Swing Your Sword: Leading the Charge in Football and Life - Hardcover

Leach, Mike

4.22

1,846 ratings by Goodreads

9780983337195: Swing Your Sword: Leading the Charge in Football and Life

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0983337195 ISBN 13: 9780983337195

Publisher: Diversion Books, 2011

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

SWING YOUR SWORD is the first ever book by one of the most fascinating and successful coaches in sports today. A maverick who took an unlikely path to coaching through law school, Mike Leach talks about his unorthodox approach to coaching and the choices that have brought him success throughout his career. A lover of the game who started creating formations and drawing his own plays as a kid, Leach took his Texas Tech Red Raiders to numerous bowl games, achieving the #2 slot in national rankings and being voted 2008 Coach of the Year before being unceremoniously fired at the end of the 2009 season. The scandalous nature of his dismissal created a media frenzy and began a personal battle between Leach and his accusers that remains unresolved.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author:

After stints at Kentucky and Oklahoma, Mike Leach took over a subpar Texas Tech program that had one of the worst graduation rates in all of major college football. A decade later, Leach had guided Tech to unprecedented on-field success and the highest graduation rate of any public university in major college football. He is now a TV analyst for CBS College Sports and hosts the daily College Football Playbook show on SiriusXM. He is native of Cody, Wyoming, and graduated from Brigham Young University. He earned his J.D. from Pepperdine Law School in 1986. Leach and his wife, Sharon, have four children.

Bruce Feldman is a writer for ESPN. He has written two books, Meat Market: Inside the Smash-Mouth World of College Football Recruiting and Cane Mutiny. His work also has appeared in three editions of the Best American Sports Writing series. He has worked for ESPN since 1994.

Michael Lewis is the author of bestsellers The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, Liar's Poker, The New New Thing, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game, Panic and Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood.

Review:

I think he’s brilliant. Mike Leach is a renaissance man through and through. The commercials about the World’s Most Interesting Man that’s Mike Leach. I love him so much. I aspire to live a full and rich life and he’s doing it. He’s as interested in literature as he is in football. He’s just a very complicated, well-rounded individual. He’s a real maverick and an inspiration.
-Peter Berg, filmmaker, director - Friday Night Lights

I could tell that our players liked him right away. What really struck me was how sure of himself of what he wanted to do. He had such conviction and confidence in his way of doing it and there wasn't any second guessing it: "This is what we're going to do. It is going to work. It has worked everywhere we've been." I remember feeling great. This is exactly what we needed to do.
-Bob Stoops, Mike’s former boss at Oklahoma

He’s one of the most unique people I’ve ever met. He’s infinitely curious about everything. He doesn’t come in there and meet new situations with an agenda. He likes to walk straight up and ask the tough questions. He loves it when someone is real as can be. He wants to learn something new. He wants to hear another point of view on something. Mike Leach is an infinitely interesting guy. His free association is epic. Nobody has the ability to free associate like this guy. He starts going and you’re thinking, O.K., where are you going with this?’ I love his re-set. His re-set line is always, well, the thing is.’ Whenever he switches gears to another subject, that his comma, it’s Well, the thing is. . .
-Matthew McConaughey

Mike Leach has proved he can write a book that's as good as his passing schemes. I might add that it also ranks up there with his leadership and communication skills. Don't miss this eye-opening entertainment.
-Dan Jenkins

Mike Leach is a great leader and an amazing motivator of men. And he got screwed. He’s got fantastic ingenuity, not only on the football field, but what he did with Texas Tech. The guy was on the cover of the New York Times Sunday Magazine as the head coach of Texas Tech. Think about how unusual that is. He is just so smart and really is a great guy, and a great coach.”
-Donald Trump

Praise for Bruce Feldman:

Meat Market

"One of the most insightful books ever written about college football."
-The New York Times

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.