Tom Peters blogged about a terrific article from last Sunday's New York Times magazine (reg reqd) -- Coach Leach Goes Deep, Very Deep. Peters likens Leach's strategy to the thesis of Blue Ocean Strategy authors Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne: "Value innovation is about making the competition irrelevant by creating uncontested market space. We argue that beating the competition within the confines of the existing industry is not the way to create profitable growth."

Mike Leach takes the mildly talented players that are available for him to recruit after the big-name schools such as Texas, Texas A&M and Oklahoma are through cherry-picking the best high-school football prospects in Texas, and he coaches them to brilliance by upending traditional football conventions such as placement of offensive linemen, use of clock time, and offensive balance (running vs passing). The conventional way of practicing football offense is to recruit talented guys and throw to them. One of Leach's offensive methods is to throw to as many receivers as possible during the game. This throws off the other team's defense and makes them work harder. Essentially Leach is putting more of the field into play, making the defense guard dwhat would ordinarily be open space on the field.

Texas Tech wins games by using other teams' strengths against them. An example: Do they have a defensive line full of huge scary guys who hit hard? Huge scary guys don't run fast, so run an offense whose main purpose is to make the huge scary guys on the defense run faster and harder. When they get tired, they won't be effective and then you'll score points.

This is an excellent story, well-written and well worth reading. You might also think about watching Texas Tech in the Cotton Bowl, to see if you can spot Leach's strategy. Tech will play Alabama, a team with a defense ranked extremely high. This may be a better matchup than any bowl except the Rose Bowl.

Disclaimer/side note: I went to Alabama and my boss went to Texas Tech. Hopefully we'll still be friends on Jan. 3!!

(Image source: Scout.com)