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Nick Aliotti vs. Mike Leach: The weirdest Pac-12 feud

What is your take on the Nick Aliotti-Mike Leach situation? Does Aliotti have a point or is this just a bizarre rant? If football teams are behind by a lot and have no chance to win, should they still be going all-out for points?

Steve Dykes

Jack Follman, Pacific Takes: It's pretty ridiculous. I know that Leach's strategy was kind of ridiculous but when you are a coach for a program that built themselves up by running as many plays as possible, you kind of lose your card to call out people for doing the exact same thing just because they are losing. I get why he was frustrated, the Ducks could have left their starters in and put up more points if they wanted to, but didn't but I don't blame Leach for what he did. I hate "unwritten rules" in sports take a look at their game against UCLA as an example of why you don't simply throw in the towel when the other team lets up. Also, he simply may have been trying to get his offense and Halliday some more confidence before they head into some more winnable games.

Jason Bartel, Arizona Desert Swarm: Based on what's happened since, I think everyone involved thinks it was a bizarre rant. I'm OK with a team still going all-out for points to the very end. If you're a team like Washington State where you're trying to establish a new culture, you need to use every second of a game to get work in and get all the kinks worked out.

Josh Schlichter, Pacific Takes: In the heat of the moment Aliotti was probably a little ticked off and that's understandable, but I really don't agree with him. To Mike Leach, a perfect game is one in which he doesn't run the ball at all, so passing the ball until the bitter end is exactly what Aliotti should have expected. The Cougs definitely need some more confidence in their offense and running it against Oregon's scout team was probably Leach's way of salvaging something from the beat-down they took from the Ducks. Again, I didn't see anything wrong with how Leach called plays in the waning drives of the game, but apparently Allioti really wanted to get out of the press box early.