STARKVILLE, Miss. — The first time Mike Leach arrived at the seafood and soul food restaurant called WTF, he ordered the honey and gold chicken wings somehow.
“Extra crispy,” he told Shan Suber, the owner and head chef.
“Extra crispy?” Great said. “That’s how I like my wings too!”
Since that reunion in 2020, Leach, the former Mississippi State football coach and Suber, a black single mother from the Mississippi Delta, grew close. Their relationship turned into a friendship, and Leach went from frequent customer to confidant.
Suber cooked for himself and his friends at the coach house, hosted them for parties at his restaurant, and drank with them late into the night, as Leach loved to do—stories flowed and spirits flowed. He especially loved his Dungeness crab, lobster tails, salmon and those extra crispy wings.
Leach poses for a photo with Suber and his favorite honey golden wing sauce.
Courtesy of Shan Suber
“Best cook in Starkville, Mississippi!” Leach once exclaimed in a video posted to social media.
On a day the people of Starkville, the Mississippi State community and the college football nation remember the coach, a little-known small-town business owner reveals a story about Leach a week after his death. .
He saved his restaurant.
“I was on edge. I was going into debt,” recalls Suber. He helped us stay open. I am eternally grateful.
Given the post-COVID-19 inflation and lack of workers, Suber was about to close the business in September when Leach heard the news, came to the restaurant one day, and wrote her a check. She wants to keep the amount private, but it’s covered by bills and leases for at least two months.
We were hanging by a thread. I didn’t ask for anything,” she says. He did it voluntarily. I don’t know why he chose me.
Suber was among the crowd that gathered at Humphrey Coliseum on Tuesday for a memorial celebrating the coach’s life. He died of heart complications on December 12. 13 in news that rocked the college football world.
Some of the industry’s most prominent figures attended the rally at the Mississippi State campus, including USC coach Lincoln Riley, Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin, former coach of Oklahoma Bob Stoops, former Kentucky coach Hal Mumme, Houston coach Dana Holgorsen and TCU coach Sonny Dykes. . Former Washington State quarterback Gardner Minshew, a Mississippian native, paid tribute to the coach with a speech, as did Mississippi State quarterback Will Rogers and SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey.
They remembered an eccentric, eccentric man who was known off the pitch for his fascination with life and on the pitch for a passing-heavy offense that revolutionized football.
Minshew, now an NFL quarterback, speaks on Tuesday.
Barbara Gauntt/Clarion Ledger/USA TODAY Network
As the memorial opened on Tuesday, a familiar and appropriate tune played over the Humphrey Coliseum speakers: “My Way” by Frank Sinatra. People close to Leach describe how he lived his life right down to the very lyrics of the song.
“He was truly one of a kind,” Stoops told the crowd. A deep thinker. An independent thinker. Bold enough to always do it his way, however unconventional.
Mumme launched into a story about the founding of the Air Raid offense, which happened in 1991 while on a Florida road trip with Leach. The trip ended with the pair at a Key West bar in what became Leach’s favorite hangout: Captain Tony’s Saloon.
During the memorial, a video of country singer Toby Keith played on the jumbotron. “He’s a guy you wanted to have a beer with!” Keith exploded from his friend Leach.
The event was broadcast live on the SEC Network. That didn’t stop Minshew from swearing at a cackling audience, which pointed to his mentor and former coach. “He really didn’t care what people thought,” Minshew said. He was definitely not politically correct. It was him. You respect that.
A nocturnal robot, Leach was known for phoning his friends late and keeping them on the line long after bedtime. “Let’s reach out and call after midnight every once in a while in Mike’s honor,” Stoops told the crowd.
Leach was an inquisitive man who was interested in a wide variety of subjects. From the American economy to the grizzlies, from the Navajos to Geronimo. Gary O’Hagan, Leach’s longtime agent and good friend, often received particular calls from the coach.
He would ask me three or four times a year, ‘Do you think there’s a Loch Ness Monster? What about Bigfoot?’ recalls O’Hagan. Mike Leach wanted to believe in these things. He wanted to believe that anything is possible. He was going to live his life as if anything was possible.
It was a gray day in Starkville. Clouds dropped raindrops amid the cool temperatures. At the gates of Davis Wade Stadium, two folding tables held dozens of flowers and gifts left in memory of the coach: a message scribbled on a cowbell; an empty bourbon bottle; a box of Copenhagen snuff, which was Leach’s favorite.
Behind the doors, a brown pirate flag flapped in the wind.
Inside the Colosseum, white flowers and photos adorned the stage, along with the glittering Egg Bowl trophy, which Leach captured in his final act as coach – a 24-22 upset against Ole Miss.
“There’s a ball game going on in heaven,” said Stoops, who hired Leach as his offensive coordinator while in Oklahoma. “It’s fourth and second of his 40, and you know he’s going there.”
A day before the memorial, Suber, 38, opened his restaurant – closed on Mondays – for a reporter. She pointed to the walk-in window where Leach ordered these extra-crispy wings during their first meeting during the pandemic. He became such a regular that year that Suber let him into the restaurant despite COVID-19 restrictions.
Suber’s restaurant, WTF, was one of Leach’s favorite places to dine.
Ross Dellenger/Sports Illustrated
The restaurant is located alongside the Dr. Martin Luther King jr. Drive, in an area of Starkville somewhat removed from the downtown scene, the brightly lit bars of the Cotton District and the hills of campus.
Suber claims to be one of the few black women to own a restaurant in the area. She learned to cook from her grandmother Mattie while growing up in the Delta town of Greenville. She opened WTF in 2015 with the intention of being different, hence her name. WTF stands for Where Food. Its signage and themes are designed to be shared on social networks. In fact, when it opened, it asked every customer to post at least five photos of their food on social platforms.
Its signage includes an “@” at the end of WTF.
“Where’s the food,” she said. “When he first arrived, I said to Mike, ‘You found the food, coach!'”
He also found a friend. Leach immediately gave Suber his number and the two began a text relationship, which evolved into a close friendship that went beyond food. She even weighed in on her training decisions. She remembers telling him once, “They’re gonna drop eight guys, and you gotta run that fucking ball!”
In many ways, Suber introduced Leach to Starkville culture and food. She calls Leach “high-end tequila.”
“He’s the good stuff,” she laughs. “Mike came over and talked to people in town. He wanted to know the city and the people of Starkville.
Suber and Leach grew close despite having different political backgrounds. Suber is a 38-year-old Democrat, while Leach, 61, supports former President Donald Trump. Suber says she does not allow political ideals to affect her personal relationships.
Neither does Leach. “He had time for anyone at any time,” Stoops said at the ceremony.
However, Leach has developed a perception due to his hot-headed nature, his friendship with Trump, and his vague words, especially on social media.
In the spring of 2020, the trainer took heat for posting a meme on Twitter that depicted a woman knitting a slipknot. Suber asked him about it. “It was a joke,” she said.
Okay, so he’s a Trump supporter. It’s his choice. Everyone has a choice,” she says. “That didn’t mean he was a bad person. We bonded over food. I don’t care what people think. Excuse my French!”
In September, when Leach learned that Suber was planning to shut down WTF, he wrote her this check. He never asked for a refund.
Today, the restaurant is doing well, but it’s still a struggle. Due to labor issues, it is only open four days a week instead of six days. She made around $200,000 in sales this year. Last year, she earned $750,000.
Suber never knew Leach was sick. She regularly prepared massive meals at his house. In fact, she cooked for Leach and his friends just a month ago. She and her assistant Gege Wells served lamb chops, salmon, lobster tails and stuffed shrimp.
Suber prepared meals for Leach at his home.
Courtesy of Shan Suber.
He never showed illness or said anything. He was fighting internally,” Suber says. “I didn’t think Mike was going to die. It’s still amazing.
However, several people in the state of Mississippi knew about it. The coach had endured pneumonia-like conditions for much of the season. They were so serious that staff members suggested she take time off. He refused.
After the season, he made at least one trip to Houston to see doctors, his relatives say. But no one expected what happened in December. On the 11th, when paramedics were called to his home for heart and respiratory problems. Leach was then airlifted to the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, where a day later he died.
“We were just with this man cooking Christmas dinner!” says Wells. “We are shocked.”
In the eyes of history, Leach will be best remembered as the man who spread the Air Raid offense across the sport, who trained some of the best quarterbacks and led far-flung places to big wins. Here in Starkville, he helped revive Mississippi State’s offense and sparked excitement at Davis Wade Stadium.
But about two miles from campus, tucked away in a more forgotten part of this small town, there’s a restaurant where its legacy lives on through honey-and-gold chicken wings.
Extra crispy.
.
Comments
Post a Comment