Mike Leach, one of the most innovative and interesting personas to ever walk the sidelines of a football field, is now eligible for the College Football Hall of Fame. The National Football Foundation (NFF) announced that it has revised the minimum career winning percentage for coaching eligibility (from .600 to .595), opening the door for Leach to be inducted beginning with the 2027 class.
Leach’s career winning percentage sits at .598 with a career record of 158-106. Leach won 18 games against AP-ranked teams while his own team was unranked, the most since the AP Top 25 Poll began in 1936.
“The NFF is committed to preserving the integrity and prestige of the NFF College Football Hall of Fame,” NFF resident & CEO Steve Hatchell said in a statement. “This adjustment reflects thoughtful dialogue with leaders across the sport and allows us to better recognize coaches whose contributions to the game extend beyond a narrow statistical threshold.”
Leach is considered one of the greatest coaches to previously not be eligible for induction. A law school graduate, he broke into coaching in 1987 as the offensive line coach at Cal Poly. He earned his first offensive coordinator appointment with Iowa Wesleyan in 1989 where he studied under Hal Mumme, who developed a pass-oriented offense built around short routes and completions out of the backfield.
Together, Mumme and Leach developed what is now known as an Air Raid offense. The two coached together at Valdosta State from 1992-96 and then at Kentucky from 1997-98 before Leach was hired as Oklahoma’s offensive coordinator in 1999. The Sooners led the Big 12 in total offense in Leach’s first year on staff. He parlayed that success into his first job at Texas Tech in 2000.
The Air Raid offense really caught on with the Red Raiders. Leach’s quarterbacks consistently ranked near the top of almost every major passing category. In 2003, B.J. Symons broke the FBS single-season record with 5,833 yards through the air. Graham Harrell set the NCAA records for most passes completed in a season (512) and most passes completed per game in a career (31.2).
Leach’s coaching tree is all over college football. Former players like Harrell and Kliff Kingsbury have since worked as assistants and coaches in college football and the NFL. Kingsbury led the Arizona Cardinals from 2019-2022, and he’s currently the offensive coordinator for the Washington Commanders.
Leach, who led the Red Raiders to a bowl each season of his 10-year tenure, is the winningest coach in Texas Tech history. He had 10 consecutive winning seasons in Lubbock and eight consecutive seasons with at least eight wins from 2002-09. He was controversially fired following alleged inappropriate treatment of receiver Adam James, but Leach spent his remaining years feverishly fighting back on said allegations.
He was hired by Washington State in 2011, and in 2018, he guided the Cougars to their first 11-win season in program history and their first top-10 finish since 2002. Leach won at least nine games in three of his eight years at Washington State. Leach coached at Mississippi State for three seasons but died suddenly in December 2022 of complications from a heart condition ahead of the team’s ReliaQuest Bowl game against Illinois.
