On Monday, the National Football Foundation released this year’s list of 80 major college players and nine coaches eligible for the College Football Hall of Fame class of 2027. One name on that list that hadn’t been eligible before this year, but many wanted to be, is the mastermind behind the Air Raid offense: Mike Leach.
Mike Leach had a career record of 158-106 over 10 years coaching at Texas Tech, 8 years at Washington State, and 3 years at Mississippi State. When he passed away in 2022, College Football Hall of Fame eligibility for coaches required at least 10 seasons of coaching and a career winning percentage of at least .600. Leach easily met the first criterion. However, his record fell .0015 percentage points shy of .600 at .5985. That minor margin keeping Leach from being eligible for the Hall of Fame did not sit well with many college football fans.
At the time, it was speculated that because Mike Leach was still coaching at the time of his death, an exemption could be created. Several people also suggested that Leach could potentially enter the College Football Hall of Fame as an ‘Outstanding Contributor’ but not as a coach.
That second option was certainly a possibility, considering the Air Raid offense he created and his coaching tree, which includes at least 12 assistants who went on to be head coaches, including Art Briles, Sonny Dykes, Lincoln Riley, Dave Aranda, and JaMarcus Shephard, and at least five players who also went on to lead a major college program, including Josh Heupel, Kliff Kingsbury, and Eric Morris.
Thankfully for fans of Mike Leach, it hasn’t had to come to that, as in May of 2025 the College Football Hall of Fame altered its criteria for coach eligibility. The new eligibility criteria require that coaches have been a head football coach for at least 10 years and have coached at least 100 games with a .595 winning percentage.
Now that he is eligible, will the College Football Hall of Fame enshrine Mike Leach?
Despite the clamor for Mike Leach to be eligible for the College Football Hall of Fame, fans still have no guarantee that he will be elected. First of all, officials had to adjust the eligibility requirements just to make him eligible, which will certainly weigh on some voters’ minds.
However, the change in eligibility requirements also means that another well-regarded head coach, Jackie Sherrill, is now eligible. Sherill, who coached for 26 years with Washington State, Pittsburgh, Texas A&M, and Mississippi State, had a 180-120-4 record. He also won five conference titles and finished ranked second in the nation in the Coaches Poll in 1980 and 1981 with Pittsburgh. Les Miles, who compiled a 108-73 record and won a National Championship with LSU in 2011, is also now eligible.
If they get in, Leach has to get in, right? He will if one of his former assistant coaches has any say in it.
“I don’t know that anybody had a bigger impact on the game in a very, very long time than Mike did,” TCU coach Sonny Dykes told The Athletic.