Washington State football: Mike Leach’s presser 10/22, more to do
Washington State football head coach Mike Leach held his weekly press conference on Monday. Coming off a huge win at home over Oregon, Leach is preparing for Stanford.
Washington State football coach Mike Leach held his usual Monday morning press conference. Last week’s game with Oregon is over and Stanford is up next. He wasn’t asked many questions about the Cardinal and about the only thing he said was that head coach David Shaw is “a pretty nice guy.”
PAC-12 is deep
A question was asked to the coach on why he thinks the PAC-12 doesn’t get more recognition for being a competitive conference since they are the only conference to have four teams currently ranked in the top 25. His first reply was “well I’ve never really thought about it” but then went on to say that the PAC-12 doesn’t really have a clear-cut favorite as other conferences do.
Leach singled out Alabama, LSU (SEC) and Clemson (ACC) as examples. He did make a great point that the bottom teams in the PAC-12 would crush any of the bottom teams in other power 5 conferences.
A future on the sidelines
More from WSU Cougars Football
- Washington State Football: What you need to know for 2018 Alamo Bowl
- Washington State Football: 6 takeaways from 28-15 Apple Cup loss
- Washington State Football: What you need to know for UW 11/23
- Apple Cup: History leading up to the 2018 edition
- PAC-12 Football Power Rankings week of 11/21 – Emerald City Swagger
Before a late run, by Leach that landed quarterback Gardner Minshew in Pullman, the graduate transfer was headed to Alabama. GMII wanted to learn to coach from Nick Saban. Bama’s loss was Wazzu’s gain, but Leach was asked for his thoughts about Minshew becoming a coach one day.
Leach said he has had some quarterbacks that were not as smart as others but Minshew is a smart one who Leach thinks could go on and coach one day after his college/pro days are over.
That’s great, but…
It was brought up by one of the reporters that the Cougars are bowl eligible after only seven games this season. While he’s happy with the accomplishment, Leach is looking at the bigger picture
He said the team is “playing pretty good” but “we can get better and need to get better.” That’s coach speak for it’s going well, but we can’t be satisfied. Currently, the Cougs are in a position where if they keep winning their regular season games, they have a shot at a PAC-12 Championship and possibly a college football playoff game.
Can we get another room?
If you’ve watched any of Leach’s press conferences this season, you can see that he’s constantly coughing and drinking water. Apparently, it’s the media room that irritates his throat. Leach said “I hate this room, if we were upstairs I wouldn’t cough once,” after a big swig of water.
Next. 6 takeaways from Cougars 34-20 win over Oregon. dark
All in all, the presser was pretty vanilla this week, but the task ahead for Leach and the Cougars is anything but.