LUBBOCK, Texas — Texas Tech coach Mike Leach refused to apologize Monday after complaining that his team’s 52-30 loss to Texas A&M was brought on by his players listening to “their fat little girlfriends” instead of respecting the Aggies.
Leach’s controversial comment came after Saturday’s crushing home loss in which the Red Raiders gave up a season-worst 321 yards rushing.
“As coaches, we failed to make our coaching points more compelling than their fat little girlfriends,” said Leach. “For one thing, their fat little girlfriends are telling them what they want to hear, which is ‘how great you are’ and ‘how easy this is going to be.'”
“As coaches, we have to solve our failure on reaching them and the players have to listen,” he added. “I’m willing to go to fairly amazing lengths to make that happen. I don’t know if I will be successful this week or not, but I’m going to try. There will be some people inconvenienced and if that happens to be their fat little girlfriends, too bad.”
One person in Leach’s corner is his former Oklahoma colleague, Kansas coach Mark Mangino.
“I don’t want to get into all of that. There’s pretty girls everywhere,” Mangino told ESPN. “Tech’s got their share, and KU has their share. We’re partial. We think KU has the best. I think you can have fun with it. That’s what Mike’s trying to do. He’s trying to have fun with it.
We’re too uptight in this society,” added Mangino, whose team faces Texas Tech this week. “We need to loosen up and have some fun and not everybody take everything so literally. I don’t want to get into the girls. We’ll leave that to Mike. I’ll focus on football. I’ve got my hands full doing that.”
