Elite Teams (contend for chance at NC):
OU
Texas

Above Average (will contend year in/year out for conference champ):
Nebraska
Tech
OSU
Possibly Kansas (they got lucky as hell two years ago with a joke schedule that would make Leach blush and a BCS bowl berth vs. a crappy VT team with no, absolutely no offense)

Inbetweens (between sucking and possibly upsetting a good team every year or so/ getting lucky):
Mizzou
Kansas again
Maybe Baylor… we’ll see if Briles’ Bears are Bowl Bound in ’09

Will be at the bottom of the conference until they restructure it again in 2015 to include U of H or TCU instead of Iowa State/ Baylor/ A&M:
Iowa State
A&M
Colorado
KSU
Baylor again

I just dont see why the conference goes to a east – west division with it looking like this:

East: UT, Tech, A&M, Baylor, Mizzou, Iowa State
West: OU, OSU, KSU, Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska

But, they did what they had to do. The guy is the best coach they have ever had, I credit their administration (Not AD) for getting the deal done and saving face (at least until next January). I think its clear he wants out of Lubbock, and this contract is doing nothing to keep him there any longer than he wants to be.

I do not think he fought “so hard to have no buyout in his contract.” His last counter-offer before he and Hance sat down and hammered out a deal had a 500K buyout, which was the same as his old contract.

The school came down on the buyout (from 1.5M to 0) to get Leach to come down on the termination, which was at 40% of his total income on his old contract, and it was at 40% on his counter-offer. Ultimately he settled at 16%, which makes him much more affordable to fire. In many ways it’s a consequence free contract, if Leach wants to go he won’t owe the school money (anyways… is 1.5M going to deter a program that really wants him, if such should come along? Not really) and if the school terminates, they’ll owe him a tiny fraction of his contract.

For a guy who has head coached at exactly one school, and done so for nearly a decade, and is 7 wins away from breaking the all-time franchise win record, it’s basically assumed that he’s gone. As a poster below noted, even if Leach does want to go… is it at all clear that anyone wants him? This gets thrown around a lot and I think it is mostly overstated, but maybe Leach is simply too strange for some programs to want him?

And anyways, as the DMN recently reported, maybe Leach’s “loyalty” (I’d prefer something less value-ridden, like reluctance to leave a high paying job in a city he’s lived in for years) isn’t as bad as everyone thinks. He initially turned down a job interview from Washington in November, he turned down a job interview from Tennessee, and he turned down a job interview with UCLA, which is the kind of job many people assume he wants to flee towards (west coast and all that). Miami never even offered an interview. A lot of the speculation about how much Leach is interested in other schools is his own fault, because he doesn’t say the right things in interviews (like Nick Saban: I will not leave the school, etc.) but when push has come to shove, in nine years Leach has accepted one interview with the University of Washington and turned down two with 1) UCLA — everyone thinks he’s a west coast guy, and 2) Tennessee, which is no stepping stone.