Mike Leach Calls Washington State a "JC Softball Team," Blames Struggles on Participation Trophies

Washington State has opened the season with losses to Eastern Washington and Boise State. Cougars head coach and certified interesting human Mike Leach is not happy with how things are going and sounded off during a Monday press conference.

Among the things he said:

• “We have the atmosphere of a JC softball game. That’s what we are, a JC softball team. It’s not whether you win or lose — the team that wins is the one that has the most fun — crap like that, all this stuff that’s contaminated America where they give every kid a trophy and they don’t keep score in Little League anymore.”
• “If you want to be nice to them and all this Kumbaya crap, that doesn’t work.”
• “This business of pretending we’re playing hard and we’re not, pretending we’re as hard as our opponent and we’re not … there’s going to be a price to pay.”
• “I’ve got receivers running routes that don’t even resemble anything we teach. We don’t tuck the ball and go straight upfield, we do all these stupid moves. We run out of bounds more than any team in the country. We’re the easiest team in the country to tackle. Defensively, we don’t run our feet on contact — we don’t on offense either. We don’t like to run and hit and this is a game for running and hitting.”

Other than that, Mike, how’s the season going?

Leach is not the first coach to communicate with his players through the media. Most coaches, however, aren’t as pointed with their criticism. Some of his critiques are fair, if exaggerated. But who is to blame if he does, in fact, have a roster of so-called “participation trophy” players? Wouldn’t it be Leach’s job to recruit kids who want to win?

Ironically, Leach sounds like a man who would be much happier if the NCAA took a page from Little League and stopped keeping score. In that reality, he wouldn’t be winless and as cantankerous.