Mike Leach

On Sunday night, Washington State head football coach Mike Leach tweeted out a heavily-edited YouTube conspiracy video of a Barack Obama speech. The tweet caption read, “Listen to this. Text your thoughts. There is a lot of disagreement on government, so I think that an open discussion is always in order. Tweet your thoughts. Maybe we can all learn something.”

Many Twitter users then responded to Leach (a friend of Donald Trump), explaining that the video was fake, and he shot them all down. Examples:

The USA Today’s Dan Wolken later wrote a column titled, “Mike Leach’s tweet of an anti-Obama hoax showed why many schools won’t hire him.”

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

Over many years of being quirky and accessible in a largely humorless profession, Leach has managed to develop a cult of personality that enjoys his random musings on dinosaurs and pirates. But within the college athletics industry, he is widely regarded as a ticking time bomb of embarrassment whose usefulness as a coach is largely outweighed by the risk that he will say or do something inflammatory and unnecessary with little regard for whose reputations he’s dragging down with him.

And now here we are.

Leach’s Sunday night behavior on Twitter was utterly disgraceful for anyone, much less the employee of an educational institution. It served no purpose other than to put a false, malicious piece of propaganda into the world that is meant to inflame hatred against a former president. And when informed in very specific ways about how and why the video was false, Leach kept firing back at people, telling them to “Prove it!”

Wolken also called Leach a “hypocrite” during an interview with Matt Perrault.

And Wolken tweeted out a statement from a Washington State spokesman that said Leach “is entitled to his personal opinions.” Wolken called the statement “pathetic.”

Well, on Tuesday night, Leach called out Wolken — “a guy who no one knows” — for the criticism, and said that he’s willing to “debate” Wolken “anywhere and anytime.”

So a guy, who no one knows, Wolken, has an ax to grind. I’m not sure who he is, but at the risk at building his career, I am willing to debate him, anywhere and anytime. He is pathetically biased, but I think that the message of free thought needs to get out

Wolken is clearly a brilliant man, because he can write an article, without any sources, only his brilliance. Amazing. In any case , I can’t wait for him to show me the light. He will set me straight and I can move forward.

Leach followed that up by retweeting several tweets of people mocking Wolken, like these:

Wolken — who’s actually one of the best-known college football writers in America — later tweeted that Leach blocked him on Twitter, and rolled his eyes — complete with an emoji — at the Leach tweet. He also said that Leach “gave me his cell number last year.”

Expect Leach to have a response — as he does for everything, of course — and for this feud to continue into the 2018 college football season.

About Matt Clapp

Matt is an editor at The Comeback. He attended Colorado State University, wishes he was Saved by the Bell's Zack Morris, and idolizes Larry David. And loves pizza and dogs because obviously.

He can be followed on Twitter at @Matt2Clapp (also @TheBlogfines for Cubs/MLB tweets and @DaBearNecess for Bears/NFL tweets), and can be reached by email at mclapp@thecomeback.com.