Swing your sword

A reader sent me a copy of this Michael Lewis article on Coach Leach of Texas Tech. Lewis is the Moneyball author; Leach looks like this, if we are to believe Lewis's portrait.

Lewis strikes me as the kind of writer who is so good, he's bad. But I won't be a dick and belittle the piece. There are, however, great passages about pirates and Steeler football, so I think you'll enjoy it too. Here's a taste:

His 45-second pregame speech set a certain tempo, but he had one final thing to say:

"Your body is your sword. Swing your sword."

Each off-season, Leach picks something he is curious about and learns as much as he can about it: Geronimo, Daniel Boone, whales, chimpanzees, grizzly bears, Jackson Pollock. The list goes on, and if you can find the common thread, you are a step ahead of his football players. One year, he studied pirates. When he learned that a pirate ship was a functional democracy; that pirates disciplined themselves; that, loathed by others, they nevertheless found ways to work together, the pirate ship became a metaphor for his football team. Last year, after a loss to Texas A.&M. in overtime, Leach hauled the team into the conference room on Sunday morning and delivered a three-hour lecture on the history of pirates. Leach read from his favorite pirate history, "Under the Black Flag," by David Cordingly (the passages about homosexuality on pirate ships had been crossed out). The analogy to football held up for a few minutes, but after a bit, it was clear that Coach Leach was just . . . talking about pirates. The quarterback Cody Hodges says of his coach: "You learn not to ask questions. If you ask questions, it just goes on longer."