The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football Read Online Free

football team. Smoking dope—or any other drugs—is just selfish. It indicates that your partying is more important than your team. So any player—no matter how talented—is cut if he violates those rules.”
    From the outside looking in, playing for Leach sounds like a grind. He was a tough taskmaster who demanded excellence. “He cussed me out plenty of times, and I respected him for that,” Crabtree said. “Some guys are soft and can’t deal with it. But I realized he just wanted to teach me. He has a great mind, and he helped me understand the game.”
    Leach had his own way of making football fun, too.
    “College football is like a job in many respects,” said Harrell. “It’s full-time. It’s demanding. But Coach Leach made it feel more like a boy’s game.”
    One way Leach accomplished this was with his dry sense of humor and a vocabulary that would make a sailor blush. “There is foul language everywhere, especially in football,” Harrell said. “But Leach is more colorful than anyone. That was another reason the guys loved being around him. Sometimes he’d put words together I’d never even heard. But his language never offended us. We all laughed. That’s just Coach.”
    Leach’s reputation for using four-letter words was so notorious that it even reached the attention of Harrell’s mother. “Graham, do you talk like that?” she asked her son at one point. He laughed. “Mom,” he replied. “No one really talks like that but Coach.”
    Harrell’s parents had raised him not to swear. And he rarely did. His backup Taylor Potts was even more conservative. A practicing Christian, Potts had a reputation for never using four-letter words. So Potts and Harrell got a kick out of the things Leach would say in quarterbacks’ meetings. Eventually, Harrell decided to have some fun with Leach’s colorful quips. It was January 2008, and daily planners had just arrived from the school. A stack was on Leach’s desk. They were designed to help student-athletes budget their time. But Harrell had another use in mind. He handed one to Potts and told him to start writing down all of Leach’s most colorful quotations.
    It was a tall order for a kid who never used the f-word. Potts ended up recording pages of quotations littered with “f***.” He never spelled out the word. One day the quotation book got left behind, and an assistant coach found it. He took it to Leach, informing him that one of the quarterbacks had been writing down everything he said. When Leach saw that the f-word wasn’t spelled out, he knew it had to be Potts.
    The following day when the four quarterbacks came in for their meetingwith Leach, he had the book in his hand. “I noticed you all are keeping a little quote book on me,” he said.
    The other quarterbacks glanced at Potts and Harrell.
    “The only thing that really bothers me,” Leach said, “is it seems that Taylor Potts doesn’t know how to spell the word ‘fuck.’ ”
    Harrell covered his mouth. Potts turned red.
    “Now grab a marker and get up on the board,” Leach said.
    Potts stepped to the whiteboard.
    “Okay, now write the letters I tell you,” Leach said. “
F-U-C-K
. Now that says ‘fuck.’ So if you ever want to know how to spell it, just turn around and it will be right there on the board.”
    The quarterbacks erupted.

    By the 2008 season, Leach had become a cult hero in Lubbock. His quarterbacks had won six national passing titles in eight years, and he had the most prolific offense in the nation. Harrell and Crabtree were the best quarterback-receiver tandem in college football. And only two teams in the Big 12 had a better cumulative record since Leach joined the conference. Needless to say, every home game at Tech’s stadium was sold out.
    Word of Leach’s success went well beyond Lubbock. The author of
Moneyball
, Michael Lewis, had profiled him in the
New York Times Magazine
. And national sportswriters had dubbed him The Mad Scientist of