Editor’s note: Mike Leach is the head football coach for Texas Tech University. This year, his players beat longtime rival University of Texas and suffered only one defeat. The team is headed to the Cotton Bowl to play the University of Mississippi on Jan. 2, 2009, the final game to be played at the historic Fair Park stadium in Dallas. The Cotton Bowl game will move to the new Dallas Cowboys stadium in Arlington in 2010. On Dec. 3, the Associated Press reported that Leach, who makes $1.75 million in his second-to-last year of a five-year contract, is negotiating a contract extension with Tech, amid reports that he met with University of Washington administrators about the head football coach job there. In a region dominated by iconic football rivals the University of Texas and the University of Oklahoma, Leach and his team stand out as alternatives. “We aren’t exactly America’s team,” says Leach, who has a relaxed and mildly sarcastic manner. Leach, a speak-off-the-cuff, go-for-broke playmaker, stands as inspiration to every sports-star hopeful who took the bar exam — a rite of passage Leach avoided. He graduated in the top third of his class at Pepperdine University School of Law then, despite never having played college football himself, built a career as a football coach and earned national attention for his transformation of Texas Tech into a powerhouse and his coaching of successive superstar quarterbacks. In late November, the week before Texas Tech beat Baylor University, Texas Lawyer reporter Miriam Rozen spoke to Leach to ask him a few law-related questions that the sports pages overlook. The interview has been edited for length and style.
Texas Lawyer: When did it dawn on you that you were not going to use your law degree?
