PULLMAN, Wash. — At the end of the first meeting of Washington State’s Insurgent Warfare and Football Strategy class a Q&A session opened up. There were a few general questions, and then one student near the front of the class raised his hand and directed one toward co-teacher — and, also, head football coach — Mike Leach about the future of football, specifically regarding artificial intelligence.

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Most in the classroom were general students, not well-acquainted with Leach beyond what they see in the video clips aired after games or on Twitter. They did not know well the regularity with which Leach might take hold of such a question and speak nonstop for upward of an hour, ending up at a place that has absolutely nothing to do with artificial intelligence or football.

To the casual observer, it might seem unconventional at best and chaotic at worst. At times, that can be Leach.

He strings together thoughts, jumping from one topic to the next with a thread that few might follow and many might chalk up to eccentricity, but in his head, it all makes sense.

And so, with the class — slotted to last an hour and a half — looking to end right on time, it’s understandable that those in attendance who knew Leach well sighed when the question about artificial intelligence and football came up.

“I was just waiting for him to latch on to any of those questions and each one I was kind of cringing,” said Gardner Minshew, the 2018 Pac-12 Offensive Player of the Year who decided to sit in on the class while he’s on campus awaiting Washington State’s pro day. “I knew at any point he could go into a 30-minute spiel on whatever he wanted to that was vaguely related to the question asked. That (artificial intelligence question) was a softball, that was right in his wheelhouse.”

So the fact that the answer only lasted a few minutes and stuck to artificial intelligence and football (and never mentioned robotics, which could have come around to the modern mechanization of industry, which could have transitioned to the economy and ended with everyone several years older) showed a more restrained side of Leach.

After the class, he was curious, asking a few students, “How do you think I did?”

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Leach’s comfort zone in football is being outside of the comfort zone, but in his first appearance in the classroom — even one that is technically the offense’s meeting room — he seemed more mellow, more observant. He spent most of his time speaking acutely aware of the fact that as many times as he has been in front of football players, this was one of the first times he was really getting into the nuance of a play with a group in which Minshew represented one end of the extreme and other students in the class representing the other.

“There was a range of football knowledge in there,” Leach said. “I was trying to stay to that. Hopefully I did, but it’s hard for me to gauge because I’m not on the receiving end. But people seemed enthusiastic. I think.”

Last spring, Leach traveled with a group of Washington State representatives to Cambodia and Laos. While traveling, former state Sen. Michael Baumgartner noticed that there were topics that would randomly pique Leach’s interests to the nth degree.

Treehouses and old movie theaters were two that came up in conversation early. And as the group embarked on a tour of a local floating village, Baumgartner noticed another: Leach was fascinated by the brightness of the locals’ clothes despite the water — waters in which the fishermen wouldn’t fish because it was too contaminated — the people use to clean them.

“He asked so many questions about the laundry,” Baumgartner said.

“It’s kind of amazing because you have the silted soil, and I don’t know how they got the laundry so clean,” Leach added. “It’s pretty brackish water, but it would be hard to get your laundry clean there. I don’t have the details on that.”

Leach and Baumgartner bonded over the fact that they are both the sons of foresters, and the more the two talked and got to know one another, they began to spitball about collaborating after the trip. With Baumgartner’s limited football history — he quit playing the sport after his freshman year in high school — that collaboration wasn’t going to come on the field.

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But both Baumgartner and Leach knew academia, to differing levels. Baumgartner had worked for the U.S. State Department in Iraq and had lectured on counterinsurgency often; Leach had a law degree from Pepperdine.

“If we could just think of the coolest, most fun class we wish we could’ve had in college, let’s do that — that was the basic theory,” Baumgartner said.

The more the two spoke of their experiences, the more they realized there was a connective thread between insurgent warfare and Leach’s Air Raid — that there is a value in being unconventional. The two made clear then and in class that they are not and will not equate the two, but there are similarities with how underdogs might approach an opponent.

“He said, ‘Oh, I bet people will be real interested in this,’ and I said, ‘No, they’ll be somewhat interested,’” Leach said. “He said, ‘Tweet it out.’”

Six months later, Leach did. The two set the over/under for “likes” on Twitter at 100. Baumgartner expected that far more than 100 people would like the idea while Leach wasn’t ready to venture that high. He took the under.

Hey WSU students, I’m thinking about teaching an evening seminar class next semester w my friend Senator Baumgartner. “Leadership Lessons in Insurgent Warfare & Football Strategy.” Would meet once a week for about 6 weeks. Would this be of interest?

— Mike Leach (@Coach_Leach) November 28, 2018

Eventually, 44,000 people liked the tweet. The class was going to happen.

By late February, the class was officially added to Washington State’s course guide as a non-credit-receiving seminar. To demonstrate their commitment to the course, interested students would be required to answer the following two questions (without exceeding 200 words per answer), knowing that the class would only accept 40 students.

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1. Can the British strategy in the Malaya insurgency be used today?

2. Is the wishbone a viable offense for the NFL? Why or why not?

“I had friends who go to other schools texting me asking me if I was going to take this class,” freshman Alexandra Lagos said. “People think it’s pretty incredible.”

Lagos said that she spent days reading up on both the British strategy and the wishbone offense in order to put together her essays, and when she finally turned them in she felt anxious until receiving her acceptance email from the university while home from school on spring break.

“I freaked out,” Lagos said. “I called my parents. I called everyone.”

In order to divvy up the workload of all those essays, Baumgartner and Leach split them up along expertise lines.

Leach read the football submissions and was pleasantly surprised with the quality of work.

”Things are looking good for our Insurgent Warfare & Football class. Interested WSU students will need to write two short essays to apply for admission. Stay tuned for more details on how to apply. ”

— Mike Leach (@Coach_Leach) February 13, 2019

“You could tell that in most cases they flat-out researched it,” Leach said. “They also carved out some opinion on it, so I thought that was kind of impressive.”

Wrote Lagos: There is a lack of wishbone offense being played currently because of losing potential blocks and putting the quarterback in jeopardy but with a quarterback that can really run the ball such as Cam Newton or Lamar Jackson, I think the offense can catch defenses off guard with those right players playing in that system. … By utilizing the right players, the wishbone offense can become viable for the NFL because there are so many different formations that can be used and that diversity can really catch the defense and defensive coordinators off guard.

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Freshman John Spellman agreed with Lagos, writing that personnel was key: The wishbone offense could easily work in the NFL, not because of the formation, but because of the players that are part of it. The reason the wishbone is so dangerous is because it is built around the quarterback, the fullback, and two tailbacks. This reflects the idea that five playmakers should be on the field at all times, instead of rotating formations depending on the down and distance.

As a part of the class’ capstone, students will submit three different play designs, including one in the red zone. Initially, there was talk that one play call could be used in the Cougars’ 2019 season opener against Houston, but Leach said it’s all dependent. He doesn’t want to commit to anything, and considering that a large portion of his Air Raid lecture in the first class was about keeping the playbook small,  it seems like it would be tough for any play drawn up to be convincing enough.

But Leach also knows that he can be inspired by anything so he will study each fairly.

“You don’t want to install a play for one time,” Leach said, “but I am curious what comes out of that.”

To say that Leach has never taught a class isn’t quite true. During the early days of his coaching career, with a college degree and J.D. in hand, he was very qualified to work as a high school substitute teacher during his offseasons at Cal Poly and College of the Desert.

The work was mostly enjoyable, and the extra money helped. And unsurprisingly, he has stories and observations from his days as a temp.

He knows the classes you wanted to get were with the seniors (“those were fool-proof, you could sit there and read a book”) or gym class (“I’d include myself in the lineup and play six periods of dodge ball”). Slightly more difficult were junior high classes and the in-school suspension sessions, while shop class was the worst: “The trouble with shop class is that you’re not allowed to bring out the tools, and the guys in the class know that the book stuff isn’t going to count,” Leach said. “Pretty soon someone is running around the parking lot and has a nail gun.”

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Those might have been the stories that students were expecting to hear when Leach took to the front of the “classroom” on March 27. Instead, Leach gave the students a brief overview of the Air Raid and his philosophy before breaking down film from the Cougars’ 2017 upset win against then-No. 5 USC.

But Minshew, who plans to attend at least a few more classes, said he wouldn’t be surprised if those stories do come up or if the next class runs an hour over. After all, it’s fair to say that you can only throw so many artificial intelligence-themed softballs at Leach until he hits one out of the park.

“It kind of depends on his mood — some days he comes in there and he’s fired up, he’ll talk about anything and everything, and some days he’s subdued. That’s how he was in that class,” Minshew said. “But I wouldn’t be surprised at all if he came back this next class and rattles off 100 stories and has everyone rolling laughing.”

Or maybe he’ll just ask them if they have any ideas about the laundry in Cambodia.

(Top photo courtesy of Washington State Athletics)