We as sports writers are not on board with any coach who just won't flat-out tell us which one of his players are injured. Especially those who won't even tell us the nature of the injury.
Such is the case with Texas Tech coach Mike Leach. The embattled coach won't even acknowledge if one of his players is injured _ even if you saw that player carted off the field on a stretcher and was later hauled off to a hospital for an overnight stay.
It's almost as if Leach is saying don't believe your lying eyes.
"We don't have injuries here and if we did we wouldn't acknowledge them,'' Leach said. "I am truthful on nearly everything, but I am honestly telling you I will lie about injuries should any ever occur, if I feel like it.
"I may just do the standard, "I don't talk about injuries.'' I may make something up, because quite frankly you are who you are and you got what you got.''
In other words, Leach sees coaches who willingly talk about their injured players are coaches who are looking for excuses just in case their team loses the game. In other words, from where Leach sits, if a coach wants to harp on the injuries of his players, why not just go ahead and forfeit the game and be done with it.
"We don't have any alibis for injuries,'' Leach said. "Teams that sit and talk about injuries all the time provide themselves with an excuse for not being successful or as successful as they might.
"We are not going to provide that for anybody _ excuses or alibis for underachievement _ so that is another reason (injuries are not mentioned). The other reason, I am not interested in a guy all of a sudden that generates attention just because he is injured. And then the other thing, well I just think it's journalism at its lowest level.''
Sports writers are always at odds with Leach because he won't reveal his team's injury situation.One sports writer even had a brief lively debate with Leach over his injury policy during Monday's Big 12 teleconference.
But Leach said the sports writers should work a little harder and try to find another story angle besides his team's injury situation.
"If you are so uncreative that you can't come up with a story or devise a story or find something newsworthy outside of an injury,'' Leach said. "Even within your profession, ask yourself in this room how much do you really respect the guy that always says, "Oh, OK, well here is their injury.'
"I mean, OK, now there is Noble Prize winning material there. There is a guy who wants to write the great American novel.''
All this talk about injuries came to light when Tech quarterback Taylor Potts suffered a concussion last Saturday against New Mexico and had to be talken to the hospital. Potts spent Saturday night in the hospital, but Leach refuses to say whether Potts will play this Saturday against Kansas State, let along whether he was injured at all.
"I mean, "Oh, all these folks are injured,' '' Leach said. "Well, hey, that's not a story, and a chimpanzee can write that. So I don't want to provide or aid any of that, and that's the policy.
"Oh, and interesting enough, you want to know things you learn from (Kansas State coach) Bill Snyder, injury policy I learned from Bill Snyder. And at the beginning of the week while everything is real civil and friendly, I want to personally thank him for that, because it was a stroke of genius.''
In essence, if you're waiting for Mike Leach to talk about his player's injuries, you're going to be waiting until time stands still. In the meantime, Leach said:
"We have a whole bunch of people that are going to go out there and practice and play and achieve things out there on the field. And so I am more than willing to talk about them.
"And those are the people that need to be discussed and recognized.''
_ Dwain Price
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