Red Raider Football Coach Renews Contract
Mike Leach Signs 5-Year Extension After Disputes with Tech Resolved
Feb 23, 2009
The questions were answered on Feb. 20, 2009, three days after a deadline expired with both Leach and Gerald Myers, the athletics director at the Big 12 university in Lubbock, Texas, refusing to give in to the other side. The deadline passed and, even with about 75 people rallying for Leach outside the athletic offices, rumblings of firing the well-known coach started coming. However, after an hours-long sit-down with Tech Chancellor Kent Hance, Leach emerged with a five-year, $12.7 million contract extension, and Tech gets to hold onto its prolific gridiron coach.
Tech’s latest offer contained a number of clauses to which Leach and his agents took exception, according to a Feb. 20 article from the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal.
- Dispute: Leach’s agents asked guaranteed income of 40 percent and claimed other Big 12 coaches had a 55 percent guarantee. (The rest is performance-based.) Tech offered a guarantee of 12 percent.
- Result: Leach is guaranteed at least $400,000 a year, which is 15.7 percent.
- Dispute: Leach had to get permission from his bosses to interview at another school. Violation of this clause would get him heavily fined.
- Result: Leach has to notify his bosses if he’s interviewing elsewhere.
- Dispute: Leach would owe the university $300,000 annually if he left his contract early to work elsewhere.
- Result: Leach isn’t going anywhere, all the parties say, so this clause was scrapped.
- Dispute: Texas Tech would own Leach’s image and naming rights and get revenues from his speaking engagements.
- Result: Tech can use Leach’s likeness and name for uniform and apparel contracts and TV and radio shows; Leach controls the books in which he’s involved and any income opportunities arranged by his agents.
Leach, who has been at Tech since the 2000 football season, had a 10-year contract with the university. The first nine seasons saw unprecedented success; the team has gone to a bowl game every season and finished the 2009 season 11-2, which included beat No. 1-ranked Texas and climbing to the No. 2 spot in the polls. Leach has a 76-39 record from 2000-2009 and has an 80 percent graduation rate of his team, which is among the highest in the nation. Speculation that he would be off to the NFL or to a larger school after this season prompted billboards around Lubbock and Facebook groups in support of keeping him at Texas Tech.
But for a while, his future looked iffy. According to the Forth Worth Star-Telegram, Leach himself was asking questions of the university and making a big deal about the hoopla surrounding his contract. As the firing rumors began and the uncertainty continued with running back coach Seth Littrell resigning in mid-February.
“I don’t know if that’s rumor or not, but think about how ridiculous it is,” Leach is quoted as saying in the Star-Telegram on Feb. 19, the day of his renewal deadline. “You’ve got two years left on your contract, you’re offered a subpar deal based on the outside provisions, and then it’s like ‘Take this deal.’ And then you say, ‘Nah, I’m going to go ahead and stick with my current deal.’ And they say, ‘All right, well, fine, I’ll fire you.’”
For now, however, the mad scientist who won coach of the year in 2008 remains at the helm of the Texas Tech Red Raiders.
- “Leach signs Tech contract.” Don Williams, Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, Feb. 20, 2009.
- “Leach feels like extortion victim under offer from Texas Tech.” Dwain Price, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Feb. 19, 2009.
