LockerK
1950
More conference realignment chaos!
Good for them if they can successfully make the jump from FCS.
Cool for the schools. But for me…my stepson is in the Tarletan State band so now I get to go watch 3 hour games that actually last 4 hours due to the commercial timeouts on ESPN-Southwest-9 or whatever down the dial channel they’ll be on. Not bad unless it’s 40 degrees, drizzling, and a nice 30 mph wind out of the North in November.
Scuzz
1952
Maybe they will play on some weeknight like the MAC, or some channel like fs1 or cbs’s cable channel. Your lucky if they show up on ESPN.
Think the first game this year was on a Thursday night. I had no idea it was on tv somewhere but after the first dozen random and long timeouts for no reason I realized it was tv timeouts and resigned myself to a long night. At least the team was mostly fun to watch. And they do a cool strobe thing with the lights I’ve never seen at a game before. But it beats the Friday nights watching our awful high school team just so we can see the daughter do her drill team stuff.
Scuzz
1954
Yea, any game televised will seemingly have extra long time outs for no reason. It’s still not as bad as college basketball though.
Our solution to that was to volunteer as band parents (props/equipment and photography). Yeah, a lot more time overall, but very little of it is spent just sitting in the stands watching other people’s kids play football.
Scuzz
1956
My daughters did color guard and band. While they enjoyed it and made life long friends ( well, they are 30+ now) I can’t say it was great fun for me.
You just didn’t do it right :)
I got to pull a house across the field at Ohio Stadium (having first barely dodged being crushed by it on the curved ramp down to field level), and push a gigantic 3-tier wooden cake across the field at Lucas Oil Stadium.
More seriously, the drives home from band practice were always some of the best 1-on-1 conversations with both kids.
Oh, we did 4 years of Band Booster chaos with the oldest boy. Plenty of concession stand time at games and many many hours of standing around waiting for them to play during competition season and pushing out all the props (don’t get me started on how crazy ‘marching’ band is now with the props and crap). And when he graduated the youngest started her Freshman year on drill team. It’s a little less consuming because the director won’t give up any control to the boosters, and fewer competitions to have to go to thankfully. Just morning dropoffs and some evening pickups these days. And this is the girl’s last year without a license so we won’t have to deal with those after next summer. Not sure how my wife is going to take it. Once it’s over it will be right at a solid decade of band/drill team insanity. And that doesn’t include college band and maybe drill team. At least the college game is more entertaining than the high school games. I mean, I know I’ll miss it once it’s over, but the end still seems so far away, hehe.
Scuzz
1959
I know they loved it so I did what needed to be done. I did plenty of picking them up at late hours after out of town games or competitions and once a season I would go to a game. I also met some parents who we are still friends with. I just didn’t like the soap opera stuff that went with it, the fund raiseing and the attitude of the adults who ran the programs.
Mike Leach had a medical emergency at home this morning. Very few details, but the fact that they took him to the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson is concerning, as Starkville has its own hospital and Jackson is two hours away. But Starkville’s hospital is Level 3, while UMMC is Level 1.
Reading between the lines, it sounds like Coach Leach is on life support until family and friends can make it to the hospital to say their goodbyes.
Really awful. Loved Leach.
Confirmation it was a massive heart attack
This sounds grim
According to multiple sources, Leach, 61, collapsed at his home in Starkville, but did not receive medical attention for between 10 to 15 minutes. EMTs used a defibrillator machine and delivered multiple shocks to restore normal heart rhythm.
eliandi
1964
I wish all the best for Mike Leach and his family. I was a fan of his when he was first at Texas Tech and ran the wide open offense.
Going back to band discussion, I was also a band dad. Did all the high school booster stuff including gigs as the leader for the props/transportation for a year and then 2 years as the booster treasurer. My spouse did 2 years as Booster President. Lots of work. I learned how to load trucks, drive trucks, design and build props, get props into show fields, track financials for 200 members, and do a P/L for a non-profit.
Son goes to college, and then we go to just go enjoy the games as the college marching band was fully self-sufficient. But then my son decides to go out for DCI, and so he did 1 year with the Troopers and a second year with the Blue Stars. With DCI we volunteered maybe 10-15 days per marching season mostly helping on the food truck and whatever else needed doing.
But I really do enjoy working with the band kids and seeing their hard work turn into really cool shows.
RIP, Pirate. Swing your sword forever.
Very sad. Mike Leach was a good football coach with a brilliant mind (dude had a law degree he never used, just went straight to coaching football). A lot of the modern passing game can be traced back to the work he did with Hal Mumme at several colleges early in his career creating and perfecting the Air Raid offense. The man also had one hell of an impressive head of hair. RIP Mike Leach, and sincere condolences to his family.
Petey
1968
I loved hearing his quotes over the years…didn’t care about his coaching as I am a Duck so anytime we played them, I was a bit nervous…but hate to see anyone gone at a youngish age…RIP
Rimbo
1969
Mike Leach’s passing hit me hard.
He and Mumme reinvented football at nearly every level. From high school to the NFL, there’s Air Raid concepts in every offense… which demanded complete changes in the defenses. You see these smaller, faster linebackers now, because of the need to drop into coverage on nearly every snap. The whole idea that you should be “balanced” between run/pass is completely obsolete now.
Above that, he was a genuinely wonderful person, so much more than the many sound bites.
AVAST! The gates of Heaven are about to be boarded! Godspeed, Pirate.
