Mike Leach almost coached at Villanova

By 1996, Andy Talley already had won a lot of football games at Villanova, but he’d strung three straight losing seasons together. By Talley’s own admission, ‘Nova’s offense had gone stale. Change was needed. Without some rejuvenation, the Talley era may have soon ended.

Change came, and it came quickly, Talley’s Hall of Fame career soon reaching new heights.

This week, it’s worth going back to ‘96, to the time Talley, looking for a new offensive coordinator with big ideas, hired Dave Clawson, then Lehigh’s offensive coordinator.

There was another finalist, the offensive coordinator at Valdosta State, then tearing up Division II.

Mike Leach.

“It was between those two for the job,” Talley said over the phone this week.

In other words, there was no wrong answer. Leach, who died this week, age 61, went on to prove his pass-happy offensive schemes, eventually known as the Air Raid offense, could work in the Big 12 (Texas Tech), Pac-12 (Washington State), and most recently in the Southeastern Conference (Mississippi State.)

Offensive stats over the years are just eye-popping. It almost didn’t seem to matter who quarterbacked a Leach team. That team would be the most productive offense in the sport. The coach was playing on a different field. (Flip side, talented QBs naturally gravitated toward Leach and his scheme.)

In ‘96, Leach was working for Hal Mumme, another coach way ahead of the passing curve.

“We interviewed on the phone,” Talley said. “It was him literally explaining to me what they did offensively. … I had a lot of tape of him, because he sent me video of their whole season. I was like, ‘Holy mackerel.’ It was so wide open.”

Clawson had a big-time offensive mind of his own, and the decision, Talley said, really came down to recruiting. Clawson knew the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic territory, and was at a school that recruited many of the same players as Villanova. That all gave him the edge.

“Mike was just a pure football coach,” Talley said. “Even though he had a law degree. He was a smart guy. … Mike would have been a fish out of water recruiting at Villanova.”

Villanova fans should not wish for some alternate Air Raid history. If Clawson hadn’t been hired, maybe a young assistant named Stan Drayton never would have joined that year on Clawson’s strong recommendation. Maybe Drayton wouldn’t have been there to say, yes, he would put his job on the line for a recruit who was injured as a high school senior … which is how Brian Westbrook ended up at Villanova.

Meanwhile, Clawson’s offense got ‘Nova right back on track, to 8-4 and the Division I-AA NCAA playoffs in ‘96, then the ‘97 national quarterfinals.

Even post-Clawson, the Talley era continued rising, with the 2009 FCS NCAA national title the crowning achievement.

» READ MORE: Villanova basketball clawed back to .500. A few observations on how the Wildcats got here.

Clawson kept rising, too. He won big as a first-time head coach at Fordham, and got Richmond — and later Bowling Green — on track. As head coach at Wake Forest, Clawson has the Demon Deacons punching way above their weight class in the Atlantic Coast Conference, winning 52 games between 2016-22. (By comparison, Florida State won 45.)

Talley, saddened by this week’s news, said he’d closely followed Leach’s career. Leach had stayed another year at Valdosta before following Mumme to Kentucky. Talley once had dinner with Leach when both were being honored by the Maxwell Club.

“I admired the guy,” Talley said. “He was ahead of his time. He was, you know, an interesting character. He had that pirate background. I went out to Washington State to visit him. When you walk into his office, he had this big pirate, a mannequin, with a sword. He truly lived this lifestyle.”

Given all that, Key West was a natural offseason Leach haunt.

“You should talk to Mark Ferrante — he ran into him down there,” Talley noted.

Ferrante, now Villanova’s head coach, remembers the whole Clawson-or-Leach process, since Ferrante, then as the Wildcats’ offensive line coach, was the only holdover Talley kept on. He also remembers how Clawson and Leach were part of the same group of offensive innovators invited to the one-back passing summer clinics held by then-Washington State head coach Mike Price in the 1990s.

Ferrante joined Clawson at those clinics, with Leach and Mumme there among others. (Ferrante remembers James Franklin being there, since Penn State’s head coach spent the 1998 season as tight ends coach at Washington State.) When Clawson moved on to Fordham, Villanova fell off the list, Ferrante said, because Massachusetts also got there under Mark Whipple, and two staffs from the same league weren’t going to be learning the same stuff. Only about a dozen staffs were there.

That was ancient history. Later on, “right after 2009,” Ferrante said, he and his wife went to Key West on vacation. Walking down the street, Ferrante remembers saying to his wife, “I think that’s Mike Leach.”

Ferrante went over. Leach recognized him right away, Ferrante said, complimenting him on the job being done at Villanova and asking: “How’s Coach Talley doing?”

This must have been right around the time Leach, riding high at Texas Tech, was suspended and eventually left the school after the allegedly inappropriate treatment of a player. That wasn’t the conversation that day, though.

“Let’s take a walk,” Ferrante remembers Leach saying. “Three hours later — he’d basically given us a walking tour of Key West.”

How much football talk? ”Very little,’’ Ferrante said, remembering how Leach walked into one local establishment and everyone knew him, but Leach went in there because he knew there was a cooler of water in the corner. They could refresh from the cooler, continue the walk.

Ferrante stayed in Key West for a number of days but never saw Leach again, besides that one random memorable encounter.

Talley, following Leach’s career from afar, noted how, “if you noticed him on the sideline,” Leach didn’t have a lot written down to consult — “he had a little piece of paper,” Talley said. “He had everything in his head. He was an offensive genius.”

A little asterisk to a career full of twists and turns, one of the turns almost leading to Lancaster Avenue.