era. Not any
more.
So in much the same way that my ex-wife will ultimately settle on someone
who is humorless and illiterate (and presumably with a full head of hair),
Texas Tech did what you do after a failed marriage — they went out and
landed someone the exact opposite of their “ex.” Indeed, they replaced the
quirky, informal, aloof, offensive-minded part-time attorney in Leach with a
dignified, tie-wearing, defensive-minded Southern gentleman in Tuberville.
The stark contrast between the two head coaches started with Tuberville’s
introductory press conference when the coach actually showed up a few
minutes early. (Unlike Leach’s alleged tardiness to team meetings, no
players on hand Tweeted about Tuberville’s punctuality.) By accounts of
those there, Leach’s rambling, meandering press conference answers were
replaced with calm, focused coachspeak from Tuberville, complete with the
requisite references to a more “aggressive” defensive approach, keeping the
streak intact of twelve jillion introductory pressers where the new coach
says he plans to be more aggressive than the previous regime.
Make no mistake, in terms of resume and accomplishments, Tech was not going
to do any better than Tuberville. If he’s not a home run, then he is
clearly a two run standup double. In 2004, he led Auburn to a 13-0 record,
and was left out of the national championship game (which five years later,
given all of the blind love today for the SEC, is about as surreal as it
sounds). Perhaps more importantly, he knocked off rival Alabama six
straight times and was a renowned big-game coach.
In short, Tuberville is a good hire.
And for that Hance, Myers, and Sowell should send Leach an engraved thank
you and go ahead and scratch out whatever the check is for their tab on his
firing, because without the ten straight bowl games, without the eleven-win
season in 2008, without 39-33, without the exemplary graduation rate, Texas
Tech doesn’t get Tommy Tuberville.
That said, the hire of Tuberville should come with a warning label. Ask the
folks at Ole Miss, Tuberville’s first employer as a head coach. Two days
after saying he’d have to be carried out of Oxford in a pine box, he was
being introduced as the head coach at Auburn. In 2008, he decided to bring
in spread offense guru Tony Franklin and turn his offensive philosophy
upside down; this metamorphosis lasted all of six weeks into what became a
5-7 season in his last year at Auburn.
Tuberville is saying all the right things right now, in particular about
keeping the Air Raid intact, but past behavior should make Tech fans
cautious. What if the offense stagnates early in the season? Bigger
picture, what if Tuberville does win nine or ten games in one of the next
couple seasons and, say, Texas A&M fires Mike Sherman? A very specific “what
if,” I know, but point being is Tuberville a Tech guy for the long haul?
Worrying about keeping a coach, in some ways, is a good problem to have.
Other schools don’t come calling on 6-6 coaches. They come calling on
winners. In this case, a winner (Tuberville) practically came calling on
Tech, as he made no bones about his desire to become head coach in Lubbock
from the minute Leach was let go.
Rumor had it that Tuberville secured his own transportation to Lubbock;
funny that the infamous string of emails between Sowell, Hance and Myers
from last year where they trashed Leach left and right mentioned what a sham
Leach’s candidacy for the Washington job was, in part because he paid his
own way to Seattle. When you’re coming off a breakup, sometimes the traits
you hated in your ex get rationalized into positives for your new meat.
Now Gerald Myers and company need to hope that Tuberville and Leach share
another common accomplishment — winning football games at Texas Tech.
Listen to Sean Pendergast on 1560 The Game from 3-7 PM weekdays on the Sean & John Show, and follow him on Twitter at
http://twitter.com/SeanCablinasian.
This article appears in Jan 7-13, 2010.
