Many agree Texas Tech needs all the good karma it can dredge up to have a shot at beating Texas this weekend in Austin.

Since it just so happens that Saturday is International Talk Like a Pirate Day, Tech coach Mike Leach will take it as some sort of sign. After all, what sports figure outside of Pittsburgh seems more pirate-obsessed than Leach?

“I think that definitely has the potential to be a good omen for us,” Leach said, tongue in cheek. “So really, I think on behalf of our program, we feel very confident as a result of that.”

International Talk Like a Pirate Day, though not an official holiday, has brought some fame the way of its creators, a couple of Oregon residents named John Baur and Mark Summers. They nicknamed themselves “Ol’ Chumbucket” and “Cap’n Slappy,” fired up an extensive, humorous Web site and wrote books about pirates.

That was sometime after they hatched the idea innocently enough in 1995 while playing racquetball.

As they described it on their Web site, TalkLikeAPirate.com:

“Anyway, whoever let out the first ‘Arrr!’ started something. One thing led to another. ‘That be a fine cannonade,’ one said, to be followed by ‘Now watch as I fire a broadside straight into your yardarm!’ and other such helpful phrases.

“By the time our hour on the court was over,” Baur and Summers went on, “we realized that lapsing into pirate lingo had made the game more fun and the time pass more quickly. We decided then and there that what the world really needed was a new national holiday, ‘Talk Like A Pirate Day.’ ”

What began as a small annual celebration among friends in 1995 was elevated in awareness in 2002 when Baur and Summers pitched it to nationally syndicated humorist Dave Barry as column material. Barry obliged, giving the day some publicity, and now the movement has taken on a life of its own. Its founders have done the Web site, radio and TV appearances, an e-mail newsletter and books, such as “Pirattitude: Unleashing Your Inner Pirate.”

Somehow, until this week, it all escaped Leach. Odd, considering the Tech coach has done much to promote talking and dressing like pirates.

“In some ways, it had maybe a bigger impact than I thought,” Leach said of his own pirate stories that spawned a cult following among Tech fans.

Leach’s pirate fascination went public in 2005 with media mentions, after which, as he observed this week, “Flags pop up. Eye patches pop up. So it goes. I think it’s been good. I don’t really give it much thought or second guess it or intellectualize it a great deal. I mean, I like pirates, and I read about them and the rest. When you consider this business and what (label) you can get stuck with, I’m very thankful that I get to be the pirate guy, instead of I have to be whatever the other stereotypes (might be).

“Oh, believe me, heck yeah, it can get worse than pirates.”

Don’t believe it? Think Leach is just posing as a pirate lover?

Well, just in the last few days, another wall-sized mural went up in the Tech Football Training Facility that’s heavy on the pirate theme.

And no, Leach reiterated, he never gets tired of what he started.

“You answer some of the same questions again and again,” he said, “but it seems to me a lot of people are having fun with it as they wear their gear. And I don’t think it hurts recruiting either, because it kind of gives you an identity.”

Tech’s game against Texas will be the Red Raiders’ first time to play on Talk Like A Pirate Day since Leach took over as head coach.

By the way, why Sept. 19?

The founders explained that, too, on their Web site.

“Mark (Summers) came up with September 19,” they wrote. “That was and is his ex-wife’s birthday, and the only date he could readily recall that wasn’t taken up with something like Christmas or the Super Bowl or something.”

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