It started like any typical Mike Leach interview. The coach was talking about people sleeping outside and the similarities between country music and rap.
And then the conversation turned to Texas Tech, which means Leach started talking about former Texas Tech chancellor Kent Hance.
“And then Kent Hance gets his feelings hurt because I won’t sign a low-ball contract that he offers,” Leach told the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. “So, eventually we get one that I agree to sign. And from that time on, they’re passing memos between one another, Hance and his henchmen, that they’re planning to fire me.”
Hance was the executive that fired Leach in December 2009, stemming from the incident when former ESPN analyst Craig James mounted a public-relations campaign around the claim Leach locked his son Adam in a shed. (I know you probably already knew that, but I just had to type it all out to remind myself that actually happened.)
In addition to what he says was an unjust firing, Leach says Texas Tech still owes him $2.5 million and brings it up in just about every interview that mentions his former job (including with me in a 2014 interview.)
After the interview was published, Leach took to Twitter to air more grievances against Hance.
For anyone else it would be haltingly weird to retweet a message about how "Tech hasn't been good since" their firing considering the Red Raiders' current coach is a former Leach player. But this is Mike Leach we're talking about. Odd is just the starting point.