Rumors are flying abound that New Mexico coach Mike Locksley will be fired after the New Mexico State game and will be replaced by Mike Leach. That would breathe some life into the inept New Mexico program, but these are pretty wild rumors.
Locksley is on the hot seat, but this looks to be premature; however the original source Gerges Scott who is a former executive producer of University of New Mexico Lobo TV sports programming and a long-time news producer for KRQE-TV reported the Locksley for Leach on his Facebook page.
Another report, came from KOB-FM about Leach's firing (the tweet has been deleted):
"Rumors coming from our sister station 770 KKOB that UNM Lobos football coach Mike Locksley will be fired after the game at NMSU on October 9th, and replaced with ANOTHER controversial coach!"
The Albuquerque Journal is saying that Scott was told by unnamed news sources. Have to love those sources:
Locksley was hired by current New Mexico Athletic Director Paul Krebs, who late Wednesday denied to the Journal that Locksley's job was in jeopardy. Krebs said, "He's our coach, period."
It's worth noting that current UNM president David Schmidly was president of Texas Tech and involved in the hiring of [Mike] Leach at that school in 2000.
Leach, who is currently serving as a college football game analyst for CBS Sports, has a wrongful termination lawsuit against Texas Tech pending. Will that current lawsuit affect Leach's ability to take a coaching job next month? We may soon find out.
The president situation is interesting, because the same type situation surrounded when Urban Meyer left Utah for Florida. Bernie Machen was the president at Utah when he hired Urban Meyer from Bowling Green, and also was the president of Florida when he broughy Meyer to coach at Florida.
After this initial report denials are coming from all directions, and they started with Leach's attorney Tim Liggett:
"There is zero truth to these reports. None. You can quote me on that," the Lubbock-based attorney said. "There have been no discussions with anyone [regarding potential future openings] as far as I know. And I would know."
Liggett said he spoke to Leach's agent, IMG's Gary O'Hagan, earlier today and there was no talk of New Mexico or any other school for that matter. "That's something that would've come up in the conversation," Liggett chuckled.
Mike Leach himself chimed in on this topic:
Mike Leach just told me this is the first he's heard of the New Mexico rumor.
brady ackerman
bradyack
Mike Locksley very well could be fired with his 1-14 record if he continues to bring down the New Mexico program any further, but as of now the Mike Leach to New Mexico rumors are on hold. Oh, and do not forget the other troubles of ageism, sexual harassment, punching a coach, and black mail.
Stay tuned to see if anything else develops from this quick developing story/rumor.
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