ESPN.com and CFT.com are reporting that Mike Leach banished injured redshirt sophomore WR Adam James (son of ESPN college football analyst Craig James) to a dark equipment room where he was ordered to clean out the equipment and not be allowed to sit or lean. He was also sent to an electrical closet. Two separate incidents of banishment after he was told not to practice following a concussion that yielded an elevated heart rate. This is all according to the family's source.

Leach's attorney says it was a press room that was much cooler and darker than the practice field and that he had an exercise bike to use if he chose to do so.

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/bowls0...ory?id=4776848

i have a feeling this one is going to get pretty ugly. Leach is weird enough to do **** like this, and you'd have to think with James' Dad being in the field that they could have resolved this easier if they wanted.

this is pretty bizarre.

Well so much for Big 12 football's (other than UT/OK) brief day in the sun. "Come to the big 12 where our coaches will verbally, physically and emotionally abuse you!"

Leach is really toeing the line between quirky eccentric and full blown psycho now.

I haven't looked into this at all, but if I were a coach I'd probably treat the son of one of the most prominent college football broadcasters with kid gloves. I mean is that a hard thing to figure out?

Obviously I go to tech so I am biased but the espn reports are obviously siding the James family. He has been unhappy with his playing time and has been trying to transfer

Sending him to a dark room and not letting him sit down are both common practice when a player has a concussion. The dark room obv for light sensitivity and standing up to keep the player conscious.

pretty sure he's jumped over the line with both feet

Kids these days, ****ing softies.

Yeah, totally common practice. Totally.

this broke at halftime of the independence bowl and the talking heads made it sound like Leach was really up **** creek, that Tech wouldn't have suspended him unless they had reason to strongly believe he was way in the wrong. Obv ESPN is biased here but that doesn't mean they're wrong on that point.

Yeah, it makes sense.
Um.

We've come along way since the Junction Boys, that's when Bear Bryant took a team of Texas A&M scrubs out to the middle of no where and forced them to practice like 16 hours a day in 100+ degree weather with no water during practice for like two weeks.

Like 3/4th of the team quit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junction_Boys

Seriously though, no way does some dumb ass just sit in a closet for 3 hours. I get the feeling this kid might have gotten some major gruff from Leach but no real abuse took place and now he's all butt hurt about it.

I only had vague knowledge of the Junction Boys before reading that wiki page, but lol at them going 1-9. But damn were they tough.

Nice to see education is taken as seriously as football at Tech.

obviously im a huge homer and biased but like a said in the other thread a player with an ego, unhappy about playing time breaks a story like this right before the bowl game seems a little suspicious to me regardless of the team.

Anyways, if this is what changes peoples minds about leach being crazy you have never seen some of his youtube videos or his office.

If a player goes unconscious after a concussion you do not lock him in a dark room. You call an ambulance.

Also, he had not just experienced a concussion. It happened days earlier and it seems Leach was miffed about the fact that a seemingly healthy young man was not cleared to play. See Concussion, major subject of the year in the NFL.

I'm not crazy about Craig James' whole god and football shtick, but I'm pretty sure he's not going to go to the University without some serious thought and real support for his position. The school seems to take this pretty seriously based in the evidence it has reviewed thus far.

I have read different versions of the story on different sites so I am not sure what to believe.

In regard to Myers suspending him its pretty well known that they do not like each other. Even if he is not the coach for the bowl game I am pretty confident he will be back next season, everyone at the school loves him except James and Myers and he just signed a new contract.

this!

There really seems to be no middle ground with him at all.

I don't know who is right, but if Leech is right all he did was tell the kid to ride the bike during practice or stay away from the field and keep busy with some side work. I am not sure what I am missing though. He did not do something terrible though like force them to play as far as I can tell.

I've had to ride the stationary bike and watch HS wrestling practice when injured. I've also watched HS football practice on the sidelines with a bad flu (when the coach spoke to me late in the practice he told me I should have just gone home). Maybe those coaches cared and maybe maybe they didn't, but it's not a situation they could realistically do something about.

Apparently, what upset Leach is that James showed up to practice after not being cleared to play with sun glasses, saying they were for light sensitivity related to the concussion.

Exercising the type of judgment often associated with football coaches, Leach decided to call the kid's concussion "bluff" and for two practices had him, apparently, placed in relatively dark areas, seemingly with a "guard" in one instance. These are jerk moves no matter how you slice it.

However, in the context of the NFL's focus on concussions and the fact that the kid's dad is one of the most prominent broadcasters in college football--who is set to call the team's upcoming bowl game--it jumps the line from bad judgment to a kind of crazy stupidity.

For all I know the kid is a total jerk, but Leach's judgment reminds me of a cop escalating a situation because he has the power to.

pics of James' fat little gf?

lol Mike Leach you cannot be real.

nice

At least he didn't make him walk the plank