Mike Leach always had an eye for SEC talent — even when he was coaching in Division II. When he ran the offense for Hal Mumme at Valdosta State in the early 1990s, he kept driving two hours north on Interstate 75 because he had found a player at Peach County High in Fort Valley who moved like lightning with the ball in his hands. The guy was a little undersized, and Leach prayed this would keep the SEC and ACC schools off the scent.

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Leach explained that when he went up that way to recruit, he would eat at the Hooters in Warner Robins. Back then, Vince Gill was one of the biggest names in country music. And back then, just as he does now, Mike Leach looked an awful lot like Vince Gill.

The staff at the Hooters thought Leach was Gill, and Leach never bothered to explain that he was a D-II coordinator trying to convince Jacquez Green to come play for him. If you recognize that name, you already know the bad news. Steve Spurrier and the Florida Gators caught the scent and scooped up Green, who drove right past Valdosta to Gainesville and became a star receiver. But there was one piece of good news — at least for one Middle Georgia hospitality industry worker. “There was a waitress who thought she had served Vince Gill a bunch of times,” Leach once told me.

As of Thursday, Leach will be the guy coaching the SEC school. He and Mumme introduced the Air Raid to the wider college football world at Kentucky, and Leach has always remained convinced that his version of it could win long-term in the SEC. Now he’ll get his chance to prove his theory at Mississippi State.

In the process, we’ll all be treated to the Thanksgiving night tradition we never knew we needed.

Mike Leach versus Lane Kiffin in the Egg Bowl.

That matchup was handed to us in an upside-down, pirate-themed cowbell on Thursday. So were these new annual games.

Mike Leach vs. Nick Saban

Mike Leach vs. Ed Orgeron

This gentleman speaks for all of us …

God I love this stupid, stupid sport.

— Bryan Mac (@Bry_Mac) January 9, 2020

Will this work for the Bulldogs? History says yes. Leach has succeeded in two far-flung Power 5 outposts with marginal history already. Texas Tech has a .540 winning percentage without Leach and a .661 winning percentage (84-43) with him. Washington State had a .494 winning percentage without Leach and a .539 winning percentage (55-47) with him, and that includes the three years it took to dig out from Paul Wulff’s disastrous tenure.

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Mississippi State isn’t a disaster. Joe Moorhead won 14 games there in two seasons before getting fired last Friday. That, in and of itself, was a little weird because just 10 years ago winning 14 games in two seasons (and going 2-0 against Ole Miss) would have been cause for celebration in Starkville. But Dan Mullen, who left for Florida after the 2017 season, raised expectations considerably in his nine seasons at Mississippi State. He made something extremely difficult — winning consistently in Starkville — seem fairly routine.

Moorhead’s hiring might have been a mistake in hindsight, but it was universally applauded at the time. He was a great coordinator at Penn State who had CEO experience after a successful run as Fordham’s head coach. Yet he didn’t seem to fit in Starkville. He inherited a senior starting quarterback (Nick Fitzgerald) and didn’t seem to know how to use him for the first half of his first season. Then he brought in his own guy (Penn State graduate transfer Tommy Stevens), who struggled to stay healthy. Eventually, freshman Garrett Shrader took over. But Shrader got knocked out of the Music City Bowl by teammate Willie Gay during an altercation in the days leading up to the game. That, plus an academic fraud scandal that resulted in staggered suspensions that left the Bulldogs without multiple players during weeks of this season, helped hasten the exit of Moorhead, who said after winning the Egg Bowl that they’d have to “drag my Yankee ass out of here.”

Last Friday, they did. And though Leach is a huge name inside and outside college football — he’s been the subject of a “60 Minutes” profile and a Michael Lewis profile in The New York Times Magazine — his hire feels like an admission by Mississippi State athletic director John Cohen that Cohen, the Bulldogs’ longtime baseball coach before he became AD, understands his football program’s place in the universe. Leach is a coach who makes teams punch up, and no matter how good the Bulldogs got under Mullen or get under Leach, they’ll probably always need to punch up at Alabama, Auburn and LSU.

Mississippi State is like Texas Tech and Washington State in that it is one of the more remote campuses in its league. But it is different in its proximity to talent. The state of Mississippi is rich with players, and it’s close enough to Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia and northern Florida to attract players from those areas. Also, the Mississippi junior college system — which the coach at Mississippi State is expected to mine — can provide ready access to players from other places who may have needed a little extra work coming out of high school.

Of all people, Leach should understand the kind of gems that can be found in Mississippi. One of his favorite quarterbacks was Gardner Minshew, who spent one record-breaking year with Leach after graduating from East Carolina. Where did Minshew grow up? Brandon, Miss. Unsatisfied with his recruitment out of high school, he went to Northwest Mississippi Community College. That led to the East Carolina scholarship. But who knows? Had Leach been around earlier, maybe Minshew and his mustache would have been slinging touchdown passes in Starkville.

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Leach will enter the league facing doubts about whether his offense can succeed in the most cutthroat division in college football. He’ll also do it at the place that spends the least on football in the SEC West, according to figures provided to the U.S. Department of Education for the 2017-18 school year.

Texas A&M: $82.6 million

Alabama: $62.9 million

Arkansas: $44.6 million

Auburn: $43.6 million

LSU: $31.5 million

Ole Miss: $30.2 million

Mississippi State: $23.2 million

But least is relative. Washington State spent $20 million last year. And look how close Mississippi State is to LSU, which is playing for the national title on Monday. At a certain point, you’re just rich. And everyone in the SEC is rich at the moment and about to get richer when Disney/ESPN kicks in a few more hundred million a year to buy the SEC’s top game each weekend in a deal that will replace the bargain CBS currently gets. Leach has never been at a place with this kind of resources — monetary or natural.

Leach has never been in a place with so many future NFL players on the opposing defenses. But he’s also never been at a school that can land the kind of talent Mississippi State can. The Bulldogs had three first-round draft picks in the 2019 draft — which is part of the reason everyone was so mad about Moorhead’s 8-5 record in 2018. Since 2011, Mississippi State has had 14 players chosen in the first three rounds of the draft. In that same span, Washington State had three such players. Texas Tech also had three. The talent pool is much deeper at Mississippi State, but the competition is also much tougher.

But that’s what Leach wanted. He has always wanted to show the Air Raid could win at the highest level. The key to whether he can prove that likely will lie in how well he selects his staff. When Leach had Alex Grinch running his defense at Washington State, the Cougars were outstanding. Tracy Claeys had a decent first season as Washington State’s defensive coordinator in 2018, but he resigned midway through a disastrous 2019. The Bulldogs will be able to recruit future NFL players to their defense. If Leach hires the correct person to coach them, Mississippi State could be just as formidable as it was when Mullen worked there.

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We know the offense will work. We know Leach will find quarterbacks and receivers who can break records. If he staffs the defense appropriately, the Bulldogs may be able to continue to outpunch their weight and live in the manner to which they had become accustomed under Mullen.

Leach could always spot SEC talent. Now he’ll have a chance to coach it.

No matter what happens, it’s going to be an adventure. And a few more servers might think they’re handing wings to Vince Gill.

(Photo: Jaime Valdez / USA Today )