Counting down the top 10 Texas Tech coaches of the Big 12 era

No. 4: Mike Leach

Mike Leach never won a Big 12 title.  In fact, he never even reached the Big 12 championship game.  So why does he sit so high on this list?

The answer is because it is harder to build a winner in the sport of football than any other sport in the NCAA.  But that’s exactly what Leach did during his ten years on the job with the Red Raiders.

Overall, he managed to go 84-43 and 47-33 in Big 12 play.   And that success came with his program being in the much more challenging division of the conference, the South, where Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, and Texas A&M also resided (along with Baylor when the Bears were a laughingstock).

No coach in the history of Texas Tech football has taken the program to more bowl games than Leach.  He went to the postseason nine times (and guided his team there a 10th but was fired before being able to coach in the 2010 Alamo Bowl).

What’s more, in 2008, he took his team all the way to No. 2 in the national polls, the highest any Red Raider team has ever been ranked at any point of a season.  And overall, five of his teams finished the year in the top 25.

It is harder to win in football because of the money required to build a top-flight program, because the size of the rosters allows blue-blood programs to hoard talent, and because that sport has the most exclusive playoff system in American sports.  But despite all that and despite taking over a program that was considered mediocre at best, Leach won at a level that no other coach in program history has.  Thus, he belongs at No. 4 on this list despite never winning a conference title.