Among fans, he’s probably the most popular coaching prospect in the country.  But when it comes to administrators, boards and presidents who actually hire football coaches… not so much.

Mike Leach — whose name has been kicked around as a possible replacement for Houston Nutt by everyone including Houston Nutt — sounded a bit disappointed this afternoon when Oxford radio host Erik Ryan Solberg asked him on WUMS-FM if he’d been contacted by Ole Miss officials:


“I wouldn’t tell ya if I had… but I haven’t.”


A hint of frustration could be detected as he uttered those last three words.

Leach once again reiterated that “Ole Miss is a job that I think anyone would have an interest in” and that “all SEC jobs are good and they’re all exciting.”

Looking at Leach’s success at Texas Tech — 10 bowls in 10 years, good graduation rates, etc — there are only two possible reasons the man with the explosive offense hasn’t been snapped up by a program hungry for success:


1.  His mercurial nature

2.  His lawsuit against the most powerful entity in sports, ESPN


Perhaps Archie Manning and crew will pick up a phone and chat with Leach at some point in the coming weeks.  But since he’s already out of work and free to talk, if someone was going to contact him from Oxford, they’d have likely done so by now.

Houston Nutt seems to want what’s best for Ole Miss despite his dismissal.  And he seems to want to help an old acquaintance to get back in the business.

Mike Leach seems to want a crack at the Rebel job.  And it seems likely that he and Nutt have spoken about him campaigning for it.

Here’s why…

A few weeks ago while listening to Leach’s daily Sirius radio talkshow, I heard someone call in and ask the ex-Texas Tech coach about the Ole Miss job and whether he would be interested.  He sidestepped the question saying that Nutt was a friend of his.

Yesterday it was his friend who went on the radio and pitched Leach for the job.  Nutt appearing on Tim Brando’s radio show said:


“You’ve got to bring maybe a little something different offensively.  You’re not always going to have the best 11 on the field when you go against Alabama and LSU.  You need something a little bit creative.  I always think about what Mike Leach did at Texas Tech.  He didn’t hae the best players compared to OU, Nebraska and those guys.  But in playing him in the Cotton Bowl and studying him, he did something a little bit different.  Probably along those lines is what maybe Ole Miss will be.”


So would Leach be interested?  From this quote in The Memphis Commercial-Appeal it sure sounds like it:


“I haven’t heard from anybody, but I’m not too hard to find.  It’s a great job.  I’m sure the administration has a certain individual it is looking for, and I’m sure they’ll find the right guy…

There’s a lot of great athletes in the state of Mississippi and you need to get them to stay in-state.  I know the atmosphere is incredible (at Ole Miss).  It’s a great place with great people.”


It’s not the first time the 50-year-old Leach has talked up a coaching vacancy.  Arizona’s job has been open for a few weeks already.  While in Tuscon promoting his book, “Swing Your Sword,” last Wednesday.  At the time he said of the Wildcats’ position:


“I think it’s a great job.  Anybody would be interested in this job.  The thing is, they have an idea of what they’re looking for.  They have an idea of what direction they’re going.  If I somehow fit in there, then maybe there will be some dialogue.  And if I don’t, I’m sure they will select a good individual for the position.  It’s an exciting position.”


Sound familiar?

In reality, Leach would probably be a better fit at Arizona than at Ole Miss.  Football isn’t as serious in Tuscon as it is in the Deep South.  There would be less media scrutiny in the Pac-12 than the SEC.

But it doesn’t appear that Arizona AD Greg Byrne — formerly of Mississippi State — is interested in Leach.  If he were, he would’ve called him already.

Which leaves us to wonder what Archie Manning’s search committee — expected to be put together by Friday — will think of the often odd Leach.

The ex-Tech coach believes his lawsuit against ESPN has hurt his chances of getting back on a sideline.  “I think it’s had a chilling effect, there’s no question.  In 2008, I was National Coach of the Year,” he told The Lexington Herald-Leader.

“I want to get back to coaching.  These should be my best coaching years and I want to get back.”

Ole Miss should want the best on-field coach for the job and that appears to be Leach.  But in terms of the off-field duties of that job, the UM administration might not want to take a risk on a loose cannon that’s currently at war with one of the SEC’s (and Ole Miss’) most-important business partners.

Defensive back Daniel Gray from Boyd Anderson High School in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., has committed to Tennessee.

Gray, who last week decommitted from Kansas, also had offers from Ole Miss, Nebraska and Texas Tech.

Gray told Volquest.com he started to hear from UT in recent months.

“I knew they would come hard after me some day,” Gray said. “Eric Berry was my favorite defensive back there.”

Gray is the 19th prospect to commit to UT for the class of 2012.

If there’s a fan favorite when it comes to Ole Miss’ coaching candidates, that man is most surely Mike Leach.

The former Texas Tech head coach — who has also had offensive success as an assistant at Kentucky — would bring instant credibility to Oxford.  His offense would excite recruits.  His fascination with pirates would give students something better than a black bear to dress up as on gameday.

But would he be a good fit at a school like Mississippi?  Houston Nutt seems to think so.  Speaking on Tim Brando’s radio show today, Nutt said that Ole Miss needs hire a coach who’ll do something different on offense. He then threw props to Leach.

But there’s a downside to making a run at Leach, too.  First, the coach’s ugly departure at Texas Tech will be mentioned again and again.  Would Chancellor Dan Jones want to fool with that?

Second, Leach’s lawsuit against ESPN for it’s coverage/involvement in his ouster — he also claims the network nixed his chances of landing the Maryland job last year — would make for some interesting times.  The SEC and ESPN are business partners.  How would ESPN cover Leach?  How would Leach handle media requests from ESPN?

Finally, would UM’s chancellor want a known loose cannon heading up his football program?  Most bosses like to make safe hires.  Leach ran a clean program and graduated playes (and won games) at Texas Tech, but his off-the-wall persona certainly doesn’t jive with the words “safe hire.”

Should Ole Miss kick the tires on Leach?  In our view… absolutely.  He’d be the first call we’d make.

But we’d want to get to know the guy before we handed him the keys to Vaught-Hemingway Stadium.

When it comes to the Southeastern Conference, football is king.  Oh, sure, when the league is looking at potential expansion partners basketball and Olympic sports matter on some (much smaller) level.  But football is where the money is.  And money — specifically the money from football-related network television packages — is driving expansion.

This Category:  Football Stadium Size

Why:  The easiest way to judge a school’s commitment to football is by judging how big and how nice its stadium is.  Since “nice” is a relative term, we’ll look at size only.

The easiest way to judge a fanbase’s passion for football — and it better be high if a school wants to be a cultural fit with the SEC — is to see how many seats a school has built for its backers.  Again, size matters.

Now, do we believe a school will rise or fall on an SEC wish list because of stadium size?  No.  League presidents won’t be passing around comparisons of seating charts the next time they get together for a chat.

However, league administrators have often spoken of finding a cultural fit for their league.  ”Cultural fit” is a rather amorphous topic.  It’s immeasurable.  Stadium size is one way for us to measure something that at least relates to the football-crazy nature of a school and its fans.  It allows us to measure the immeasurable.

Below are the stadium capacity numbers for each of the 35 schools we’ve been comparing in this series.  While I’m sure a few folks will claim that their school’s stadium can fit even more with standing-room-only tickets, we’re sticking with the following official numbers.

* Schools marked with an asterisk play in an off-campus facility that is also home to a professional team.  That just doesn’t fit the SEC profile.

* Those schools with capacities over 80,000 — Penn State, Texas, A&M, FSU, Oklahoma, Notre Dame and Clemson — they are SEC-caliber in terms of fan passion.

* Are you surprised t0 find that Missouri has a bigger football stadium than Virginia Tech?

* Schools with stadiums seating less than 50,000 had better have some serious basketball clout, because serious football schools have larger facilities.

For the sake of comparison, the numbers for current SEC stadiums are as follows:

* All told, the 12 SEC stadiums feature a combined seating capacity of 944,871.

* The average stadium size in the SEC is 78,739.  Take out Vanderbilt and the average jumps to 82,280.

* Kentucky may be thought of as a basketball school, but the Wildcats’ Commonwealth Stadium is bigger than the facilities at Virginia Tech, North Carolina, West Virginia, Texas Tech and Oklahoma State.

In Part 8 of our series on SEC expansion, we’ll look at athletic success.

UPDATE — Clemson’s 2011 media guide lists its official stadium capacity as 81,500 after a recent expansion project.  The chart above has been updated.

Everyone knows and admits that television dollars are driving the current college football expansion push.  As we noted a couple of weeks ago, conference realignment isn’t evil, it’s evolution.  And we seem to finally be arriving at the final stage of a move that began way back in 1984.

Below are the top 50 television markets in the US as ranked by Nielsen for 2010-11.  Beside each city we’ve listed the conference or conferences that will attempt to claim that market.

For the sake of argument, we’ll assume that Texas A&M joins the SEC… Syracuse, Pittsburgh and UConn join the ACC… and Texas, Texas Tech, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State join the Pac-12:

Again, we’re making some assumptions here:

A&M, Texas, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Pittsburgh, Syracuse and UConn have been assigned landing spots.

Missouri, for example, has not and that’s why Kansas City and St. Louis appear to be “unclaimed” on our list.

We’ve also given some “benefit of the doubt” to a few leagues.  For example, Austin is clearly a Texas-first market, but A&M’s huge alumni base certainly has some tentacles in the state capital.  So we’ll give the SEC a piece of the Austin market as we believe the SEC will certainly try to make that pitch to network executives.

Here’s how things break down with regard to whole TV markets owned versus TV markets split between conferences:

We know that Market X could go this way or that way depending on your point of view, but we’re trying to provide a big picture look here.  So shift a market one way or the other if you like.  The bottom line is this: When it comes to television markets, the SEC is an underdog.  Only four Top 50 markets appear to be SEC-only and a couple of those — Memphis, Louisville — aren’t strongly SEC.

Make no mistake, if the SEC can convince Missouri to come onboard, it would be a very smart business decision.  West Virginia would at least allow the SEC to stake a partial claim into the Pittsburgh market as well.

But if the future will be driven by television revenue, the SEC needs to expand outward.  It needed to raid the ACC and expand into Virginia or North Carolina.  It didn’t.  (At least it hasn’t yet.)  So now the SEC is forced to play catch-up with those schools left behind by others.

Yesterday it was reported that Oklahoma had waived its right to sue Texas A&M and the SEC — as requested by the SEC.  Today, ESPN.com’s Andy Katz and Joe Schad report that Texas has also said that it has waived its right to sue.

In addition, Texas Tech has apparently waived its right, too.  A Red Raider spokesperson said: “Texas Tech is not involved in any legal action against Texas A&M, the SEC or any other parties.  Texas Tech has no intentions whatsoever of being involved in any future lawsuits against Texas A&M, the SEC or SEC commissioner Mike Slive.”

In other words, most of the schools coveted by other leagues — namely the Pac-12 — aren’t in on the whole threatened lawsuit thing because they don’t want to find themselves staring down the barrel of a comparable lawsuit down the road.

Oklahoma State is the only school rumored to be a possible Pac-12 addition that hasn’t waived its right to litigate.  Mega-booster T. Boone Pickens has stated that he believes the Big 12 will be dead in five years, but he’s also said that he prefer it stay alive.  At OSU, Pickens has a large influence on what goes on… and his desire to save the Big 12 might explain why OSU isn’t waiving its rights a la OU, UT and TTU.

Baylor, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State and Missouri are the remaining schools that have not waived their rights.  Mizzou’s case is the most interesting.

Chancellor Brady Deaton has to look out for UM’s best interests, obviously.  Earlier this week he pretty much admitted that everyone in the Big 12 — including Missouri — has been talking to other schools and other conferences about possible realignment.

At the same time, Deaton is the chairman of the Big 12 board of directors.  So while looking out for Mizzou’s long-term security, he must also appear to be pro-Big 12.  That would be your Grade A conflict of interest, folks.

But by not waiving his schools right to sue the SEC, Deaton may be hurting his school’s chances of landing in that very league.  As we pointed out in our lengthy “Expounding on Expansion” series last summer, Missouri is a better fit with the SEC than most think.  It’s home state borders three current SEC states.  It brings in two major television markets.  It has a sizable population, good sports, good academics and it expands the SEC’s footprint.  Win, win, win, win, win and win.

But there are some (many, in fact) connected to the University of Missouri who believe the Tigers still dream of someday landing in the more Midwestern, more academically-respected Big Ten.

While no one knows what conversations are being had between Mizzou and SEC representatives behind closed doors — and we mean no one — if Deaton wants to save the Big 12, avoid the SEC and wait for a Big Ten bid down the road… refusing to waive his school’s right to sue the SEC is certainly a good way of going about it.

Expansion is good for web traffic.  There’s zero question about that.

But expansion coverage also requires constant attention.  Not unlike a chihuahua.  And I don’t like chihuahuas.

So many thanks to the folks at Baylor for waiting til the last minute to toss a new glitch into everyone’s plans — including thousands of frustrated fans who are Suh-Ick of this story.  Cheers to the Bears.  If only I could go back in time to last Friday night and un-pull for BU’s upset of TCU.

Here’s a wrap of what was being said early — and we mean early — Thursday morning:


1.  Mississippi State president Mark Keenum explained in detail yesterday how the SEC’s powers-that-be learned of Baylor’s reversal of field on Tuesday night.

2.  In this must-read breakdown of a split Big 12, Texas A&M president R. Bowen Loftin loosened his bow tie and let Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe have it for his last-minute backtrack:


“We took this letter (of September 2nd) very seriously.  We asked for such a statement.  They gave it to us freely.  It says here a unanimous vote was taken and yet when we look at Beebe’s letter (from Tuesday) night it says: ‘No we didn’t really mean that,’ and I find that to be rather difficult to digest. …

We are being held hostage right now.  Essentially, we’re being told that you must stay here against your will and we think that really flies in the face of what makes us Americans, for example, and makes us free people.”


(An aside… dollars-to-doughnuts that if someone from the University of Texas had made that statement they would have substituted the word “Texans” for “Americans.”  Guaranteed.)


3.  Loftin also took aim at Baylor:


“Clearly for quite some time, one school has been specifically the one trying to both bring pressure on us politically for a while and now raising the threat of legal action.  In fact even calling members of the board of the SEC directly and the commissioner of the SEC directly and speaking to them and leaving voicemails for them.”


4.  Beebe put out a statement yesterday confirming that his league as a whole won’t take legal action against the SEC or Texas A&M, but he won’t guarantee what individual schools might do:


“If the departure of Texas A&M results in significant changes in the Big 12 membership, several institutions may be severely affected after counting on revenue streams from contracts that were approved unanimously by our members, including Texas A&M.  In some cases, members reasonably relied on such approval to embark on obligations that will cost millions of dollars.”


(That sounds pretty legit.  Except for the fact Houston, Rice, SMU and TCU could have made the same claim when Baylor, Texas, Texas A&M and Texas Tech left them in the hot Texas dust back in 1996.)


5.  Some claim Baylor and their Beggin’ Brethren are hoping to force Oklahoma to “remain in the Big 12 and allow the conference to continue its quest to expand and survive with its strongest members.”

6.  ESPN’s Andy Katz writes that until Oklahoma agrees to stay in the Big 12, eight of the league’s nine school will not waive their right to pursue litigation against A&M and the SEC. 

7.  In case you didn’t know, BU president Kenneth Starr has always been a lightning rod.

8.  But Baylor’s got a fan in this writer from FoxSportsSouthwest.com who says — unbelievably — that Baylor “has positioned itself as that guy standing in front of the tank at Tiananmen Square.”  Uh, yeah.  That’s a fair comparison. 

(Anyone need further proof that the anti-expansion crowd can’t make their argument without wildly exaggerating?)

9.  Gary Parish of CBSSports.com says Baylor is both desperate and right at the same time.

10.  This SI.com writer says Baylor is simply delaying the inevitable in the hopes of catching a realignment ride.  (Agreed.  We said the same yesterday.)

11.  Speaking of Washington insiders like Starr, A&M alum and former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said, “A man’s got to know his limitations,” when asked about the Aggies move to the SEC.  (“Magnum Force,” sweet.)

12.  Written when it looked like Baylor would back down from its lawsuit threats, Matt Hayes’ piece from The Sporting News says mass hysteria will befall college football when A&M finally moves to the SEC.  (Dogs and cats living together…)

13.  The Oklahoman reports that Sooner officials have denied a report that six (now eight, according to ESPN) Big 12 schools are trying to force OU to stay:


“I haven’t heard anything about this ‘group of six.’”


14.  Missouri chancellor Brady Deaton — who also happens to be the chairman of the Big 12 board of directors – pretty much admitted that Mizzou’s been talking to people in other conferences.  Yep, good league you got there, Mr. Chairman.


“There’s so much discussion around the nation right now that I think there’s probably not an institution in the Big 12 that has not been in discussion with other institutions.”


15.  Orangebloods.com reports that Texas, Texas Tech, Oklahoma State and Missouri “have apparently retained their right to sue but have vowed they won’t take actions against the SEC.”

16.  Speaking of Texas, this writer says the Longhorn Network is to blame for the current mess.

17.  And speaking of Texas Tech, that school’s president said yesterday that “things are going to be in a holding pattern” for Big 12 schools.

18.  This writer for The Kansas City Star says he would dismiss any court case brought by Baylor and its Beggin’ Brethren:


“You boys didn’t lose any sleep when you left those other folk on the outside looking in.  So don’t try to convince me this is anything but a blatant attempt at self-preservation now that you coots are about to be on the outside looking in.  Case dismissed.  Texas A&M, do as you please.”


19.  Pat Forde of ESPN.com has this to say about Baylor slowing down the expansion train:


“Nobody cares about Baylor football, which is why Baylor must do everything it can to retain the big-six conference membership it got mostly through political pressure and traditional alliances.  When the Southwest Conference collapsed in the mid-1990s, Baylor tenaciously clung to Texas, A&M and Tech for inclusion into the Big 12 while Houston, TCU, SMU and Rice were cut loose and marginalized as football entities.  Since then the Bears have done nothing on the football field to merit keeping their place among the power elite — which is why any radical redrawing of the map could easily leave Baylor without a seat at the big-boy table.”


20.  Dennis Dodd of CBSSports.com says no one looks good in this latest Big 12 snit.

21.  Stewart Mandel of SI.com says that “no one (with the exception of Texas A&M) actually wants super-conferences.”  Uh, well, technically A&M just wants to be School #13 in the SEC.  And if the Big 12 just replaces the Aggies, all those people who don’t want super-conferences… can avoid super-conferences.  I still don’t get how trading A&M for BYU, for example, would unhinge the Big 12.  Especially when everyone in the Big 12 is telling the world it’s still strong as new rope. 

22.  So what’s up with the Big Ten’s expansion options?

23.  Tony Barnhart of CBSSports.com wonders who’ll be the SEC’s 14th school.

24.  CBS analyst Gary Danielson — very wisely, I might add — states that the SEC’s School #14 should be Florida State because of the school’s name recognition.  (Danielson understands the business of expansion.)

25.  Finally, raise your hand if you’ll sue.


And one last note…

After the events of the last 36 hours, how welcoming do you think Aggie fans will be when Baylor visits College Station on October 15th?

Confession: I don’t like it when politicians get involved in athletics.  Even when its something “bad” like steroids in baseball — gasp! — I expect my elected officials to worry about the economy, not Barry Bonds’ biceps.

Likewise, I don’t like it when athletic parties take their disagreements into our nation’s courtrooms.  One entity trying to force it’s will upon another is not okay in my book.  And our court system is filled with enough nonsensical lawsuits already.

Therefore — even though I believe the SEC is just fine as a 12-school collective — I’d like to see Mike Slive tan the hides of the Baylor Bears at this point.

Still, let’s look at Kenneth Starr’s power play more closely.  Is Baylor’s president trying to hold the Big 12 together with his legal posturing?

No. 

A thinking man would realize that any league already held together by duct tape and chewing gum isn’t going to be strengthened by adding spite to the mixture.  Think the schools in the Big 12 despise and distrust one another now?  Wait until they’re forced to spend more time together because of a Baylor lawsuit.

Litigation is not a long-term solution for the Big 12.  And Baylor isn’t likely to win any lawsuit against the SEC, either.  Too many Big 12 officials have already publicly stated a) that Colorado and Nebraska hurt the league when they left and b) Texas’ huge cash advantage is the root of all Big 12 evil.

But while BU likely couldn’t prove tortious interference against the SEC, Orangebloods.com reports that “multiple sources” as saying Baylor would consider a lawsuit against Slive personally.  Frivolous or not, that kind of threat is likely to give any conference commissioner pause.

But if keeping the Big 12 intact isn’t the angle, what are Starr and his Baptist Bears up to?  Well, clearly they want to make themselves more attractive to other leagues on the expansion front.  With Baylor threatening to muck up the waters, might Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Texas, for example, force the Pac-12 to accept BU rather than Texas Tech?

Probably not.  While some Sooner, Cowboy and Longhorn fans might be cheering Baylor for slowing their schools’ race to the Pacific Time Zone, it’s doubtful that administrators at those schools are pleased with BU’s stunt.  Royalty doesn’t like to be pushed around by peasants.

More likely, Baylor officials think they can attach themselves to Texas A&M and the SEC.  Baylor isn’t attractive enough to draw an invite on its own, so it could be looking to enter the SEC’s warm, calm waters like a remora riding on the belly of A&M’s shark.

If the SEC truly wants to land Texas A&M — and if the league truly doesn’t want to be sued — it should consider adding Baylor, too.  The Bears aren’t a member of the prestigious AAU, but they are a well-ranked school on most lists.  (According to US News & World Report’s rankings, Baylor would tie Alabama — #79 nationally — as the fourth-best school in the SEC if admitted.)  League presidents would go for that.

But from an athletics standpoint, the Bears would fall near the bottom of the conference in terms of tradition.  Also, with Texas A&M’s enormous alumni base, the SEC would already be able to claim the biggest Texas television markets.  So Baylor would likely bring little to the table moneywise.

But let’s play some number games anyway.  If the addition of A&M brought in enough money for the SEC to cover the costs of adding Baylor, then the SEC might be wise to consider such a move. 

Let’s say you want some apples.  You can either have five or none.  But to get five, you have to give someone else two.  It’s not the five apples you’d hoped for, but three apples would still beat none, right?

Ah, but even if the SEC stood to make a profit by adding Texas A&M and Baylor… the odds of Slive and his conference presidents being strong-armed by Starr and his band of whiners from Waco are slim to none.

Just as Baylor can’t hold the Big 12 together via spite, it can’t force its way into a new league using that method either.  Shotgun weddings don’t often last.

Fifteen years ago, Texas politicians forced Texas and A&M to drag Baylor and Texas Tech into the Big 12.  (It just so happened that Texas’ governor was a Baylor grad and the state’s lieutenant governor was a Tech grad at the time.)  How well has that shotgun wedding worked?

This time, no one’s around to save Baylor’ bacon.  As a result, they’re threatening to take the SEC — and perhaps Slive — to court.  How weak.

Texas A&M, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State are looking after their own self-interests.  But they’re leaving Baylor with options to do the same.  Schools have always looked out for their own best interests.  Including Baylor.  But Starr and BU — incapable of taking care of themselves — are now going the lawsuit route, closing off options for everyone else.

So here’s wishing nothing but the worst for the school and its athletic programs.  As if the realignment debate weren’t nasty enough already, now the wackos from Waco are threatening to get the lawyers involved.

Could this story get any worse?

Oh, yeah.  It could.  If the SEC caved and invited Baylor to tag along with A&M.  Thank goodness that’s not going to happen.

Colin Blake is technically committed to a Big 12 school.

But the safety from Brandeis High School in San Antonio clearly had the SEC on his mind when he committed to Texas A&M on Tuesday.

The school officially announced last week that it plans to leave the Big 12 by next summer. That has led many to believe the SEC will invite Texas A&M into the conference, perhaps as early as Wednesday.

And that’s a big reason Blake decided to commit to the Aggies.

“I think it makes them more attractive to me because that’s the best conference in college football so I would love to have a chance to play in the SEC,” Blake told AggieYell.com. “They look real good going into the year this year and I think they are going to do well in the Big 12 this year. I like A&M a lot, so I want them to win the Big 12.”

Blake, who’s considered the 14th-best safety in the nation and 23rd-best prospect in the state of Texas by Rivals.com, chose Texas A&M over schools such as Oklahoma, Missouri, Texas Tech, Arizona and California.

Four of Rivals.com’s top 25 players in the state of Texas have committed to Texas A&M for 2012. How many of the top 25 players in Texas did the Aggies sign in 2011? Zero.