BY DON WILLIAMS
AVALANCHE-JOURNAL

DALLAS — Other than a pirate, the fellow next most likely to impress Mike Leach is the one with an imaginative mind for offensive football. Leach made it sound Tuesday as if he’s pitted against a like-minded coach in the Cotton Bowl.

Mississippi’s Houston Nutt has Leach’s seal of approval.

“One thing both teams have in common is we do have a lot of stuff that not everybody sees all the time,” the Texas Tech coach said while sitting alongside his Ole Miss counterpart at a Cotton Bowl news conference.

Texas Tech receiver Michael Crabtree runs during practice on Tuesday at Texas Stadium in Irving. The No. 7 ranked Red Raiders face Ole Miss on Friday in the AT&T Cotton Bowl. (Zach Long/Lubbock Avalanche-Journal)

No. 25 Ole Miss (8-4), which takes on No. 7 Tech (11-1) at 1 p.m. Friday, sported the Southeastern Conference’s third-ranked offense this season, one that averaged 398 yards per game. That would be only ninth in the Big 12 Conference.

But clearly, using a not-everyday style delights Leach — whether he’s watching his own game video or someone else’s. Leach appreciates Nutt’s attack for its use of an unconventional formation. (“They invented the ‘Wild Hog,’ and guess who we’re going to snap it to,” Leach said approvingly.) And the way Ole Miss spreads the field, uses spacing and gets multiple skill positions involved is right up Leach’s alley.

“The thing is, they’re unique,” Leach said. “You don’t get to see it all the time. Stuff comes at you from different angles. But there’s nothing gimmicky about it, because they understand that the most important thing you do on offense is block. The other thing is they use the whole field, and they put it in everybody’s hands. That’s why it’s a great offense. The uniqueness makes it that much tougher.”

Leach’s praise for the Rebels’ approach was part of a larger railing against conventional offensive thinking. His monologue elicited plenty of laughs in a Las Colinas hotel ballroom.

“Everybody thinks that if you run it between the tackles you need to be knighted as a sainted offense, just because you’re really boring and people see it all the time,” Leach said. Feigning an impersonation, he continued with: “ ‘Oh well, if we wanted to score 40 points a game, we would, but we want to do this.’ No, you don’t want to do that; you just don’t have any imagination.

“Sadly in our case, Mississippi’s not one of those teams. They put it in everybody’s hands and they do attack the whole field, and that’s why they’re a problem for everybody.”

Former Dallas Cowboy Deion Sanders watches Texas Tech practice on Tuesday at Texas Stadium in Irving. The No. 7 ranked Red Raiders face Ole Miss on Friday in the AT&T Cotton Bowl. (Zach Long/Lubbock Avalanche-Journal)

Ole Miss’ creativity aside, the Rebels weren’t as successful as the Red Raiders this season and aren’t expected to win in their first bowl appearance in five years. But that’s not surprising since they were 3-9 last year and didn’t win an SEC game.

“All year long, we’ve pretty much been an underdog,” Nutt said. “The most rewarding thing about this season was coming in, our guys, they had nothing to reach back for, to say, ‘That’s how we do it. That’s how we win.’ We had to change that part of it.”

Nevertheless, when Nutt left Arkansas 13 months ago for Ole Miss, he saw a lot of potential in the players he inherited from Ed Orgeron, who was let go after three losing seasons.

“They walk in a room, they look good,” Nutt said. “We have some good athletes, but football’s more than that. The thing that I’m proud of, the thing that our staff did a good job of, is finally, we stopped beating ourselves.

“There’s two, three, four games that we were really in the charity business. ‘Let’s give away this ball. Let’s give away that ball. Let’s hit somebody in the back at the wrong time’ — all those things that get you beat. We kind of flipped that, and our guys started believing. There’s nothing like that celebrating locker room.”

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