Before a game at Texas A&M, for example, Leach noticed the Aggies' core of cadets with their uniforms and buzz-cuts. Bemused, he wondered aloud, "How come they get to pretend they are soldiers? The thing is, they aren’t actually in the military."

(Which is true; they aren’t.)

“I ought to have Mike's Pirate School,” Leach continued. “The freshmen, all they get is the bandanna. When you're a senior, you get the sword and skull and crossbones.”

The pirate reference was not random. Leach’s affinity for learning is not confined to the gridiron (he finished in the top third of his law school class, by the way). During the offseason, he selects one topic and turns it into his own personal thesis project. One year, that discipline was pirates. In fact, he gave a three-hour lecture to his players on buccaneers.

Leach may be unhinged (now here, Governor Palin, is a maverick) but he is not stupid. That four different quarterbacks of his — Kliff Kingsbury, 2002; B.J. Symons, 2003; Sonny Cumbie, 2004; and Graham Harrell, 2006 and ’07 — have compiled five of the top 13 most prolific passing seasons in college football history speaks to both the genius of his system and his acumen as a teacher.

“He may be a mad scientist,” ESPN’s Trevor Matich said on “College Football Live” on Tuesday, “but he is a scientist.”

Leach approaches his laboratory, the gridiron, as if it were any other puzzle or game. He patterned his theory on a rule and a reality. The rule, as he understood it, is that seven offensive players must be on the line of scrimmage, and only the exterior two are eligible to catch a pass. The reality is that, while players have gotten bigger and faster over the past century, the parameters of a football field have not.

Hence, to maximize offensive potential, you spread the field with the five offensive players who are neither linemen nor the quarterback. And, the more evenly you can distribute the ball among those five players, the less a defense can rely on your tendencies in preparation.

Besides, Leach’s non-conformist mentality makes him more amenable to unorthodox ideas. Last month a Red Raiders sophomore named Matt Williams won a halftime kicking contest by booting a 30-yard field goal. Within a few weeks Leach had given him a uniform and put him on the traveling squad. Williams recently made his debut at Kansas. Not only did he get in the game, but he was 9-for-9 on PATs. Williams, who began the season as just another “Guns up!” cheering fan in the student section, was named Big 12 Special Teams Player of the Week.

Today’s non-conformist is yesterday’s pioneer, after all. Just ask Dick Fosbury. Or Galileo. And as for taking an unconventional route? Jimi Hendrix never learned how to read music and Jim “Mad Money” Cramer never earned an M.B.A. And, to all those coaches who in the past have been so dismissive of Leach, we will end with a brief anecdote.

Ninety-five years ago, a tiny school encountered a football leviathan of the time and were given little chance of defeating them. However, one of the players on that underdog squad devised an offensive wrinkle that he and his roommate waited until that game to unveil.

The tiny school was Notre Dame, the leviathan Army. The player? Knute Rockne, who would later go on to be the most successful coach in terms of winning percentage that college football has ever seen.

The wrinkle? The forward pass.

That’s the irony about non-conformists. The successful ones spawn a legion of followers. Saturday night in Lubbock was the most evangelical moment in college football in quite some time. And, honestly, how much fun would it be to see a non-practicing attorney such as Mike Leach matched up against Joe Paterno or Nick Saban in the national championship game?

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