The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football (51 page)

The one thing O’Hagan
was
willing to do with Giansante was tell him stories about his client. Giansante listened to as many as O’Hagan wanted to tell. The more he could learn about Leach, the better.

“He’s not like most coaches,” O’Hagan explained. “The people at Texas Tech took that personally. They felt snubbed at times. Mike wasn’t doing that deliberately. He’s from Cody, Wyoming. He’s a football coach. He’s not a hobnobber, and he’s not an ass kisser.”

Mike Marlow and Joe Giansante had a standing appointment to speak every weekday morning at 7:30. Giansante would be on the San Diego Freeway in his GMC Acadia. He referred to it as his mobile office. Marlow never did the call from his office, though. He always called on his cell phone from the parking lot next to the Sunset mini-mart in Pullman, a few minutes from campus. Marlow called it his “Leach spot.”

Usually, the morning call would begin with Giansante saying, “Here’s what I’m hearing,” or “Here’s something Bill needs to know.” But on the morning of November 8, Marlow was the one with some news. Two days earlier Cal had pounded WSU 30–7. It was the team’s fifth straight loss, dropping its record to 3-6. Only three games remained, against Arizona, Utah and Washington. WSU would have to win all of them for Wulff to hit the six-win mark. That was highly unlikely. But Moos was starting to look at other factors, too. He had asked one of his staff to compile a list of
off-the-field problems involving the football team. The staffer came back with a list of players that was three pages long. Over the previous eighteen months, at least twenty-five WSU football players had been arrested or charged with offenses that carried possible jail time. Many of the offenses were misdemeanors—underage drinking, marijuana possession and theft. But there had been a few serious assaults, too. The point was none of this reflected well on the program or the institution.

The football players weren’t pulling their weight in the classroom either. The NCAA had already yanked eight scholarships from the program a couple years earlier after a review revealed that the program had failed to meet academic standards.

It was time, Moos decided, to make a change.

“But,” Moos had told Marlow, “I don’t want to get a divorce until I know who my new wife is going to be.”

Giansante asked Marlow what he wanted him to do.

Marlow told him that Moos wanted a face-to-face meeting with Leach as soon as possible—just the two of them. He was willing to travel to Dallas or Denver, any place where they could talk without being found out.

Over the next week, Giansante went back and forth with O’Hagan. Finally, they agreed on a meeting date: November 16. But Leach wanted to do it in Key West.

On November 12, WSU unexpectedly knocked off Arizona State 37–27 at home. It was far and away the team’s best performance of the year. Bill Moos was on record saying that he supported Paul Wulff. Yet he was about to leave town in hopes of securing Wulff’s replacement. In his mind, the victory over Arizona State didn’t change things. Meanwhile, the clock was ticking. Giansante was hearing that Kansas was preparing to make Leach an offer. If Moos waited until the end of the season, Leach might be off the market. The situation called for stealth.

Normally, all of Moos’s business-related travel was booked through the athletic department and paid for out of a travel budget. In this case, Moos booked his own trip to Key West and made sure to put the flight, hotel and rental car on his personal credit card. He even booked his flight out of Spokane to ensure he didn’t run into athletic department personnel traveling in and out of Pullman. Other than his wife, his secretary and Marlow, no one knew where he was headed.

The day before Moos was scheduled to fly, Marlow burst into his office. “You gotta read the book,” he said.

“What book?”

Marlow handed him Leach’s
Swing Your Sword
.

Moos flipped through the pages.

“You gotta read it before you interview him,” Marlow said.

Moos called for his secretary and handed her the new iPad that Nike had given him. He asked her to download a digital version of Leach’s book.

On the morning of November 16, Mike Leach slipped on a pair of sandals, some cargo shorts, a polo shirt and a baseball cap. Then he hopped on his bicycle, pedaled four miles to the Marriott Beachside Hotel, purchased a Styrofoam cup of coffee and headed for Bill Moos’s suite.

The previous night, Moos had gotten word through Leach’s agent that Leach preferred the meeting to be casual dress. But Moos had only packed a suit and tie. He ditched the tie and undid the top button on his white shirt. Then he had a fresh pot of coffee and a bucket of cold sodas delivered to his room for the 8:00 a.m. meeting. At 8:25, Leach knocked and Moos greeted him.

“Hello, Mike.”

“Hi.”

They shook hands.

“I got the word that casual was fine,” Leach said.

“It is. You look fine. C’mon in.”

“I’m sorry for being late,” Leach said, trailing him into the room. “I rode my bike.”

“You rode your bike?”

“Yeah, I don’t own a car.”

“How do you get around?”

“If Sharon and I and the kids go to a movie or something, we just saddle up and ride.”

Moos laughed and offered him coffee. Mike held up his Styrofoam cup.

“Well, I’ve been reading your book,” Moos said.

“Oh, yeah?”

“I’m from a small town in Washington, and I grew up watching
Gunsmoke
. So I love the part in the book where you talk about being a student at BYU and you got to your girlfriend’s apartment. She’s watching
M*A*S*H
and you turn the channel to
Gunsmoke
.”

“Yeah, well, hell, I pretty much figured that Marshal Dillon could kick Hawkeye’s ass any day, don’t you?”

Moos cracked up. It was exactly the sort of thing Moos might say. A
connection was instantly formed, and the two men spent the next thirty minutes discussing their favorite
Gunsmoke
episodes and swapping tales of growing up in the West. By the time they turned their attention to football, it was apparent that they spoke the same language.

Over the next two and a half hours they discussed Washington State football, Moos’s administrative style and Leach’s coaching style. At one point Moos brought up the fact that he was not happy with the number of off-the-field problems cropping up among football players. He asked Leach how he felt about a three-strikes-and-you’re-out philosophy toward players who get in trouble.

“What do you think about one strike and you’re out?” Leach said.

“Well, that’s okay. You can be stricter than my rule. Just not more lenient.”

Moos reiterated that he wanted to see a more disciplined approach overall. Leach shared his Three Queen Mothers rules—no stealing, no hitting women and no smoking pot. “It’s probably going to take cutting a few guys to get the message through,” Leach said.

They also discussed academics, and Leach said he was a stickler for performance in the classroom.

But most of the time was spent wading through all the changes under way in the Pac-12 and how those changes were enabling WSU to transform its stadium and practice facilities to be on par with the top teams in the conference. Moos pulled out renditions of the football stadium expansion. He talked about the massive football operations building that would follow—a new weight room, new locker room, new equipment room, new training rooms and tables, state-of-the-art meeting rooms and spacious coaches’ offices.

Wrapping up, Moos made it clear that he wanted Leach to be the next coach at WSU. Leach liked everything he heard and said he was genuinely interested.

“If you come to Washington State,” Moos said, “it’s going to be you and me.”

Elson Floyd had been trying to reach Bill Moos all morning. The board of regents was due to vote on the $80 million stadium expansion project in two days. He wanted to go over some last-minute details. Moos had caught a flight out of Key West. The minute he landed to catch a connecting flight, he returned Floyd’s calls.

“Where are you, Bill?”

“I’m at the airport in Charlotte, North Carolina, dealing with our football situation,” Moos said. “I feel confident we have the next coach.”

“Who is it?”

“I’ve had a conversation with Mike Leach, and I think we can get him.”

Floyd didn’t know many coaches. But he’d certainly heard of Leach. Before he could respond, Moos began rattling off his credentials. “He’s had ten winning seasons, ten straight bowl games,” he said.

“You don’t need to convince me,” Floyd said. “If he’s your guy, I support it.”

“Well, it’s going to be expensive.”

“How much?”

Moos cleared his throat. “Elson, it’s going to be $2 million.”

Floyd paused. He was the highest-paid employee at the university, and his annual salary was $750,000. Moos was talking about paying more than twice that much to Leach. But four coaches in the Pac-12 earned $2.25 million or more per year. That was the going rate for a top coach.

“We’ll make that work,” Floyd said. “Let’s go ahead.”

Moos said he’d be back in touch as soon as he reached Pullman.

At a time when universities throughout the country were cutting jobs, reducing course offerings and raising tuition to keep pace with the rising costs of education, coaching salaries continued to skyrocket. At that time—November 2011—the average compensation for a Division I head football coach was $1.47 million annually, a jump of nearly 55 percent from six seasons earlier. The highest-paid coaches all earned well over $3 million annually.