Airport acquires WSU land for $14.7 million
By Taylor Nadauld, Moscow Pullman Daily News
Washington State University regents agreed to sell land now
containing several ongoing research experiments to the Pullman-Moscow Regional
Airport for approximately $14.7 million Friday morning.
Coming at the regent’s regular meeting in the Compton Union
Building, the deal gives the airport the green light to continue moving forward
with its runway realignment project.
The runway project broke ground last summer in an effort to
bring the runway into compliance with Federal Aviation Administration
regulations.
The new alignment puts the Runway Protection Zone, which
should mainly be bare land, over property that houses WSU’s Terre View Research
Facility. Airport Executive Director Tony Bean told the Daily News in August
that 28 various buildings -- and the experiments in them -- will need to be
relocated.
The airport and WSU have been negotiating since March 2016.
………….
Growing up with the Air Raid
Nevada OC Matt Mumme was there when his father and Mike
Leach created the pass-happy offense, and now he'll match wits with him
Saturday
By Dale Grummert, Lewiston Trib Sept 22, 2017
They're a matched pair of opposites. The University of Nevada
offense is brand new to the Air Raid, and its coordinator has known it
intimately since its inception.
Matt Mumme was attending junior high in Mount Pleasant,
Iowa, in 1989 when his father, then-Iowa Wesleyan coach Hal Mumme, pieced
together the Air Raid offense in collaboration with assistant Mike Leach.
Almost three decades later, Generation I of the Air Raid
faces Generation II on Saturday (3 p.m., Pac-12 Networks) at Martin Stadium
when a Washington State team (3-0) coached by Leach plays a Nevada club (0-3)
whose first-year offensive coordinator is Matt Mumme.
As Leach routinely mentions prior to these types of
matchups, there won't be much "memory lane stuff" as the game
approaches. But the memories are there, as palpable as the game film that plays
such a central role in coaches' lives.
"Shoot, I have fond memories from before even VHS - it
was reels of film on a projector," Matt Mumme (the surname is two
syllables: MUH-mee) said by phone this week from Reno, Nev. "They had to
get it all cut up and taped together and all that stuff. I remember those days
and just the fun of being around not only my dad but coach Leach. Just growing
up in the Air Raid. That's all I really know."
He's not kidding.
Mumme was a quarterback at Kentucky - a backup to Tim Couch
- when his father employed the Air Raid there in the late 1990s, with Leach as
offensive coordinator. Later as a coach, the younger Mumme assisted his father
at New Mexico State and other schools, then ran the Air Raid on his own as OC
at Davidson in North Carolina and as head coach the past four years at
LaGrange, an NCAA Division III school in Georgia. (Hal Mumme, too, has been
coaching D-III football in recent years, at Belhaven in Mississippi.)
So that's what Matt Mumme, 42, said when newly hired Nevada
coach Jay Norvell phoned him out of the blue and offered him an OC job: The Air
Raid was all he really knew.
But that's what Norvell wanted. He'd spent time at Oklahoma,
which was still using elements of the Air Raid that Leach had installed as OC
in 1999. And last year Norvell worked with Chip Lindsey, who sprinkled similar
concepts into his spread-option schemes as OC at Arizona State.
It's been a rugged initiation at Reno for Norvell, Mumme and
their version of the Air Raid, which probably lacks both the personnel and the
experience level to make it hum. The young, winless Wolf Pack are coming off an
embarrassing 30-28 home loss to Idaho State, an FCS school that hadn't upset an
FBS opponent in 17 years.
Mumme started a true freshman quarterback, Kaymen Cureton,
who has kept the ball almost as many times as he's completed a pass - not a
very Air Raidish statistic.
The Wolf Pack's slow start is no surprise at Washington
State, where Leach went 3-9 in two of his first three seasons before nabbing
back-to-back bowl bids the past two years.
"The biggest thing in this offense is just pure
repetition," Mumme said, echoing Leach's thoughts to a T, "just
getting time on the field to do it. We're young. The two big spots where we're
doing well are O-line and our running backs. But I don't think we're anywhere
near where we want to be in the passing game."
Success at running back is a tradition at Nevada, where
then-coach Chris Ault (with help from now-WSU running-backs coach Jim Mastro)
created the run-friendly pistol offense in 2004. As it happens, Matt Mumme is a
fan of the pistol, having adopted elements of it a few years ago to lend
unpredictability to his pass protection. He's now doing the same thing at Reno,
with help from the retired Ault.
"Getting the opportunity to come here with coach
Norvell and getting to pick Chris Ault's brain, with all he's done on offense
here at the University of Nevada, was pretty cool," Mumme said.
Other concepts Mumme is propagating are foreign to his
players. He's been helped by the presence of receiver Kaleb Fossum, a former
WSU walk-on who transferred to Nevada this year so he could be on scholarship.
Fossum caught four passes in a season-opening 31-20 loss at Northwestern, but
is sidelined at the moment with a knee injury.
So the connections between the Nevada and Wazzu programs -
Mastro is one of three former Wolf Pack coaches on Leach's staff - are
striking.
"You can't throw a dead cat without hitting somebody
from Nevada around here," Leach said.
Reunions aren't Leach's cup of tea when they conflict with
football business. But he took a moment to recall Matt Mumme's initiation to
the Air Raid as a teenager.
His father "always watched a ton of film, so you know
that Matt didn't have any choice on the subject," Leach said. "I
mean, if I was watching film at the house, he's going to drag Matt in and make
him watch it. 'Hey, Matt, what do you think of that?' Matt says, 'Hey I think I
want to go to bed.' Hal says, 'Too bad, we're going to go ahead and talk about
this stick route. What do you think if we do it like this and motion to this?'
"And so I think over time Matt gave in," Leach
said, "and has been a real successful coach."
……………………..
The architect, his pupil, and his son: Hal Mumme, Mike Leach
and Matt Mumme are wedded to the Air Raid offense
Fri., Sept. 22, 2017, 6 a.m.
By Theo Lawson S-R Spokane
PULLMAN – The year was 2000 and Matt Mumme had decided to
tag along with his father, Hal, for an American Football Coaches Association
convention in Florida.
The two were strolling through a conference room when
someone at a nearby table spoke up to get Hal’s attention. And Matt remembers
this vividly. He and his father stopped in their tracks as Howard Schnellenberger
belted out: “Hey Hal, you know you’re ruining football, don’t you?”
A 50-year coaching veteran who’d won a national championship
at Miami before overhauling the football program at Louisville, Schnellenberger
was well-respected in the coaching fraternity. Evidently, Mumme was still an
outcast.
Like rock & roll music at one point in time, the Air
Raid offense was a genre of football so unordinary and so intrusive that most
thought its composer was mad for merely introducing it.
“Yeah, only 99 out of 100 coaches,” Hal said by phone
earlier this week from Jackson, Mississippi, where he’s now coaching NAIA
Belhaven University.
These days, it might be harder to find one coach in a pool
of 100 who hasn’t been at least partially influenced by Mumme’s pass-centric
system. The grandfather of the Air Raid introduced his offensive concept more
than 30 years ago at a small high school in Copperas Cove, Texas, and even
though Mumme never did spend much time coaching major college ball, or dip his
feet into the pro ranks, his ideas and schemes have infiltrated almost every
level of football – from high school to the NFL.
“(Texas Tech coach) Kliff Kingsbury told us one time he
thought 85 percent of the high school coaches in Texas run Air Raid, some form
of Air Raid,” Mumme said. “That’s a lot of high schools.”
Mumme is recognized by most as the founder of the Air Raid.
He says that’s accurate. “I did it in places that nobody noticed.” But his
disciples are the ones responsible for growing the brand, and none have been
more dedicated than Washington State’s Mike Leach.
Since Leach became a head coach at Texas Tech in 2000, his
offenses have generally led the nation in passing. When they haven’t, it’s
because another one of Mumme’s pupils – or Leach’s – has installed the Air Raid
and found a way to use it efficiently. Among them, Kingsbury at Texas Tech,
Sonny Dykes at Cal and Louisiana Tech, Lincoln Riley at Oklahoma, Kevin Sumlin
at Texas A&M and Dana Holgorsen at West Virginia.
It’s also the offense of choice at the University of Nevada,
where Matt Mumme happens to be a first-year offensive coordinator.
“I grew up in it,” said Matt, who was hired by Nevada coach
Jay Norvell in December. “I told Jay, I don’t know anything different, really.”
It’s too bad Hal has to take his Belhaven team to East Texas
Baptist this Saturday because there’s a game on the other side of the country
he’s invested in. Matt Mumme’s Wolf Pack (0-3, 0-0) are taking on Leach’s
Cougars (3-0, 0-0) at 3 p.m. at Martin Stadium. It’s Air Raid vs. Air Raid –
Hal’s longtime friend vs. his oldest child.
“I guess I’ll just root for the offense,” Hal Mumme said.
Humble beginnings in Texas
In an era when high school football was losing athletes to
the year-round sports – basketball, soccer and baseball – Hal Mumme vowed to
design an offense that would make the game fun again.
Copperas Cove High School later would later produce Heisman
Trophy winner Robert Griffin III, but when Hal inherited the program in central
Texas, it wasn’t particularly rich in tradition and it was about half as big as
the schools on its schedule.
“So we were pretty much outmanned,” Hal recalled. “… But
what we could do is we could be one of the best passing teams in the state of
Texas.”
That same pitch is what eventually helped Mumme turn around
the program at Iowa Wesleyan, the one at Valdosta State and the one at
Kentucky. He wasn’t interested in drilling the Power I formation, the Wing T or
the Wishbone – the bread-and-butter offenses being used at the time – but maybe
he could entice quarterbacks to come play at a small cornfield school in Iowa
by promising them they’d throw the ball 50-60 times per game.
“We have a little tiny college that’s been there forever,
100-something years, trying to survive,” Hal said. “There’s really no reason
for a good player to want to go there.”
Mumme’s throwing offense brought enough talent in – and not
just players. Iowa Wesleyan is where he linked up with Leach, who’d spent the
1989 football season coaching American football in Finland.
“Really I wanted to hire somebody that didn’t have a lot of
preset notions on offensive line play because what we were doing was so
different,” Hal said.
In order to widen the quarterback’s passing lines, Mumme
decided to split the offensive linemen two to three feet from one another.
Mumme poached the concept from BYU, where head coach LaVell Edwards and
offensive line coach Roger French had utilized wide-split front lines to open
things up for their shorter passers.
“Mike being Mike,” Mumme said, “he took it to some new
levels in terms of being able to split your linemen out and pass-protect.”
The duo still wanted more edge for their edgy offense and
they found it in Florida. Mumme and Leach were there for recruiting purposes
when they ran into Don Matthews, a former Canadian Football League coach who
was in Orlando for a coaching clinic. Matthews had an up-tempo two-minute drill
that the Wesleyan coaches latched onto – the “Bandit drill” is what Mumme
termed it.
“(We) took it back and we said, that’s what we want to do,
but we’re not going to do it for two minutes, we’re going to do it all the
time,” Mumme said. “And so that was what has become known as the Air Raid.”
Soon enough, both corn and winning football were sprouting
from the soil in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. The Tigers went 10-2 in 1991 – “still the
only playoff appearance for that little school in over 100 years,” Mumme said.
‘Don’t stop attacking’
You could call Mumme and Leach the Lewis and Clark of
football’s modern era. Together, they resurrected three downtrodden programs at
three different levels.
Mumme only means to flatter when he says his partner’s
influence wasn’t truly felt until Leach left Kentucky in 2000 to become the
offensive coordinator at Oklahoma.
“I can remember standing on the sidelines at Kentucky the
year after he went to go to Oklahoma,” Mumme said. “Walking up and down the
sidelined and thinking, something was different, it’s not right. And it took me
awhile to figure it out, but what it was, I missed Mike in my ear telling me,
‘Don’t stop attacking, don’t stop attacking.’”
Attack they did, and win they did.
High school coaches would drop in to learn about the
offensive theories the two mad scientists were cooking up, but even when Mumme
and Leach arrived in Lexington, the Air Raid still had a relatively small
footprint.
Then Kentucky beat Alabama.
On Oct. 4, 1997, Mumme and Leach orchestrated a 40-34
victory over the Crimson Tide. It took overtime and the Wildcats were at home,
but for the first time in 75 years, Kentucky would upend the SEC’s biggest
bully.
“After that, the whole state of Alabama – I bet we had 20
high school staffs from the state of Alabama come up there,” Mumme recalled.
Big-time upsets became the norm for Mumme and Leach. They
believed they could beat anybody. Leach especially.
Valdosta State, an NCAA Division II school, traveled to
Central Florida during the second week of the 1994 season. UCF, a top-ranked
FCS team at the time, paid Valdosta State big money for the visit and in exchange,
the Knights were supposed to spank the Blazers.
“I remember Mike who was coaching the O-line at the time,”
Hal said. “He said, ‘Not only are we going to beat these guys, we’re going to
beat them bad.’”
Valdosta State 31, Central Florida 14.
Kentucky’s 1997 win over Alabama was one of two signature
upsets for the Wildcats that season. They opened the year with Louisville and
even if the Air Raid had proven success at the small-school level, many
skeptics decided that’s also where it would stop.
“Going into that deal, there was only three or four people
in Kentucky that thought we would beat Louisville,” Mumme said. “It was Mike
Leach, Matt Mumme and Tim Couch.”
Kentucky 38, Louisville 24.
The Air Raid was more than operational. It was lethal.
“Now you turn on the TV and everyone talks Air Raid and they
turn on PlayStation games, Air Raid offenses are on there,” Matt Mumme said.
“It is a pretty neat deal to see it everywhere and of course my dad would say
this, too. The concepts have been around for a long time, but the way that dad
and Mike have packaged is what made it such a game-changer.”
Family business
Consider Matt Mumme the world’s first Air Raid quarterback.
“I was doing this stuff when I was in junior high in Texas,”
Nevada’s OC said on Tuesday, suggesting he was perhaps a lab rat for dad’s
offense when it was still in the experimental stages.
Matt later became a prolific quarterback at Valdosta High in
Georgia and won a national championship as a junior. He figured he’d play at
nearby Valdosta State, where most thought Leach would become head coach after
Hal Mumme bolted for Kentucky. But Valdosta State went in another direction,
Leach followed Hal to coach QBs at Kentucky and Matt decided he’d rather be in
Lexington as a backup to Couch, the eventual first pick of the NFL Draft, than
start at Valdosta, which had already divorced from the Air Raid.
Matt wore out his arm throwing the ball on the weekdays,
gladly backed up Couch on Saturdays and graduated from Kentucky in 1999. He
vowed to get away from football and sporting a business degree, went to work as
an accounts manager in Lexington.
“Being from Texas, you know the Willie Nelson song, ‘Mammas,
Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys,’” he said. “My mom didn’t want me
to be a coach. So I tried not to.”
It was a temptation Matt fought for three years before Hal
offered him a position at Southeastern Louisiana.
“Then basically the rest is history,” Matt said.
That was in 2003 and Matt Mumme has been holding a clipboard
since. Leach isn’t the least bit surprised.
“He was always around the office, always watching a lot of
film,” the WSU coach said. “Hal always watched a ton of film, so you know that
Matt didn’t have any choice on the subject. As a kid, if Hal was watching film
at the house, he’s going to drag Matt in and make him watch it. You know, ‘Hey
Matt, what do you think of this, what do you think of that?’ Matt says, ‘Hey, I
think I want to go to bed,’ and Hal says, ‘Well too bad, we’re going to go
ahead and talk about this stick route, so what do you think we do it like this
and motion to this?’”
An Air Raid reunion
Saturday, Matt will stand on the opposite sideline as his
one-time mentor when WSU and Nevada go head-to-head. One of these Air Raids
will presumably look much more mature than the other. Leach has produced the
two most productive quarterbacks in school history and WSU’s all-time passing
leader, Luke Falk, is still on campus. Meanwhile, Mumme and Norvell are just
three games into their rebuild at Nevada. They’ll be starting a true freshman,
Kaymen Cureton, against the nation’s 18th-ranked team.
The learning curve can be steep for rookie QBs in the Air
Raid. And it’s awfully hard on the arm at first.
“It’s like being a pitcher,” Matt Mumme said. “You’re going
to throw a lot. I always tell them, quarterbacks when they get here, I’m like,
‘As much as you think you’re going to throw it, you’re going to throw it more
than that. You’re going to have to ice every day.’”
The Cougars are 28-point favorites on Saturday. It could get
ugly for Matt Mumme’s Wolf Pack, but either way, this should be a good show for
the Air Raid aficionados out there. Including the architect himself.
“I’m torn,” Hal Mumme said. “I don’t know who to root for in
this.”
Former Cal coach Sonny Dykes, left, and Washington State
coach Mike Leach speak before a game in Pullman in 2016. Dykes installed the
Air Raid offense at Cal after coaching for six years under Leach at Texas Tech.
(Young Kwak / AP)
Former Cal coach Sonny Dykes, left, and Washington State
coach Mike Leach speak before a game in Pullman in 2016. Dykes installed the
Air Raid offense at Cal after coaching for six years under Leach at Texas Tech.
(Young Kwak / AP)
If the actual contest isn’t entertaining, at least a few of
the game-week stories have been.
Both Hal and Matt Mumme offered their best Leach tales
earlier in the week and it’s as if they’ve been colluding – the father and son
end up sharing the same one. Almost.
“When I was a freshman, I went into his office and I had
about 20 minutes to kill before class and Valdosta State, it’s not a big
campus, so I just knew it would be like a two-minute walk to class,” Matt said.
“And as I walk in there and sat up and look at the Geronimo picture and I was
like, ‘Coach, you really love Geronimo a lot, don’t you?’ And that led into
about a two-hour-and-45-minute discussion of Geronimo in which I missed two
classes.”
Hal accuses Leach of a similar crime.
Mason Miller, now the offensive line coach at Nevada, was also
a player at Valdosta State under the Mumme/Leach regime. Miller was a bright
kid, but he was occasionally a no-show to class. Days after the Valdosta
coaches grilled their player for skipping, Mumme noticed that Miller had missed
a history lecture.
“He’s on some kind of secret probation or something,” Mumme
said. “I call him up, I’m like, ‘Hey Mace, how could you miss this? I just got
on you about going to class and you go and turn around and miss this history
class.’ He said, ‘Coach, I was going to history class and coach Leach called me
in his office and said, ‘Let me tell you about Geronimo.’’ He said, ‘Two hours
later, I left and class was over with.’”
……………………………
Meet the man who knows both WSU and Nevada’s offenses
intimately: Air Raid architect Hal Mumme
Originally published September 21, 2017 at 4:25 pm
Back in 1989, Hal Mumme and Mike Leach created the Air Raid
offense WSU runs together. Now, it's Air Raid vs. Air Raid as Leach and Mumme's
son, Nevada offensive coordinator Matt Mumme, battle head-to-head in Pullman
By Stefanie Loh Seattle
Times staff reporter
Forget the bookies, odds makers, TV analysts, and heck,
maybe even the players themselves.
The man who might have the most intimate knowledge of both
offenses in 18th-ranked Washington State’s final non-conference game against
Nevada resides 2,000 miles southeast of Pullman, in the town of Jackson, Miss.
Hal Mumme created the Air Raid offense with WSU head coach
Mike Leach, and fathered, mentored and trained Nevada offensive coordinator Matt
Mumme, his son. For him, this game is a must-see matchup for the ages.
These days, Mumme is the head football coach at Division III
Belhaven University.
So while he won’t be at the game in Pullman on Saturday –
the Belhaven Blazers play on the road at East Texas Baptist University that
same evening – Mumme hopes to get done with his post-game duties in time to
plop down in front of a television somewhere and watch his son try to out-duel
his longtime friend and right hand man, Leach.
Mumme talks to both men weekly, texting them regularly, and
exchanging film and ideas, and he’s excited to watch his two former lieutenants
try to outduel each other on the Palouse.
“We compare notes a lot,” Mumme says. “It’s an unusual
situation that they’re actually playing each other.”
As coaches and playcallers, Leach and Matt Mumme are more
similar than different, Hal Mumme says, but they each have their quirks and
there are little nuances between their offenses.
From the viewpoint of someone who knows both play-callers
better than anyone in the business, here’s how the Air Raid began, and how the
Cougars and Wolf Pack’s offensive systems compare.
Origins of the Air Raid
Mumme’s relationship with Leach dates back to 1989, when he
hired the 27-year-old unknown commodity to coach his offensive line at NAIA
Iowa Wesleyan.
Back then, Mumme was still tweaking with the innovative
offensive system that he’d designed based in part on LaVell Edwards’ system at
BYU, and in part on Bill Walsh’s West Coast offense. Leach joined his staff,
and Mumme realized he’d found a kindred spirit.
His new assistant coach was naturally inquisitive, loved
history as much as Mumme did, and was as intrigued by the pass as he was.
Over the next decade, Mumme and Leach rose through the
college football ranks together, moving from Iowa Wesleyan to Valdosta (Ga.)
State and then Kentucky.
Leach soon became Mumme’s offensive coordinator and the two
men spent hours bouncing ideas back and forth, diagramming plays and figuring
out new ways to teach players their offense. In the offseason, they hit the
road together, driving all over the country to learn from coaches or other
pass-friendly teams.
BYU opened its doors to them, as did the Green Bay Packers
and Miami Hurricanes, who, at the time, were led by former WSU coach Dennis
Erickson.
“We’d drive all over the place and talk football with
anybody who we thought we could learn something from,” Leach said. “We worked
together to evolve this thing for 10 years. It was a great time to learn a lot
of football, and I felt like we did.”
The peak of their success together came in October 1997,
when, powered by eventual Heisman-winning quarterback Tim Couch and the Air
Raid offense – a name Leach coined at Valdosta State — Mumme and Leach’s
Kentucky team beat Alabama for the first time in 75 years.
Matt Mumme was a junior backup quarterback on that Kentucky
team. He’d transferred from Valdosta State to Kentucky after his father became
the Wildcats’ head coach because he wanted to continue playing in the Air Raid
offense.
The eldest of the three Mumme children, Matt started playing
football in fifth grade, when his father was a high school coach in Texas and
had just begun experimenting with his unusual offensive concepts.
“The fifth grade coach got sick one day, so dad filled in
for him and we were throwing the ball all over the place. I just really enjoyed
that,” Matt Mumme said. “I knew from a young age that I wanted to play for him.
I had a lot of time from sixth grade to college to play football for my dad and
be around coach Leach. … They made it fun, and that’s what Leach has done
everywhere he’s been.”
Leach recalls Matt as the prototypical coach’s kid who was
around football so much that it seemed inevitable he’d follow in his father’s
footsteps.
“He’s a very likeable guy. A steady guy. I thought he’d
probably coach,” Leach says. “He was always kind of a knowledgeable guy, always
around the office. He watched a ton of film. But then, Hal watched a ton of
film, so you know Matt didn’t have any choice in the subject.”
However, Matt resisted the pull of the coaching profession
for as long as he could – three years – because he didn’t want to disappoint
his mother. After decades of following Hal from one remote college town to the
next, June Mumme knew firsthand how nomadic and unsteady a coach’s life could
be, and she didn’t want that for her son.
To try and please his mom, Matt took a job with Lexmark out
of college, selling printers. But try as he might, he just couldn’t stay away
from football.
“Every day he’d come into my office and get a copy of the
game plan, and then he’d plan his time around practices and come to games and
sit in the press box. And he coached some 12-year-olds,” Hal said. “He still
had it in his system.”
Matt finally gave in to the coaching bug in 2003, when he
joined his father’s staff at Southeastern Louisiana as the quarterbacks coach.
By 2005, when Hal was hired as head coach at New Mexico State, Matt was his
co-offensive coordinator.
More similar than different
So, how would the architect of the Air Raid describe this
offense that has become so popular in college football over the last 15 years?
The Air Raid is “more of an attitude than a playbook. It’s a
flexible enough system that you can put your own personality to it. It’s this
attitude of attacking,” Mumme says. “You do it any way you can, a lot of it has
to do with spreading receivers, spreading linemen and creating space and
attacking the open grass. That’s what it’s always been.
“Both those guys do a great job of it and they both have a
great knowledge of how to do that.”
Hal Mumme says his son and Leach are more alike than
different. They’re intelligent, analytical and inquisitive by nature, and on
the sideline, they’re tenacious and aggressive in their play calling.
“You can see it in both of them when they call a game. Both
of them have the same personality,” Mumme says. “When Matt was a player for us,
Mike and I were at Valdosta State, and Matt was a freshman. He was the backup
quarterback. He’d get to go in a game (when) we were just wrapping the game up,
and you could bet he would go in and check deep. And Mike would be on the
sidelines telling him, ‘don’t quit attacking.”
So perhaps Matt has subconsciously adopted Leach’s
play-calling persona. However, he’s also consciously tried to model his
sideline demeanor after Leach’s.
“One thing I’ve always admired about him is the way he is on
game day – how relaxed he is. He’s willing to be patient, but he’ll take his
shots,” Matt says. “Overall, the way he runs an offense, it’s so impressive.
It’s like what my dad did. It’s real easy to be greedy, but sometimes you just
have to be patient as an offense until they give you what you want.”
Since Kentucky’s big win over Alabama in 1997, the Air Raid
has taken off, and variations of it have been installed at high schools and
colleges at every level. It’s even bled into the pros to some extent, Mumme
says, pointing to the New England Patriots and Detroit Lions as NFL teams that
have adopted Air Raid concepts.
However, the system Leach runs at WSU is “the purest form of
(the Air Raid) in comparison to what we did in 1991,” Hal Mumme says.
Plays like four verticals and mesh – in which two receivers
start from opposite ends of the field and run crossing routes so close to each
other they can slap hands when they intersect in the middle – are staples, and
much of the Cougars’ offense is dependent on playmakers adjusting their
movements based on the defense and running to open space.
The version of the Air Raid Matt Mumme has installed in his
first year as Nevada’s offensive coordinator blends Hal and Leach’s original
system with former Nevada coach Chris Ault’s pistol concepts.
This Nevada version of the Air Raid is more run-oriented.
Nevada has tallied 106 rush attempts and 107 pass attempts through three games,
while WSU operates more on a 3:1 pass/run ration. Also, unlike the Cougars, the
Wolf Pack use a tight end in their base offense.
Matt says it’s been fun tinkering with the system to suit
his personnel, and he has enjoyed meeting Ault to talk about the pistol and how
he’s incorporated it into the offense he learned from his father.
On Saturday, the protégé will try to out-duel one of the Air
Raid’s two original masters. The matchup and storylines are intriguing, but the
game itself should also be entertaining.
“Everybody should tune in. It’ll be fun to watch,” Hal Mumme
says. “I’ll probably just watch the offenses, as usual.”
………………..
COLLEGE FOOTBALL
If Mike Leach Had Gotten His Dream Job, How Would College
Football History Have Changed?
Sports Illustrated
By ANDY STAPLES Friday September 22nd, 2017
I want to go back to the island, Where the shrimp boats tie
up to the pilin'. Give me oysters and beer for dinner every day of the year,
And I'll feel fine, I'll feel fine.
In 1996, a little-known assistant named Mike Leach applied
to become head coach of the Key West High Conchs. If he had settled into island
life instead of spreading the gospel of the Air Raid, would anything about the
sport's past 20 years be the same?
I want to go back to the island, Where the shrimp boats tie
up to the pilin'. Give me oysters and beer for dinner every day of the year,
And I'll feel fine, I'll feel fine.
— Jimmy Buffett, “Tin Cup Chalice”
When Mike Leach was Hal Mumme’s offensive coordinator at
Iowa Wesleyan in the early 1990s, the coaches would listen to Jimmy Buffett’s
A1A to keep their minds warm as they drove on snow-covered roads. But Leach
didn't truly understand what Buffett meant on the album’s last track—his first
song about Key West—until a weekend break during a recruiting trip to Florida
took Leach down the Overseas Highway to the southernmost point in the
continental United States. After two days spent people-watching, Leach knew. He
had to come back to this place, preferably for a long time.
By the start of 1996, Leach and Mumme had been at Valdosta
State for four seasons. Leach, a $48,000-a-year Division II offensive
coordinator, noticed that his dream job had opened. He’d have to take a pay cut,
but he didn’t care. He applied to become the head coach of the Key West High
Conchs.
He didn’t get the job. Not enough experience, Leach
remembers hearing when he learned he wasn’t hired. Key West hired a coach from
New England named Fred Dennen. He didn’t make it through his first season.
Leach, meanwhile, followed Mumme to Kentucky the following year and set records
with quarterback Tim Couch at the helm of Leach’s Air Raid offense. In 1999,
Leach got hired at Oklahoma to run the offense for first-year head coach Bob
Stoops. A year later, Leach was running his own program at Texas Tech. He had
wanted to coach the Conchs. He had to settle for revolutionizing offensive
football at the college level.
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Leach now leads No. 18 Washington State, which is 3–0
heading into home games against Nevada followed by No. 5 USC. Asked today what
might have happened had he gotten that Key West High job in 1996, Leach
imagines the possibilities between bites of salad in a dining hall on the
opposite end of the continent. “It would have been a blast,” he says. Then he
paints the picture. “You ought to see the crowd at a Key West High School
game,” Leach says. “There would be hippies who never quit being hippies. Then
there would be fighter pilots. There would Czechs, Russians, Haitians,
Bahamians. You’ve got the shrimper’s kid out there playing. You’ve got some
captain’s kid. You’ve got the stripper’s kid. It runs the whole gamut.”
From there, a parallel football universe spins forth. “This
is like It’s a Wonderful Life,” cracks Key West attorney and sixth-generation
Conch Bill Spottswood, who served on the search committee that didn’t give
Leach the job and who befriended Leach years later when the coach bought a
house on the island. The Air Raid that Leach and Mumme created and that Leach
made famous at Texas Tech swept through Texas, and coaches from across the
country borrowed concepts from it. Currently, six of the 10 Big 12 offenses run
a version of the Air Raid. But what if Leach had run it in Key West instead of
in Lexington and Norman and Lubbock and Pullman?
Begin with Leach. The coach never met a stranger whose brain
he wouldn’t pick for two hours, and he would have fit right in among the free
spirits of Key West. (He still owns a house there even though he coaches 3,200
miles away.) This month, he’d probably be helping his neighbors recover from
Hurricane Irma. One of the main draws of the island for Leach was its spirit.
These are people who can face down a natural disaster and throw a party the
next day. “He’d be an island legend,” says current Texas Tech coach Kliff
Kingsbury, the quarterback Leach inherited when he took over the Red Raiders in
2000. Leach figures he would have taught history or English in the mornings as
Key West’s coach. “That would probably be his favorite part of the day,
honestly,” Kingsbury says. “He wouldn’t let them out of class. The bell would
be ringing, and he would just keep talking.”
Given the relatively low pay a public school teacher–coach
receives, would Leach have stayed at Key West? Greg Kremer, who was the Conchs’
athletic director in ’96 and still teaches at the school, wonders if Leach
might have been lured away. Kremer, who did not get to choose the coach that
year, remembers meeting Leach—at a TGI Friday’s, he believes—and thinking him
overqualified for the job. “I wonder how happy he would be here at the end of
the road at a school not known for football,” Kremer says.
West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen suggests that Leach never
would have left Key West. Spottswood insists he would have made sure the coach
stayed. Leach does have a law degree from Pepperdine, and Spottswood does run a
law firm. “He might have wound up practicing in my office if I had to keep him
there,” Spottswood says.
On the field, Leach would have inherited a roster stocked
with speed but lacking in size and depth. He would have fielded varsity teams
full of would-be Wes Welkers with rosters numbering in the 20s, and if he made
the playoffs, he would have had to face South Florida powerhouses such as
American Heritage in Plantation and Glades Central in Belle Glade.
Leach imagines he would have raided the Conchs’ celebrated
baseball team for players. The shortstop would have become Leach’s quarterback.
On the diamond that kid had to deliver intermediate range throws with pinpoint
accuracy, just like an Air Raid quarterback. “If he had been the head coach
here, I think it would have been off the charts,” says Rick Lopez, a Key West
High grad who has called Conchs games on local radio since ’98. “It would have
been crazy pinball-type numbers on the scoreboard, and it would have been a lot
of fun.”
The Air Raid, which at the college level has befuddled even
more formidable defenses, definitely would have worked. And the moment Leach’s
Conchs upset an American Heritage or a Glades Central, everyone in South
Florida would have tried to copy it. Suddenly, the area that produces the best
players in America would have been Air Raid crazy. And as South Florida teams
used the offense to whip their northern counterparts in the playoffs, the
offense would spread throughout the state. By the early ’00s, Miami, Florida
and Florida State would be under pressure to switch to the Air Raid to better
blend in the talent from high schools.
And there would have been no respected offensive coach at
those schools to stem the tide. Steve Spurrier had left Florida for the NFL
after the ’01 season. Florida State was mired in the Jeff Bowden era on
offense, and even Bobby Bowden wouldn’t have had the capital to cling to the
old ways. At Miami, Larry Coker was viewed as a guy cashing in on Butch Davis’s
recruiting bounty. At the high school level, Florida would have become what
Texas became: a laboratory for offensive explosiveness. At the college level,
the Sunshine State’s Big Three would be what the Big 12 is now.
All because of a full-time football coach–part-time lawyer
working magic at the end of the world.
So what about the rest of the football universe? Let’s start
with Kentucky. Mumme still probably would have been hired by the Wildcats prior
to the ’97 season, but his actual history at Kentucky without Leach (6–6 in
’99, 2–9 in ’00) suggests the Wildcats might not have wowed the SEC with their
aerial prowess. In the real world Leach got the Oklahoma coordinator job
because his offense drove Stoops mad when Stoops was the defensive coordinator
at Florida. Without Leach at Kentucky to inspire Stoops to run the Air Raid at
Oklahoma, things get interesting. Stoops likely would’ve hired former Kansas
State co-worker Mark Mangino as the offensive coordinator instead of as
offensive-line coach. (Mangino became the OC after Leach left.) Mangino
would’ve installed Kansas State’s offense, which embraced the dual-threat
quarterback long before the trend was in vogue. But it wouldn’t have been the
shock to the system the Air Raid turned out to be.
Meanwhile, Texas Tech likely would have still pursued
Clemson’s offensive coordinator, Rich Rodriguez, to fill its coaching vacancy
in 1999. But when Rodriguez pulled his name from consideration, the Red Raiders
wouldn’t have been able to turn to Leach, so they might have upped their offer
to Rodriguez. Maybe he would have taken the job.
Imagine: Instead of an up-tempo, spread-out, pass-happy
offense, Rodriguez brings an up-tempo, spread-out, power-run offense to the Big
12. The read option, his signature innovation, takes the league by storm.
Everyone in Lubbock is thrilled except for the redshirt sophomore quarterback
Rodriguez inherited. (“I’m not really the type of runner to run coach
Rodriguez’s offense,” Kingsbury says now. “So I don’t know where I’d be. I
don’t like getting hit that much.”) Kingsbury winds up on the bench behind B.J.
Symons, a better fit for Rodriguez’s run-heavy scheme. Meanwhile, Rodriguez
falls in love with a minor prospect from Oklahoma City and makes him the
featured tailback. Welker, who played receiver for Leach, breaks every rushing
record Texas Tech has. Kingsbury, a sixth-round pick by the Patriots in 2006,
never plays in the NFL and never gets bitten by the coaching bug. Instead, he
pursues his original dream of becoming a securities trader.
• What if ... Chris Leak had scrambled for a first down
against LSU in 2004?
Rodriguez, a West Virginia native, probably still would have
been offered the Mountaineers’ job after coach Don Nehlen retired in 2000. But
in our alternative reality he turns it down, believing he can win the Big 12 at
Texas Tech. Back at Oklahoma, the Sooners are far better off than they were
under Stoops’s predecessor, John Blake, but they haven’t satisfied their fans.
Without Leach bringing the Air Raid in 1999, they don’t win the 2000 national
title. They still win the Big 12 in ’02, but the fanbase wants more. Meanwhile,
Texas coach Mack Brown, after losing to Rodriguez’s Texas Tech team in ’02 and
’03, decides to mimic Rodriguez’s offense to better highlight the skill set of
a redshirt sophomore named Vince Young. Young runs for 196 yards and three TDs
in the Longhorns’ ’04 win against the Sooners in Dallas. That loss keeps
Oklahoma from winning the Big 12 South title, increasing howls from the
faithful. Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione has no intention of firing
Stoops, but Stoops remembers the advice former boss Steve Spurrier gave him:
Don’t stay somewhere where they complain about 10-win seasons. After Florida
fires Ron Zook in ’04, Stoops reaches out to pal (and Gators athletic director)
Jeremy Foley. Stoops promises to run the Air Raid offense that has swept the
state, and Foley is thrilled to hire the guy who turned him down before he
hired Zook.
This leaves Oklahoma without a coach. Castiglione’s list is
obvious, though: It begins and ends with Utah coach Urban Meyer. Castiglione
just has to beat out Notre Dame—which just fired Tyrone Willingham—for the
hottest coach in America. In the real world Meyer chose Florida because he felt
he could win faster and more consistently there than at Notre Dame. But in our
fantasy, Meyer's offense is perfect for the new Big 12. Texas high school
programs, which had been trending toward pass-happy spreads before Rodriguez
arrived at Texas Tech, had incorporated many of the same principles of the
Rodriguez offense that Meyer had borrowed when creating his own spread offense.
Meyer has a virtual buffet of backs and receivers suited to run his scheme. Of
course, he also has inherited Adrian Peterson.
Meyer knows he needs two things to get Oklahoma over the
hump. Young must leave Texas, and the Sooners must grab the correct
quarterback. But in doing research on the Florida opening, Meyer has discovered
a brawny quarterback near Jacksonville. Tim Tebow isn't a great fit for the Air
Raid offense, but he's ideal for the new Big 12. Meyer convinces Tebow to leave
his home state, and Tebow enrolls at Oklahoma in January 2006. Later that year,
Tebow and Peterson line up in the same backfield. A national title is all but
assured.
A decade later, Leach has taken the Key West High Conchs to
the playoffs 12 times in 20 seasons and won two state titles. He has mastered
lobster mini-season, giving his team time off from camp every July so each
player—and the head coach—can bag 12 spiny critters in a two-day span. As the
pirate looks toward 60, he's content. He never made enough money to buy Miami,
as a certain crooner would say, but if he wants oysters and beer for dinner
every day, he can have them. Up on the mainland, a debate rages as to whether
Florida's college teams need to adjust the Air Raid to create more offensive
diversity in the state.
Leach? He feels fine.
……….
Reno Gazette Journal
Nevada football at Washington State: Position preview and
prediction
Chris Murray, Reno Gazette-Journal Published 8:11 a.m. PT
Sept. 21, 2017 | Updated 12:00 p.m. PT Sept. 21, 2017
The Wolf Pack is a 27-point underdog at No. 18-ranked Washington
State on Saturday.
Reno Gazette-Journal sports columnist Chris Murray breaks
down Nevada’s game against Washington State with a position-by-position
analysis.
Nevada (0-3) at No. 18 Washington State (3-0)
When: Saturday, 3 p.m.
Where: Martin Stadium (capacity 32,952)
Weather: High of 59; low of 40
TV/Radio: Pac-12 Networks/94.5 FM
Online: None
Payout: Nevada gets $300,000 to play game
Betting line: Washington State by 28 points
All-time series: Washington State leads, 2-1
Position-by-position
Quarterback: Washington State is starting a quarterback
(Luke Falk) with 11,788 passing yards and 98 touchdowns thrown in his career.
Nevada is starting a true freshman quarterback (Kaymen Cureton) who will be
playing his first road game in college. Pretty decisive edge on this one. Edge:
Wazzu
Running backs: I’ll go Wazzu even though the Cougars barely
use their running backs in the traditional sense, but Jamal Morrow and James
Williams averaged more than 6 yards per carry in 2016. Nevada will likely be
without Jaxson Kincaide (concussion), pushing Kelton Moore into a bigger role.
Edge: Wazzu
Wide receivers/tight end: Wazzu lost some good receivers
from 2016 but remains strong at this position (and uses its running backs a lot
in the pass game). Tavares Martin Jr. is the top returner and biggest threat.
For Nevada, McLane Mannix and Wyatt Demps have been good, but that’s it. Edge:
Wazzu
Offensive line: This is a veteran (and gigantic) group led
by three seniors, including unanimous All-American LG Cody O’Connell (6-9,
368). This is a solid, but inconsistent, line. Nevada’s line is coming off a
poor game after two good ones to start the season. I expect a bounce-back
effort. Edge: Wazzu
Defensive line: Washington State’s Hercules Mata’afa is the
Cougars’ best player alongside Falk. He has 5.5 TFL and two sacks through three
games. The Pack will need an inspired pass-rush effort from its front, which
has just one sack this year. Nevada must use its speed vs. Wazzu’s huge size.
Edge: Wazzu
Linebackers: The Cougars lost four-year starting MLB Peyton
Pelluer to a broken foot in their last game. That’s a big blow. Isaac Dotson,
who once committed to Nevada as a QB, is a quality outside backer. Austin
Paulhus (29 tackles, 5.5 TFL, 1.5 sacks) has been Nevada’s best defensive
player. Edge: Wazzu
Secondary: The Wolf Pack secondary needs to step up after a
poor start to the season. The talent is there to be a good group, but Nevada is
allowing 284.3 passing yards a game. Washington State’s secondary has loads of
experience with 82 career starts among the starting four DBs. Edge: Wazzu
Special teams: Wazzu hasn’t gotten much out of its return
game, but it’s been really good in coverage and has averaged 44.2 yards per
punt. K Erik Powell is only 35-of-51 (68.6 percent) on field goals in his
career. After a bad game against Toledo, Nevada’s special teams rebounded last
week. Edge: Nevada
Coaching: Jay Norvell could really use a win here. Wolf Pack
fans are (rightfully) steaming after Nevada’s loss last week to Idaho State.
It’s a tall task, but his team is in dire need of a victory. After resurrecting
Texas Tech, Mike Leach has done the same at Washington State. He’s 116-77 in
his career. Edge: Wazzu
Prediction
Washington State 49, Nevada 20: The Wolf Pack is a decisive
underdog in this game, but has three things playing in its favor: (1) It has
practiced against the Air Raid every day for the last two months, so it should
be used to Washington State’s offensive scheme, which is potent. (2) Leach’s
Wazzu teams have had major slipups against foes it should have crushed, losing
to FCS teams in 2015 and 2016 and to Nevada in 2014. (3) The Cougars host USC in
a huge Pac-12 matchup next week, so they could be looking ahead to that game
considering Nevada is coming off a loss to Idaho State and doesn’t appear (on
paper) to pose much of a threat. Still, the Wolf Pack will need an off game
from Washington State to strike for an upset here. I don’t see how this game
ends up all that close after what we saw last week. Nevada’s pass defense has
been susceptible and Washington State’s pass offense is awesome. The Cougars’
defense also is much better than it typically is and should be salivating at
the notion of playing a true freshman quarterback in his first road game.
Expect a lot of blitzes from Washington State’s fast defense. The Wolf Pack
will have to be nearly perfect in this game, and while I expect a better effort
than we saw last week, it won’t be enough. Season record: 2-1. Against the
spread: 2-1
