The first I heard of Mike Leach was when he showed up at Valdosta State as the offensive coordinator for Hal Mumme following a three-year tenure at Iowa Wesleyan where they originated the Air Raid offense.

When you take over a school that has not won a game in two full seasons, the constituency doesn’t necessarily expect to be entertained, they just want to win a few games. At the time, winning a single game was a big deal.

With Mumme and Leach it turned out to be both. Leach, a native of Susanville, California, had earned a bachelor’s degree at Brigham Young and law degree at Pepperdine but really didn’t want to practice law. He was willing to start out as a volunteer coach. Both he and Mumme knew why they put air in footballs which was to “throw the hell out of it.”

They had one thing in common from the start. They were attracted to the offense of LaVell Edwards at BYU and found their way to Provo at every opportunity. It didn’t hurt that Leach and his family were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He really became enamored with the Cougar offense. He wasn’t big enough to play football, so he played rugby and hung around the BYU practices. He let LaVell Edwards’ flair for a dominating brand of offense sink in. He learned all the nuances and particulars to the extent he could have called the plays if Edwards had let him.

When Mumme got the Iowa Wesleyan job, he walked into his office and saw a stack of those old-style pink telephone slips. Most of them were calls from athletic directors wanting to schedule the Tigers. One, however, was from Mike Leach. It would be the start of a fortuitous relationship for both men.

The first season, 1989, was a memorable one.  Iowa Wesleyan and its explosive offense brought smashing results as the team posted a 7-4 record and euphoria set in.

A signature development took place after that first year at Iowa Wesleyan.  With the team winning, the mood skyrocketed upwards on campus, which prompted Mumme to call the president and tell him that they needed a recruiting budget.

Initially, the president underwrote the cost of two plane tickets to Florida.  Mumme wanted to evaluate a kicker at a high school in Key West.  When they got to the airport, they discovered that their flight was to Orlando.   Undaunted they pressed on, driving six hours from Orlando to Key West.  They signed the kicker and got commitments from other players along the way. The President’s money was well spent.

There was an emotional bonus that would accompany Leach the rest of his life. He fell in love with Pirate history on the recruiting sojourn and became a buccaneer aficionado for the rest of his life. Mike got to know the treasure hunter Mel Fisher, and if Key West had had a college football team, Mike would have been the first candidate to apply for the head coaching position.

Mumme will be in Las Vegas in December for the induction of Tim Couch, former Kentucky quarterback, into the College Football Hall of Fame.  He and Leach turned Couch into a household name in Kentucky when they were in Lexington. 

There will be a link to Leach in Sanford Stadium Saturday. His son, Cody, is a special teams fellow working with State’s special team’s coordinator.  Cody and Mumme talk frequently on the phone. Cody naturally has the highest regard for Mumme who had a “joined at the hip,” relationship with his dad.

Before Leach and Mumme reached that status, they had become acquainted via long distance. Mumme sensed that they would get along and once they met, he knew he wanted Mike to run his offense although at their first stop, Iowa Wesleyan they had to coach multiple positions, wash jerseys, mow the grass, and line off the field.

There was no recruiting budget but after a couple of games when they were tossing the ball around like it was a back yard pickup game in which running the ball was considered a cardinal sin, they began to get attention outside Iowa.

They won big—so big—that nobody wanted to play them. They had to play schools a level above them which heightened the challenge, but they won against all competition and wore out the competition on their level.  “We played those bigger schools the same reason it goes on today,” Mumme says.  “We needed money.”

One spring they visited a team in a development league in Central Florida.  It was coached by Dan Matthews who had noteworthy success in the Canadian League. He called his two-minute offense the “Bandit Drill.”  The ball was in the air every snap.

Mumme winked at Leach and said, “That is our offense.” Then came the response, from Mike:  “We are going to run it every play, aren’t we.”   The rest of the story?  That was the genesis of the “Air Raid” offense.  

The Air Raid was on wherever they went—from Iowa Wesleyan to Valdosta State to Kentucky to Texas Tech, where Leach became the head coach, then to Washington State to Mississippi State where Leach passed away in December 2022 at age 61.

Mumme’s mission in Las Vegas will be twofold:  Participate in the honoring of Tim Couch and to promote the candidacy of Mike Leach for the College Football Hall of Fame.