The Daily Oklahoman from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma • 44

THE SUNDAY OKLAHOMAN SUNDAY PROFILE 16-B SEPTEMBERS. 1999 Low-key approach, high-octane results "I'm from Cody, Wyoming. In Cody, Wyoming, there's not a lot of suit-wearing." Mike Leach, on the lure of football It's been a long journey from law school to OU methods, techniques, things they taught effectively. Sometimes, Leach even sat in on film-watching with the BYU staff. "They were tremendous," he said.

"Friendly, approachable people." Leach graduated from BYU in 1983, went to Pepperdine and got a law degree in 1986. By then, he and Sharon were married with the first of their four children, Janeen. It was time to make some money. But he still wanted to coach. So he beat the bushes for any job.

Leach liked baseball, but he figured the prospects were better in football. Leach got on as a graduate assistant at Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo, where he made $3,000 and he got $70 a day as a substitute teacher. "We just felt, even though we weren't making a dime, if we would keep moving up, we'd stick with it," Sharon said. The next year, 1988, Leach got a full-time job coaching linebackers at the College of the Desert in Palm Desert, Calif. In the spring of '89, Leach became head coach at Pori, Finland, of the European Football League.

"I planned on going back to law," Leach said. "But you go deeper and deeper. 'Boy, I want to see his senior year. We've got some great recruits, we're going to be better next year. It kind of Leach often returned to BYU to learn more.

Practices, clinics, whatever, he wanted to know all he could about the passing game. One spring day in 1989 on the sidelines at Provo, Leach met a high-school coach from Copperas Cove, Texas, who had just landed a college post. Hal Mumme was looking for a staff. By Berry Tramel StaffWriter NORMAN Mike Leach crawls into the extended cab of a '91 Nissan pickup. A reporter is driving, and Leach can't very well ask the female photographer to climb back there for the ride to the photo shoot, now can he? So the offensive coordinator of the Oklahoma Sooners, on whose shoulders ride much of the rebuilding responsibilities for one of college football's fallen giants, sits with his knees on his chin, like a 14-year-old slow to holler "shotgun." Low key is Leach's way.

Even-tempered. Droopy-dog look. The deputy sheriff in a no-crime town. Talk softly, so when you do say something, people listen. That's the way they grow them in Cody, Wyo.

That's why Leach is in Norman. Because a Texan, Hal Mumme, took a shine to Leach when both were clawing their way into college football coaching. "I liked the way he talked," said Mumme, who long ago hired Leach at Iowa Wesleyan and took him along to Valdosta State and Kentucky. "Never yelled at the kids." Indeed, on an OU staff loaded with coaches whose screams cross county lines, Leach is a mountain of quiet. A guy who keeps his emotions somewhere other than his sleeve.

Leach is such a fortress of unas-sumption, he has to ask if he's smiling. A STAFF PHOTO BY JACONNA AGU1RRE OU offensive coordinator Mike Leach gave up law for football. BIOGRAPHY MIKE LEACH mm The Sunday In the beginning Mumme was the new coach cool character. That's another thing Mumme liked about the guy he entrusted with Kentucky franchise Quarterback Tim Profile at Iowa Wesleyan, a tiny NAIA rmifti PmA Tarix alwavs school that had an O-10 record kept his cool in games. mike LEACH 1988- Leacn figured the job That's why Mumme laughs could only go up.

a little bitterly when asked about the hole "That program was so bad, nobody would work for me but Mike," Mumme said. PERSON I'D MOST LIKE TO MEET: "I want to meet everybody; I guess Bear Bryant." MY LAST MEAL: "Crab legs, cranberry juice, key lime pie and that white corn on the cob that you have to eat right after you pick it." FAVORITE MOVIE: The Sting." PET PEEVE: "When things get lost. It's like I have to find it. I'm a basket case. I won't stop till I find it." FAVORITE MONTH: "July.

I'm a summer-water guy." FAVORITE BAND: Jimmy Buffet. IF I WERE 19 AGAIN: "I'd try to do everything the opposite direction and see how it turned out. I'd pack less and take more time." BIRTH DATE PLACE: March 9, 1961 in Su-sanville, Calif. HOMETOWN: Cody, Wyo. FAMILY: Wife Sharon, children Janeen (1 3), Kim (9), Cody (2) and Kiersten (1).

CLAIM TO FAME: Oklahoma offensive coordinator. BEST TIME I EVER HAD: "When I was in college, I coached a 1 3-year-old all-star baseball team. We were underdogs, from the smallest population draw, and we ended up getting second. That was gigantic." FAVORITE OKLAHOMA HANGOUT: Othello's. Or Hollywood Theaters.

MY HERO: Geronimo. MOST MAJOR CREDrT CARDS ACCEPTED OPEN lvf-f 8-6 SAT a-S SOUTH 66 634-4533 NORTH-225 W. Memorial 751-8333 NW-4117 N.W. 63rd 848-86S6 JACKIE COOPER TIKE ELECTRONICS Leach, Mumme said, had a lot of appeal. He wasn't a big-time college player who had gone straight to a G.A.

job on a Division I-A staff. Leach had a working man's background. He had earned anything he had. "Mike had done some things," Mumme said. "It's hard to go to law school.

It's hard to give all that up. You knew he was really committed. "The places Mike and I coached, you had to really have a passion for the game, because we weren't making any money." Leach's BYU background also attracted Mumme. Leach had wanted to get back to offensive coaching. He wanted to be part of a passing system.

He had been around passing attacks at BYU and Cal Poly, and he sensed the country was moving in that direction. Rule changes, liberalized holding, etc. Mumme felt the same way. In three years at Iowa Wesleyan, the Mumme-Leach offense led the NAIA in passing yards once and placed second twice. Then they moved on to Valdosta State, where in five years the Blazers went 40-17-1.

Leach, a guy who grew up in the Rocky Mountains and went to law school on Ma-libu Beach, thought he was in Heaven in southern Georgia. "He liked Valdosta so much," said Sharon Leach. "He didn't mind staying there. None of those (other) instances lasted that long. It's not like we were in one of those places long enough to say, 'are we ever going to get out of After the 1996 season, Mumme got an offer from Kentucky, and waiting was Couch.

The prototype quarterback met the pass-happy coach, and the UK offense drew national attention. Last season, Kentucky gained 801 yards against Louisville, it led the Southeastern Conference in scoring and total offense, and Leach was named offensive coordinator of the year by American Football Quarterly. "Mike is one of those guys who's got a good knowledge of the game," said BYU's Edwards, who now knows Leach's name. "Obviously I'm impressed with his work with Hal Mumme. Those guys were working on a shoestring at Iowa Wesleyan.

It's been a nice opportunity for Mike." An even better opportunity awaited. No matter how many touchdown passes Tim Couch threw, Kentucky was and forever will be a basketball school. Not so at Oklahoma. It wasn't easy to leave Mumme. Thoy had been together 10 years, at three schools.

But Stoops made a double-barrel offer: great tradition and control of the offense. "I wouldn't have recommended Mike go except to a place like that," Mumme said. "Going to OU, where Stoops is defense, he'll be in charge" of the offense. Leach and Stoops had met at a clinic in Fort Worth, Texas. They had dinnor together.

They competed against each other twice as coordinators. That was tho extent of their relationship. But Stoops called last December. Ho told Leach ho liked Kentucky's offense, that it gave Florida trouble, that it was the type of offense he wanted at OU. Stoops offered the job.

"I said, 'Do you want mo to fly out Leach said. 'Meet tho AD? Check out the He said, 'Do that if you want to, but otherwise, wo'U announco it and you show up Jan. I came out there site unseen." Funny. Tho guy who doesn't call the shots seems to keep making good decisions. Leacn resume, xce iitue matter uiau Oklahoma has an offensive coordinator who has never called a play.

Mumme was the play-caller at Iowa Wesleyan and Valdosta State and Kentucky. Leach made suggestions; Mumme made decisions. "He's the smartest coach I know," Mumme said. "He'd be in the top five." Play-calling, Mumme said, is "probably the least important thing you do during the week. The guy that calls plays in our offense is the quarterback, if you coach him up good." The Mumme-Leach-Couch team worked.

Kentucky football had its most fun since the Bear Bryant days, Couch became the first pick of the NFL draft and Leach was handed the Sooner offense. "No question, their offensive system was very difficult to stop," said OU coach Bob Stoops, whose Florida defense gave up 35 and 28 points the last two years to Kentucky. "Their system had been proven. "Hal loved him. Said without question they were a team, how they prepared, how they scripted plays, how they practiced." And so, 11 days before his first Sooner game, Leach rode in the back of the Nissan to the southern tip of campus, where sits the OU Law Center, a building he had never seen.

But he knew his way around. The law man Leach's old law-school buddies would call on occasion. They would talk about their condos and BMWs. Leach would watch his wife work full-time and raise their kids, and he would wonder if he made the right move. Wonder if the courtroom was where he belonged.

Wonder if all those stops in San Luis Obispo, and Pori, Finland, and Mount Pleasant, Iowa, were getting him anywhere. But funny tiling. Those buddies with the BMWs would always ask if Leach wanted to trade jobs. His answer always was no. "I guess there's a tradeoff somewhere," Leach said.

"I think I liked what I did every lay a little better." Don't get him wrong; the courtroom appealed to Leach. That's why he went to Pepperdine Law School. "He liked the idea of ioing battle, looking out for the little guy," said his wife, Sharon. But the other part of lawyering, tho biggest part, didn't do much for Leach. All the paperwork, sitting in some library writing briefs.

"Plus," Leach said, "the idea of wearing a every day. I'm from Cody, Wyoming. In 3ody, Wyoming, there's not a lot of suit-wearing. Cody sits on Wyoming's northern rim, between the Shoshone and Bighorn national forests. A long way from anywhere.

The nearest major-college power, Brig-lam Young, recruited Leach, but his college fizzled. He arrived with a high-school inkle injury and never so much as suited jp for BYU. He tried rugby. He coached ittlo-league baseball. His football playing lays were over.

BYU legend Lavell Edwards, still coaching the Cougars, admits ho recalls virtually lothing about Leach from those days. "The nly thing I remember is the name." But Leach remembers Edwards. Leach vas set on law school, but tho coaching bug lad bitten during thoso little-league sum-ners. At BYU, Leach studied the football itaff; ho kept little notebooks of coaching I 4 Ai Balnorail VniKaai ftlBiMiid CksWf I JUL 'fe 1.