Pac-12 After Spring: Washington State coach Mike Leach

Spring football is over. Real football is still far, far away.

To help bridge the gap, we’re checking in on Arizona’s competition in the Pac-12 – running some of the best comments from the league’s coaches after their recent participation in a conference call to wrap up spring ball.

Today’s 11th and final Q&A is with Washington State coach Mike Leach, who unfortunately was not given the opportunity to talk about Washington State football. We made it all the way to the end before this happened. I apologize on behalf of my colleagues who cover the Pac-12 who didn’t take advantage of the fact that the Cougars are actually good and interesting now.

At least Leach is entertaining. Here he is going off on the satellite-camp controversy and the notion that spread-system quarterbacks can’t play in the NFL. At bottom, you can find links to all of the previous 10 Q&As.

(on the value of satellite camps within the Pac-12 and across college football)

“Let’s be clear: The Pac-12, among their schools, 11 of them already have voted to have satellite camps. (It is believed that Stanford is the only school that didn’t.) That part’s indisputable. Sadly, we failed to place a vote that reflected the will and wishes of our schools. So this conference already is overwhelmingly in favor of satellite camps. Just so there’s no confusion.

“I think everybody would benefit (from having them). The mission of higher education and Division I schools is to provide opportunities. And the more opportunities, the better it is for everybody.

“If you’re a low-income person, (from) a low-income family, that is qualified and skilled enough to be a Division I college football player, and you have the opportunity to get discovered, whether through a satellite camp or any means, it does nothing but (1) help edify your life and (2) help build the product of college football, which in the end helps everybody.

“I can’t fathom anybody that would be against satellite camps, although it’s clear that one school is. The only reason that they could possibly be against satellite camps is for some selfish motivation of locking other schools out of the opportunity to see their players.”

(on whether it’s harder for QBs from Air Raid or spread-style offenses to transition to the NFL)

“I think the entire thing’s ridiculously absurd. … No. 1, the best thing is to throw as many balls as possible and read as many defenses as possible. The more leeway you have at the line of scrimmage, the better. There’s an awful lot of spread quarterbacks that have played in the NFL and have done so successfully. A lot of times, for their own convenience, folks will want to suggest otherwise. Of course that’s really not true. I’ve had a number of them on NFL teams. I haven’t had a guy that was a premier starter. But given the fact there’s 30 teams, as far as actually being on teams, I probably have more on teams than most schools.

“The other thing that’s interesting, the NFL, from one team to the next, there’s a wide variety of how they value the quarterback position – what they value, what they want. The failure for everybody to be on the same page is why there’s so much struggle in the NFL for them to find quarterbacks. When you consider that virtually every team in the NFL has drafted a quarterback in the first round, and yet there’s so many of them that weren’t drafted or weren’t drafted in the first round that are starting, that means the entire evaluation process is flawed to a point.

“The most important thing to keep in mind with regard to quarterbacks is, the most important asset they have is elevating the efforts and skills of the people around them. There’s nothing they do that’s more important than that.”