Captain Mike Leach Will Sail Again, Me Hearties

Into this long dark tea-time of the college football soul shines a beacon of belligerent hope -- Mike Leach says he’s not done coaching football:

↵Instead of preparing for spring practice at Texas Tech, the former Red Raiders coach is enjoying fishing, exploring and meeting the people in Key West, Fla., where he and his family moved after he was fired in late December.
↵Now, when they say “exploring,” rest assured they mean actual exploring, as in “he’s off somewhere cutting a broad swath through the tropical undergrowth with a machete,” because this is Leach we’re talking about.

↵And he longs to get back into coaching.↵This is relieving for a couple of reasons; namely that Leach isn’t a college football lifer (he set out to be a lawyer and got his J.D. from Pepperdine before signing on as an assistant with Cal Poly), and that he’s a guy with many and varied interests that have nothing to do with sports. Those factors make it easy to imagine him deciding the physical and familial tolls of the game aren’t worth it, taking his money and living out the rest of his days Jimmy Buffett-style, maybe opening a crab shack on the beach. Happily, that choice doesn’t yet appear to be in the cards. Leach is an icon, and college football is more interesting with him in it.