Legendary coach Mike Leach will soon be eligible for the College Football Hall of Fame after a recent set of rules adjustments by the National Football Foundation.
“In consultation with the American Football Coaches Association, the NFF Honors Court and the NFF Awards Committee, the Foundation has revised the minimum career winning percentage required for coaching eligibility from .600 to .595,” the NFF stated in a news release. “This change will go into effect beginning with the 2027 NFF College Football Hall of Fame Ballot.”
Leach, a former Mississippi State coach, accrued a 158-107 record in more than two decades as a head coach, which included stops at Texas Tech and Washington State. He won 59.6% of games, leaving him just below the previous threshold of win percentage threshold of 60% following his unexpected death in 2022.
Leach was expected to have cleared that threshold before his untimely death, with COVID having previously interrupted his progress toward hall of fame eligibility.
Now beginning in 2027, the two-time national coach of the year will meet the criteria to be selected into the College Football Hall of Fame.
Also known as “The Pirate,” Leach engineered an Air Raid offense that led him to 84 wins in nine years at Texas Tech. In 2012, he moved on to Washington State where he won 55 games in eight seasons, the third-most in program history.
The final stint of his coaching career saw the Bulldogs steadily improve over the course of three seasons, winning eight games under Leach in 2022 before securing a win in the ReliaQuest Bowl shortly after his death.
Harrison Campbell covers sports for The Daily Herald and The Tennessean. Email him at hcampbell@gannett.com and follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @hccamp.
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