by John Walters
MasterMind
Football coach Mike Leach, gone too soon at the age of 61. Lawyer, innovator, iconoclast, polymath, rebel. Leach was all of the above.
When Leach joined Hal Mumme’s coaching staff at Iowa Wesleyan in 1989, only two of the previous 17 Heisman Trophy winners had been quarterbacks (and one of them was spritely unicorn Doug Flutie). In the past 17 years only two Heisman Trophy winners have been running backs. That’s no coincidence.
Leach and Mumme—and let’s give due credit to Mouse Davis, Bill Walsh and John Jenkins—looked at the rectangle that is a football field, studied the rules governing play and how offensive players can be positioned, and solved it as a physics problem. More to the point, they used soccer as a guide (whether they realized it or not). Knowing that the Bo Jacksons of the world were not coming to play for them, they could not rely on brute force. So, as skilled soccer teams do, they took advantage of spacing. Spread the defense out.
Soccer, and also warfare. Before World War II, wars were won on the ground. Beginning in World War II and since, air superiority usually dictates who wins a war. Leach was not a military historian for nothing.
Growing up in the 1970s, I’d never heard the terms “five-wide” or “empty backfield” or “trips right.” Leach and Mumme helped revolutionize the sport, and it’s never going back.
Like just about every scribe who encountered Leach, I chrerished him because he enjoyed discussing, and unraveling, issues that had nothing to do with football. He was refreshing. However, it needs to be said that in my few meetings with quarterbacks who played for him, they were not quite so fond. One, they let it be known that Leach basically relied on the upperclassmen QBs to teach the younger QBs they playbook and the details. And also, that he could treat his players like chattel when unhappy. Probably like plenty of coaches. But, coming from someone who came off to the media as such a renaissance man, the image of him behaving like Junction Boys-era Bear Bryant is off-putting.
A memory I want to add: on the night that Leach had quarterback Connor Halliday attempt 70 passes (completing 49, a cool 70%) in Pullman, Halliday set the FBS record with 740 passing yards. Yet, in the game’s final minute, with Wazzu trailing 60-59, Leach opted to play it safe, calling two run plays inside the 5 (to run out clock) before marching his kicker onto the field for what should have been a chip-shot game-winner. He missed the kick. Wazzu lost to Cal by one (Cal’s QB was Jared Goff; Halliday never played a down in the League).
A truly colorful character, though. And one of a kind.
Messi Situation
By losing its first match to Saudi Arabia, 2-0, in the group stage, World Cup favorites (at least to advance to the semis) Argentina put itself into knockout round mode for the rest of its stay in Qatar. Lose another match and go home. So of course the Argentines, with aging (35) but still magical star Lionel Messi, have rattled off five straight wins since.
Yesterday’s 3-0 defeat of Croatia in the semis guaranteed the Argentine squad a spot in the final (likely versus defending champions France). It was only last Friday when Argentina trailed the Netherlands 1-0 with less than four minutes remaining in extra time. Once again, they rescued themselves from termination (ironically, last Friday, just as Grant Wahl was about to collapse in his seat while watching them).
And if you’ve ever wondered what all the hubbub about Lionel Messi is, this play goes a long way to clarifying it. Arguably the greatest soccer player ever (we put only Pele above him), Messi has only missed out on a World Cup win to secure his legacy (something the Federer to his Nadal, Cristiano Ronaldo, has never won, either, and now never will). He’s one victory away.
France, by the way, may have the current top player in the world, Klyian Mbappe, who is Messi’s teammate on the Ligue 1 squad Paris-St. Germain.
Grant Wahl Update From The Most Reliable Source
This morning Dr. Celine Grounder, the widow of Grant Wahl, took to substack to pen a thoughtful and incisive update on news surrounding her late husband. You may read all of it here, but I’ll excerpt these sentences (bold type mine):
Grant died from the rupture of a slowly growing, undetected ascending aortic aneurysm with hemopericardium. The chest pressure he experienced shortly before his death may have represented the initial symptoms. No amount of CPR or shocks would have saved him. His death was unrelated to COVID. His death was unrelated to vaccination status. There was nothing nefarious about his death.
Bond Agent
For the feminist—or misogynist— on your Christmas card list (and doesn’t that cover just about everyone?): Bonnie Garmus’ novel, Lessons In Chemistry, which has been named by many a critic as Fiction Book of the Year.
It’s the tale of Elizabeth Zott, a brilliant and serious and determined woman trying to make her way in the world as a chemist in the Eisenhower era. Garmus adorns the book with fanciful characters (a dog who knows 981 English words, for example) and our main critique is that almost every character is two-dimensional. Nearly all the men are villains and all the women saints (just as in real life, you say?)
For the MH staff, reading a book that goes in depth about chemistry and rowing hit close to home, though we have no experience in being a single mom and barely any more in being a magical chef. But it is an entertaining read, and the story only improves in the second half. Plus, how often does a novel pain a vivid picture, using metaphor, on the differences between covalent, ionic and hydrogen bonds (we wish Emil Hofman had thought of this)? We picture Emily Blunt in the title role, but that remains to be seen. We think.
Schlub Hub*
*The judges will also accept “SBF Now SOL” but not “Samuel Bankman-Caged”
Samuel Bankman-Fried (SBF), the be-shorted kingpin of what not long ago was arguably the most visible cryptocurrency exchange on the planet, was arrested yesterday in the Bahamas. He’s only 30, but we imagine SBF is going away for a long, long time.
What happens when a bunch of over-educated nerds who overdosed on The Social Network and The Big Short and failed to realize that they were cautionary tales get their hands on billions of dollars before any of them has gotten married or changed a diaper or even purchased a home in the U.S.A? You’re looking at it.
In short, SBF’s exchange, FTX, was inveigling venture capital firms to invest millions and millions of dollars (no one did their due diligence… where’s Ryan Gosling’s Jared from Deutsche Bank when you need him???), then handing that money over to Alameda Research (a sister company SBF had founded and made his slam-piece CEO of), which would then invest in FTX (using FTX’s own $$ you see) to pump up the price of its stock. That’s not healthy. Or legal.
The New York Times, being The New York Times, took the occasion of SBF’s arrest to pen a fashion essay about what his wardrobe, and that of the precocious and obnoxious GenZ-eniuses who populate Silicon Valley, says about his business acumen and ethics. You may or may not hate it.
I don’t think Argentina was ever trailing vs. Netherlands. They were up 2-0 before Netherlands tied it late.
You are correct; I was thinking of the Brazil-Croatia match.