Like Virginia’s Al Groh, who spent one season as a Texas Tech assistant, Red Raiders head coach Mike Leach has been on the campus of his team’s Gator Bowl opponent.

As a tourist.

“I think I was on the staff at Kentucky at the time,” Leach said. “We went to Monticello, visited the campus, looked at all the Thomas Jefferson stuff. I wondered what it would be like to live in one of those little [Lawn] rooms with the fireplaces.

“It looked like a cool deal. We stopped to read the plaques on the door. I seem to remember walking through their weight room next to the football practice field, but mostly what jumped out at me was the museum quality of the inner campus.”

As football coaches go, clearly Leach is a little different.

For one thing, he has a law degree. For another, he did not play college football, one of five such coaches in Division I-A football this year. The others were Notre Dame’s Charlie Weis, Kansas’ Mark Mangino, Navy’s Paul Johnson and Texas A&M’s Dennis Franchione. Franchione was dismissed after the season and Johnson moved to Georgia Tech.

Leach frequently has been described as a protege of current New Mexico State coach Hal Mumme, Leach’s pass-happy boss at Valdosta State and Kentucky.

He also had the benefit of attending Brigham Young during the early 1980s.

“I broke my ankle in high school, went to Brigham Young and figured I’d go to law school and start playing rugby,” Leach said. “I watched a lot of games [at BYU]. Talked to the staff a lot of times when Lavell Edwards was there. They were a major influence.”

Leach, 46, was born in Susanville, Calif., but graduated from high school in Cody, Wyo., which he considers his hometown.

Becoming a coach was a gradual process, said Leach, who went from BYU to Pepperdine, where he received his law degree at the age of 25.

“I wasn’t ready to hang up the shingle and put on suits,” Leach said. “I figured I would coach for a year or two and get it out of my system and then go back and practice law. I’ve been coaching ever since.”

Leach will occasionally catch an episode of “Boston Legal” and has read two of the books by John Grisham — the lawyer turned successful novelist who makes his home in Charlottesville.

“I’ve read Gerry Spence’s books,” said Leach, whose Wyoming heritage is shared by Spence, one of America’s most renowned trial lawyers. “The type of law he did, suing the corporations on behalf of the little guy, appealed to me. But, I tend to read other stuff and not law stuff.”

At the suggestion that coaches don’t have time to read many books, Leach said, “Actually, sadly, I did.”

What’s sad about that?

Leach, who spent one year as the offensive coordinator at Oklahoma under Bob Stoops after leaving Kentucky, is in his eighth season as the head coach at Texas Tech.

The Red Raiders broke school records in virtually every passing category in his first year, 2000, and have exceeded those numbers in each subsequent season.

Texas Tech attempts more than 57 passes per game and ranks first in Division I-A in passing offense (475.6 ypg) and second in total offense (537 ypg), but Leach is slow to embrace the term “innovator.”

“I can’t really say what’s been invented,” he said. “I can’t say we’ve [Leach and Mumme] invented a ton of stuff. We’ve just stolen and borrowed and adjusted what a bunch of other people have done. The hardest thing in football is making choices [about] what you’re going to run because there’s way too much stuff out there.

“It’s funny, because Sammy Baugh lives right up the road. He’s 90-something. When he played for TCU, they threw it around a ton with a guy named Dutch Meyer. In some form or fashion, a lot of this has been floating around for a long time.”