Because I don’t ever want to stop talking about Mike Leach.

Historically, the assistants Leach has been around, both when he was an assistant himself and later as a head coach, have gone on to continued or increased success elsewhere as four or five have become D-1 head coaches and a number of others have gone on to become offensive coordinators. Further, Mike is a strange guy: he talks too long in meetings, can ramble when recruiting, was never known as a die-hard recruiter, and is very focused on certain things — his offense and his quarterbacks — and really needs others to take the lead in other matters.

Specifically, a lot of his success or failure in Pullman will be decided by three hires: his defensive coordinator, his offensive line coach, and his recruiting coordinator.

One reason, of course, is because he’s a unique guy. But I think his connections to the foundations of WSU’s past success is being overlooked by a lot of outsiders.

In his book Leach mentions that, had he not joined up with Hal Mumme and began running their twist on the BYU passing game, he would have run Dennis Erickson’s one-back three-step game, which was in fact what he’d been doing before he and Mumme got together. Further, after Mumme and Leach’s first season at Kentucky in 1997, they visited Mike Price and his staff at Washington State after their Rose Bowl season. There they picked up some information on formations and receiver screens. It may be irrelevant, but Mumme’s Airraid had always been a two-back offense, while in 1997 Washington State ran a ton of four-wides with one back. That personnel group and formation would later dominant Leach’s offense when he began running his own show.

Offensive line coach is incredibly important because of the pressure Mike’s offense puts on those guys. He will probably go back to the wide splits, and he expects his linemen to do their pass blocking one-on-one and not lose. The good news for Leach is he’s probably got a good one in mind that he can get: Robert Anae. Anae was Leach’s offensive line coach in his early days at Texas Tech, before he went on to be the offensive coordinator at BYU and later Arizona. As his gig at Arizona is ending, I expect Leach to make Anae a pretty nice offer to come back and be his line coach.

Depending who he brings in on his staff I expect Leach to still recruit Texas (remember, LaMichael James is from Texas and he wound up at Oregon), but I think he’ll do fine in California. He should be able to get the quarterbacks he wants from the surrounding states (Ryan Leaf was from Montana and Bledsoe was from Walla Walla), and his offense is going to be a huge selling point for receivers and other "athlete" skill guys. Many of Leach’s best receivers, including Michael Crabtree, were dual-threat quarterbacks in high school who played that role simply because they were good athletes.

Defense is where recruiting might be difficult. A lot of guys at Texas Tech came in as athletes or skill guys and got moved to defense; that’s just how it goes. But it will be a challenge to convince kids to come to Pullman, to play defense for Washington State, and, for of all people, Mike Leach.

The good news is that Washington State appears to have quarterbacks and receivers, as they are currently in the top-ten in passing, but it’s an open question whether the skills will translate so quickly. Leach is a good natured guy but can be very ornery and gruff when things aren’t to his standards, and it may well be a big shock for him to go from a Texas Tech practice with experienced kids running his offense with precision to a bunch of guys that frankly don’t know what they are doing. I expect them to get there, but 2012 will likely be a very inconsistent year, with some blowout games and probably a dud or two (think of Texas Tech’s 56-3 pasting by Nebraska in 2000).

Fans can’t wait for 600 yard passing games, but are they ready for seasons where the team averages less than 60 yards rushing a game, as they did even in 2007 when the number two offense in the country averaged a mere 59 yards rushing per contest? And stats like these mean that on third and one Leach is going to line up in four wides in the shotgun and call a couple of incomplete passes too; there’s going to be someone out there looking at his TV set wondering why the hell didn’t this overpaid jerk get in the I formation and run the ball. I am certainly not saying that’s wrong, just that, well: get ready.

I actually think most of Coug Center will be good about this, but I’m a little wary of demands for Leach to fall more in line with football tradition, second guessing his intelligent choices that don’t work out because they’re off the beaten path.