Lyle Setencich was piecing together his new football staff at Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo in 1987 when he hired a fresh-faced kid who hadn't coached a lick in college to be in charge of his offensive line.

Little did Setencich know that 16 years later the same guy, Mike Leach, would end up naming him as Texas Tech's defensive coordinator.

Well, actually,  it might not have come as a huge shock.

"We had a guy on the staff back then, Bill Macdermott, who's now with Edmonton in the CFL who worked with Mike," Setencich said. "Mac came in my office one day after about three or four weeks and said ‘Lyle, this guy will be a big-time guy some day.'"

Setencich chuckles now when recollecting his stunned reaction to that proclamation. But long before he and Leach reunited after their only season together, he realized Macdermott was right.

"He's really smart," Setencich said of his boss.

Prior to being named Tech's head coach when he was just 38, Leach, now 43, spent one season as the offensive coordinator at Oklahoma. There, he mapped out and executed a spread-the-field, pass-oriented attack that elevated the Sooners from the worst offense in the Big 12 to the best.

Before coming to Norman, Leach spent 10 seasons developing his system as Hal Mumme's offensive coordinator at Kentucky, Division II Valdosta (Ga.) State and a tiny NAIA school, Iowa Wesleyan. At each stop, Leach's plan produced record-setting results.

"You knew he was very ambitious," Tech receivers coach Sonny Dykes said of Leach, whom he first worked with at Kentucky. "He's a guy that's always thinking of what to improve. Sometimes it drives you crazy as a coach, because you're thinking, ‘What's wrong with what we're doing?'

"He keeps you on your toes, and that's one of the great things about working for him. There's not a whole lot of drudgery."

Leach, one of the five current NCAA Division I-A coaches who never played college football, got some of his early ideas while attending Brigham Young, where he played club rugby and watched LaVell Edwards annually unleash one of the nation's top passing attacks. He also drew from watching the wide-open offenses of the Big Sky Conference, paying special attention to the quick-step game run at Idaho by Dennis Erickson, who's now the San Francisco 49ers coach.

Leach dryly jokes that he got into the coaching profession because, after graduating from BYU and then getting his law degree at Pepperdine, "I didn't have money to go to Europe and find myself."

Instead, he got his Master's degree in Sports Science/Coaching from the U.S. Sports Academy and grabbed a coach's whistle.

Never mind that his first job paid him $3,000 — a year.

"I liked coaching, and I was broke," Leach said. "Really, I just didn't want to get old and have any regrets at not having ever checked it out."

Tonight, Leach takes his third crack at trying to beat Nebraska.

In 2000, his first season at Tech, the Huskers whacked the Red Raiders 56-3. That game still represents the only one in which a Leach-coached Tech team failed to score a touchdown. One year later, though, the Red Raiders came to Lincoln and threw a major scare into NU before falling 41-31.

Earlier this week, a reporter on the Big 12 coaches teleconference asked Leach if there was a comment to be made on where college football offenses are heading, considering that since the last time Nebraska and Tech played, the Huskers looked more like the Red Raiders than vice-versa?

Leach, who loves to shrug off such questions, gave this response:

"I don't know. If this guy comes to the stadium and he goes around three times and then gets a hot dog, what does it mean? . … I don't know what any of that means. There's teams that run the ball a ton that do well, too. Nebraska decided to stir the pot and throw it more. I don't know. I'm not a big-picture guy."

Don't let Leach's quirkiness fool you. As head of the only program to post a winning record every year since the Big 12 began in 1996, he has a firm handle on the big picture.

And he likes the part he plays in it.

"I think so," Leach said when asked if coaching is as much fun for him now as when he first started. "That's why I've always stayed directly involved. I get to decide when periods end. My drills don't get stopped."

Reach Curt McKeever at 473-7441 or cmckeever@journalstar.com.