A trick play in Cambodia. Advice over Mexican. Laughs with hyenas. That's Mike Leach | Toppmeyer
A football coach, a state politician and a real estate and infrastructure investor walk into a Mexican restaurant. The coach turns to his two dining companions and asks, who should be my starting quarterback this season?
There’s no punchline, because this isn’t a joke. Mike Leach actually did that.
Leach, Mississippi State’s 61-year-old coach who died Monday of heart complications, was widely liked and respected within the coaching community.
But a renaissance man doesn’t limit his circle to football coaches, and Leach’s cache of friends included folks from all walks of life – guys like Michael Baumgartner, the aforementioned politician and former diplomat, and Ferhat Guven, the investor. With Guven, Leach co-edited a book. With Baumgartner, he traveled the globe. With each, he became a friend unlike any other.
“He was the older brother that we never wanted,” Guven said with a laugh, “and he’s also the best friend I think that you could ever have.”
When Baumgartner and Guven met in the early 2000s while living in Dubai, they couldn’t have known their friendship would later become a triad including Leach.
Baumgartner worked in the executive office of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who was then Dubai's crown prince and is now its ruler, while Guven was in Dubai working with an investment group. They bonded over a fandom for college football, each rooting for his alma mater – Washington State for Baumgartner and Texas Tech for Guven – as they followed games as best they could from halfway around the globe.
Texas Tech enjoyed unprecedented success throughout the 2000s under Leach, the nonconformist coach who shook up the sport with his Air Raid offense.
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Guven met Leach first. Their meeting traces to Guven writing blog posts for an SB Nation Texas Tech fan site. In 2010, Guven was living in London, and Leach was out of a job after his controversial ouster at Texas Tech following off-field drama involving player Adam James, a concussion and an equipment shed. Guven came to Leach’s defense in the blogosphere.
Leach sued Texas Tech. One of Leach’s lawyers, Chris Ritter, had grown up with Guven.
Guven eventually told Ritter he'd been authoring blog posts supporting Leach under the screen name LondonRaider. Ritter mentioned this to Leach, and Leach asked for Guven’s phone number.
Leach and Guven talked for hours in that initial conversation, their first of many long talks throughout a decades-long friendship.
Washington State hired Leach before the 2012 season, and the coach met Baumgartner. They shared a kindred spirit. Each is the son of a forester, and they connected over politics and travel.
Baumgartner had won his first election in 2010, becoming a Washington state senator. He's now Spokane County's treasurer. With Baumgartner, Leach saw the world, visiting outposts like Cambodia, Taiwan, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Turkey, Dubai, Tanzania, Zanzibar, Colombia and Panama.
Never a dull moment in a friendship with Leach.
Mike Leach showed an interest in people he met and their way of life
Leach was intellectually curious about many things, but his curiosity was not equitable.
Leach and Baumgartner visited the Angkor Wat temple complex during a trip to Cambodia. An interesting place, but a subsequent visit to a Cambodian village stimulated Leach more. He quizzed villagers about their way of life.
“He spent way more time asking these Cambodian villagers about how they did their laundry than he did asking our tour guide about the famous temple complex,” Baumgartner said.
Enjoying a dip and a joke while hyenas feast
Part of the joy in traveling with Leach was what you’d see. Part of the joy came in what he’d say. Leach kept travel companions in stitches.
A hunter who liked big game, of course Leach enjoyed the Tanzanian safari he went on with Baumgartner in 2021. Seeing African wildlife proved only half the fun.
“When you go on safari, you’re just sitting with a bunch of guys in a safari truck all day, telling stories, and BS’ing,” Baumgartner said.
Leach supplied running commentary while the group watched hyenas feast on a buffalo that had been killed by lions.
With a big dip of chewing tobacco in his lip, Leach called the action: Now he’s going in for some more! Now he’s getting a hind filet!
“Leach was so damn funny,” Baumgartner said. “It was just kind of a golden moment.”
A trick formation emerged in Cambodia
Leach welcomed outsiders’ football suggestions. Baumgartner’s brother, Pat, is a Microsoft engineer and a college football fan with a creative streak.
Rules don't require the center to snap the football, and Pat started tinkering with a formation in which a wide receiver would align by himself, over the football, while his teammates assembled on one side of the field.
A different wide receiver would come in motion, and the receiver over the football would decide whether to snap the ball to the in-motion receiver or direct a lateral snap to the quarterback, several yards away, where the rest of the team had aligned.
Pat wanted his brother to pitch his idea to Leach, but Baumgartner resisted.
“It sounded like a totally crazy idea. My little brother had lots of crazy ideas,” Baumgartner said. “I told him, ‘Yeah, man, I’m not going to tell Leach how to run your stupid, crazy, doesn’t-make-any-sense offense.’”
If Pat wanted Leach to have the idea, Baumgartner suggested, then he should come to Cambodia and pitch the idea himself.
And so Pat did.
While Baumgartner attended meetings with government officials, Pat and Leach enjoyed drinks on a Cambodian beach, and Pat sketched his offense on napkins.
Leach dug the formation.
Still, Baumgartner figured Leach was just having fun on vacation – until Leach gave Pat reign of the whiteboard one day during preseason camp, and Pat showed the Cougars coaching staff his innovation.
WSU ran a play from the formation in its season opener against Wyoming. Receiver Kyle Sweet aligned over the ball at the left hash mark. Ten teammates were to Sweet's left. Not a single Cougar aligned to the right of the left hashmark.
A man went in motion, but Sweet snapped the ball diagonally several yards to running back James Williams, who ran behind the wedge for a 5-yard gain.
The formation reappeared in WSU’s upset of Oregon that season. This time, Sweet snapped diagonally to the quarterback, who handed to Williams, who scored on a 24-yard run.
“The first touchdown came out of my brother’s formation,” Baumgartner said. “That was pretty surreal to watch.”
Who should play quarterback? Ask the group
Leach gathered Baumgartner and Guven for a meal at a Mexican restaurant in Pullman after a preseason practice in 2019. He asked his friends, who should be WSU’s starting quarterback?
He was serious.
Leach, who would post a winning record in 16 of his 21 seasons as a coach, wanted their input.
“That was Mike, right? He wanted to have an outsider’s perspective,” Guven said, “because that outsider’s perspective was something that he valued a lot.”
Mike Leach, the professor
How did Leach’s football attack style contrast with that of U.S. Gen. David Petraeus?
Baumgartner can tell you. Before becoming a politician, Baumgartner was a diplomat. As a state department officer at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Baumgartner worked closely with Petraeus during the Iraq Surge.
“Gen. Petraeus was like Nick Saban – like, how do you win when you have the heavy firepower and when you have all the advantages?” Baumgartner said. “Mike, … he was the ultimate insurgent. How do you fight when you’re outnumbered? How do you outthink (your opponent)? How do you use asymmetric attacks? How do you use unconventional warfare to beat someone?
“That’s sort of what the Air Raid is. Mike wasn’t David Petraeus. Mike was like Ho Chi Minh or Lawrence of Arabia.”
Leach and Baumgartner teamed up to teach “Insurgent Warfare & Football Strategy” seminars at Washington State and later Mississippi State. The popular courses examined asymmetric strategies used in warfare and in football.
Mike Leach, the author
Leach’s first book, authored with sportswriter Bruce Feldman and released 18 months after his Texas Tech firing, is his most known. Its catchy title, “Swing Your Sword,” plays off of Leach’s fascination with pirates. Leach later authored “Geronimo” with Buddy Levy, a nod to Leach’s obsession with the Apache leader and medicine man.
In between those titles, Leach teamed with Guven to co-edit a lesser-known title, “Sports for Dorks.” The anthology featured writings from a broad net of contributors, including economists, a former FBI profiler and even a world backgammon champion.
“His interests and his curiosity had him looking above the football horizon,” Guven said.
Mike Leach wanted to see it all
Leach wanted to go so many places, and he craved travel destinations that were new.
Why return to a country he’d been to if he could visit another?
Leach and Baumgartner recently pondered their next travel plans. Baumgartner pitched Uzbekistan. Leach had an alternate idea.
“Mike doesn’t like the desert,” Baumgartner said. “He would always complain, why are we always going to the desert?”
Leach countered with Brazil. That satisfied Baumgartner. Their destination was set.
“That was the last exchange that we had,” Baumgartner said.
A curious explorer, until the end.
Blake Toppmeyer is an SEC Columnist for the USA TODAY Network. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter @btoppmeyer.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY NETWORK: Why Mike Leach traveled the world and learned a trick play in Cambodia
