Want to go on a trip to the Middle East with Mike Leach?

Last year, it was a trip to Cambodia and Thailand. This year, Washington State Cougars coach Mike Leach and former Washington state senator (and WSU alumnus) Michael Baumgartner are considering a trip to the Middle East ... and you’re invited!

Invited to try and convince them you’re interesting enough to be allowed to go, that is.

Last week, Leach posted this:

Leach and Baumgartner just finished teaching their “Insurgent Warfare and Football Strategy” course, which was an outgrowth of last year’s trip to southeast Asia.

“Mike (Leach) and I had such a good time on last year’s trip and we had a lot of people mention that they wish they could have come along, as we started thinking about a trip year, we started thinking, ‘well, maybe we could bring a few folks with us,’ ” Baumgartner told CougCenter.

Baumgartner also said that they have already received significant interest in the trip from journalists and documentary film makers, but they would prefer “good travel companions with an interest in college football stories and foreign affairs looking for a special trip.”

How will they choose travel companions? Baumgartner said they still have to figure that out. The locations of the trip means that they can’t take just anybody and that they may have some meetings with foreign officials that are outside the norm of a regular tour.

“It may end up that we don’t take anyone, but we both hope that we do,” he said.

Baumgartner, who is a former U.S. State Department officer who in the past received scholarships for the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations and previously worked for the Crown Prince of Dubai, declined to give specifics on the timing or the location of the trip. But he did mention that he has travelled extensively in the region and where they are going is both “historic and really cool” and that the trip would take place “in the late Spring.”

As Leach said in the tweet, you can contact Baumgartner via Twitter if you’re interested.

Of course, that didn’t stop people from responding directly to Leach’s original tweet.