Texas Tech football coach Mike Leach deserves another look, and another chance

At a time that concern over concussions is growing, coaches have a growing awareness of entitlement and hypersensitivity in the teenagers they welcome to campus. Every coach I know has remarked with disappointment on the trend: Too many of today's college athletes expect more while sacrificing less, and regard tough coaching as unfair criticism. They suspect that young athletes are over-congratulated for merely participating in high school, and they fear that kids are losing a sense of what real excellence is, and requires.

Put a prideful, protective parent in the same room with a driven coach who thinks his players have been babied, and throw in the hot-button concussion topic, and you get a recipe for a lawsuit.

Leach is not one who tolerates pampered or pouty players, judging by his public statements over the years. He is a blunt critic, which probably hasn't helped him in this case. Earlier this season he tongue-lashed his team for being too complacent by saying "their fat little girlfriends are telling them what they want to hear, which is how great you are and how easy it's going to be." A couple of years ago he railed about a poor performance by saying: "We got hit in the mouth and acted like someone took our lunch money, and all we wanted to do is have pouty expressions on our face until somebody dobbed our little tears off and made us [expletive] feel better. Then we go out there and try harder once our mommies told us we were okay. Neither one of those things is acceptable."

Leach also has a penchant for creative forms of discipline, which has obviously led to his current trouble. Last spring he was unhappy with split end Edward Britton for not hitting the books. Leach demoted him during spring practice, and, to further make his point, had a desk placed on the 50-yard line.

After practice he ordered Britton to sit at the desk and study, even though Lubbock was experiencing a cold snap. There Britton sat, in an overcoat and hood, reading at a desk in the middle of the football field. "If he does good studying out there, we'll decide if we're going to actually let him practice," Leach said.

Some parents might object to that sort of treatment. Others might thank him.

One thing's for sure: Another school should hire him.