Message To Mike Leach And To Mississippi State: Lynching Isn’t Funny

Regarding Mike Leach, his tweet of a meme featuring a woman knitting a noose and the outrage among several of his players: That sound from those with more than a little power around Mississippi State University is telling.

Crickets, crickets, crickets.

It’s five days after Leach embarrassed himself and Mississippi State with his latest transformation from college football coach to Def Comedy Jam participant (you know, even though the show hasn’t been around in more than two decades), and his bosses are saying . . .

Nothing.

After I called Mississippi State’s president office early Monday for a comment, I was told I would receive an email response within the hour.

It didn’t happen. Mississippi State officials remember they put themselves in a bind three months ago by giving Leach the richest contract in school history for a coach of any kind ($5 million per year for four seasons).

He should have been fired by now.

Instead, the silence of Mississippi State officials is saying they don’t believe a silly old tweet should keep Leach from trying to become the savior of one of the historically worst programs in college football.

Mississippi State’s first game was in 1895, but the Bulldogs have won just 49 percent of their games overall. It doesn’t help that they reside in SEC whose motto for those from top to bottom is, “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.”

Take Alabama, winners of five national championships under Nick Saban. Even though coaches were asked not to deal with players during this pandemic regarding workouts, Saban sent his guys Apple watches to make it easier for his staff to monitor their progress.

At least the SEC is exploring the Saban matter.

In contrast, Mississippi State officials have stayed mostly in the shadows over the tweet Leach used as a match last Wednesday night to trigger an inferno of disbelief, even in his own locker room.

That tweet featured a meme of an elderly woman with knitting sticks, and here was the caption: “After two weeks of quarantine with her husband, Gertrude decided to knit him a scarf.” 

The woman switched to a noose.

The hangman’s knot was already in place.

Yeah, Leach deleted the tweet the next morning with one of those “sort of” apologies from a serial twitter.

Yeah, during Leach’s nearly 20 seasons as a productive head coach in college football, starting with Texas Tech and continuing at Washington State before coming to Mississippi State, he’s been noted as a jokester.

Jerry Seinfeld, he isn’t, though.

Try Fuzzy Zoeller.

In 1997, Zoeller never recovered after he responded to Tiger Woods winning his first Masters as a ‘little boy,” and then the supposedly funniest man on the PGA Tour at the time said before rolling cameras, “So, you know what you guys do when he gets in here? You pat him on the back and say congratulations and enjoy it and tell him not serve fried chicken next year. Got it?”

Zoeller smiled, snapped his fingers and then walked away, but he returned to say, “Or collard greens or whatever the hell they serve.”

Not funny.

Neither are nooses to many folks around Mississippi, especially among African Americans.

According to the NAACP, Mississippi had more lynchings than any state from 1882 through 1968 with 581. The organization also determined that African Americans represented 72.7% of lynching victims across the United States.

As is the case throughout college football, the overwhelming majority of players on Mississippi State’s team are African American, and several of them weren’t amused by Leach’s post.

Mississippi State’s 2019 team captain Erroll Thompson retweeted Leach’s original entry with a emoji featuring hands on the chin and eyebrows raised. Defensive lineman Fabien Lovett responded to Leach’s first tweet with “Wtf,” and then he put his name in the transfer portal.

That said, the bulk of Mississippi State players (black and white) haven’t responded to either of Leach’s tweets, and the original one generated 4,000 likes within hours, and the SEC isn’t getting easier, and Leach does have a reputation for prospering at underdog programs.

Which is why those crickets around Starkville, Mississippi keep getting louder by the moment.