Yesterday’s Liberty Bowl confirmed yet again that Mississippi State Bulldogs Head Coach Mike Leach is a fraud. His allegedly great offense scored just 7 points in the season finale as the Bulldogs lost, 34-7, against the Texas Tech Red Raiders—a school that did the smart thing and fired Leach a long time ago. After two seasons in Starkville now, Leach has posted an 11-13 record.

He only has a bowl win from last year due to the Covid pandemic, so in reality, that record is really 10-13. Is that all “SEC money” can buy these days? Again, the “offensive genius” guided his second Mississippi State squad to just the 60th-best scoring offense in the country, out of 130 FBS teams. Do the math, and that’s a barely above-average offense. We also saw Leach lose by 40 points to its best regional rival.

Time and time again, we see the media prop this guy up as some kind of mad scientist, when it’s clear any team with a moderately intelligent defensive coordinator can shut his offense down pretty easily. His gimmicks can only get him so far, and unless he has some luck and an outstanding DC of his own, Leach always will hover around .500 overall.

His second season in Starkville also pales in comparison to his respective second seasons in Lubbock and Pullman: His second season with Texas Tech produced the eighth-best team of his career in coaching, while his second year with Washington State still ranks ahead of this season outing with Mississippi State. In 20 years overall, this 2021 team was his seventh-worst team.

The Bulldogs probably won’t tolerate another two seasons of this mediocrity: Our contention all along has been that Leach would wear out his welcome in Starkville by the end of the 2022 season. The more the SEC/Southern schools see his offense, the easier it will be for them to beat Mississippi State, no matter what level of experience his players allegedly will have next season.

With a 12-season bowl streak going on now, it might take missing a bowl game to get the school to fire Leach—or just another social gaffe/misstep, for that matter … anything to get Mississippi State off the hook for his bloated salary. We have seen good coaches get chewed up by the SEC sinkhole, so there’s no reason to expect a fraud like Leach to last very much longer down there in the Confederacy.