Mike Leach and Rich Rodriguez give the Pac-12 the most interesting stable of head coaches in the country.

Mike Leach and Rich Rodriguez give the Pac-12 the most interesting stable of head coaches in the country.

There will be very little drama on the field in the Pac-12 next year.  There will be one game of note the entire season, USC vs. Oregon in LA.  That game will also be the Pac-12 Championship game, at whichever team wins the first match up.  None of the other teams in the conference will be anywhere near USC & Oregon’s talent level next year, and those teams are going to run away with their divisions. I can’t wait.  More after the jump...

Not for any on the field reason, but because with the recent hiring of Rich Rodriguez at Arizona and Mike Leach at Washington State, The Pac-12 will feature the most interesting and diverse stable of Head Coaches of any conference in the country.

Mike Leach and Rich Rodriguez are quite possibly the two most diametrically opposed coaches in college football, in strategy and personality.  Rich Rodriguez is an intense, no-nonsense type of coach, never saying anything remotely funny or interesting in an interview.  If something he says makes headlines, its simply because he took something too seriously.  As his offensive gameplan, his Spread option attack, perfected during his years at WVU, doesn’t necessarily have a QB as much as it has an extra RB, that can kinda-sorta throw a spiral.

Mike Leach is the most eccentric, confounding, and flat out weird coach in college football.  Any interview he does is instant youtube fodder. He has an obsession with pirates for no apparent reason. He wrote a book entitled “Swing Your Sword”.  When he coached at Texas Tech he hosted a weekly call-in tv show in which he covered topics from football to pirates to dating. If he hadn’t always been like this, I’d be convinced it’s just elaborate performance art in the vein of Joaquin Phoenix.  Oh, and he locked a player who he thought wasn’t tough enough in a janitorial closet for the duration of a practice.

In Mike Leach’s offense the running back is more a really short receiver who lines up in a weird spot.  The architect of the “Air Raid” style of offense currently used at SMU, Oklahoma State and West Virginia, Leach has his QB’s throw the ball upwards of 45 times every game.  In his 10 years at Texas Tech, he had 2 separate QB’s set the single season passing yardage record, and 1 set the career passing yardage mark.

Throwing these 2 in a conference that features everyone’s favorite ship-jumper Lane Kiffin at USC, Chip Kelly who tells his own fans to shut up at Oregon, Steve Sarkesian at Washington and the rest of the conference will make for an immensely entertaining media day and Harbaugh-level hand shake analysis after every game.  The contrast in styles will be interesting as only Oregon runs an offense that vaguely resembles either of the new guys’ (Rich Rod’s Spread O). While the games themselves probably won’t be too competitive or well-played, the sideline shots, interviews, & game handshakes all promise to be gloriously awkward, weird, and with the definite potential for fireworks.  It’s not going to be SEC level football every week, but it will be entertaining in its own train wreck sort of way.