Dorm Report: Record-setting Halliday latest Leach prodigy

Philadelphia, PA (SportsNetwork.com) – Congratulations to Washington State quarterback Connor Halliday after he recently inserted himself into the NCAA record books.

On Oct. 4 against Pac-12 Conference foe California, a team which was 3-1 entering the meeting, Halliday lit up the sky with a staggering 70 pass attempts, of which 49 landed in friendly hands. Halliday tossed a total of six touchdowns in a game that saw 1,261 yards through the air alone, resulting in a total of 11 TDs, no interceptions and just a single sack between he and Cal quarterback Jared Goff.

Washington State controlled the action for close to 36 minutes in front of the hometown crowd and amassed 812 yards of total offense on 95 snaps, and yet the team came up short in a 60-59 final.

The game took more than four hours and the Cougars were flagged 12 times for a loss of 121 yards, but still the squad should have come away with the victory when you consider Halliday threw for 734 yards to set the NCAA’s FBS passing yardage record, exceeding the previous mark of 716 set by Houston’s David Klingler in 1990.

Having taken almost every single snap for the Cougars to this point, Halliday is averaging just over 60 pass attempts per contest, completing 67.8 percent, for an incredible 508.7 ypg and a total of 26 touchdowns. Because of his prolific efforts during the first half of the campaign, Halliday has an efficiency rating of 156.69, thanks in part to having thrown only seven interceptions in 369 chances.

Halliday, who owns three of the top six single-game passing efforts here in 2014, leads the nation in yards per game by more than 70 ypg. With 3,052 passing yards heading into this week’s action, the quarterback is more than 800 yards ahead of his closest competition, but the team as a whole is scoring only 38.0 ppg (27th nationally) and has a record of only 2-4. Of the two victories for WSU, one was a blowout versus FCS foe Portland State (59-21) and the other just a single-point triumph over conference rival Utah (28-27).

In his 19 games as Washington State’s gunslinger, Halliday has thrown for more than 7,600 yards and 60 touchdowns.

Unfortunately, Halliday and his teammates found out all too well that just because they are cogs in a historic offensive machine, by no means does that imply that tallies will be lining up in the win column.

When asked about his performance against Cal, Halliday down-played the effort because it failed to bring about a victory.

“It really doesn’t mean too much … it’ll be fun to look back on it when I’m 30 years old.”

Mike Leach, the coach known for his swashbuckling ways and aggressive passing attacks, has been refining his approach ever since he signed on as an offensive coordinator with Iowa Wesleyan a quarter century ago. He has made stops at Valdosta State, Kentucky and Oklahoma, all as an OC, before being handed the reins at Texas Tech in 2000.

After grooming former No. 1 NFL Draft pick Tim Couch with the Kentucky Wildcats, and also having a hand in creating the hype surrounding Oklahoma quarterback Josh Heupel during his one and only season in Norman, Leach embarked on a decade of action with Texas Tech in the highly competitive Big 12 Conference.

Leach was 84-43 overall with the Red Raiders, but just 47-33 in conference. He ended up the top of the division standings only once during his decade in Lubbock, making it to the Cotton Bowl following the 2008 campaign, although Tech ended up bowing to Ole Miss in that contest, 47-34.

When you have a scheme that is nicknamed the “Air Raid Offense”, clearly the competition is standing up and taking notice. But even with all the attention and record-setting efforts, Leach and his teams haven’t won much of anything of any real significance. The gimmicky approach makes for great headlines and highlight reels and is useful fodder for sports trivia nights at the local pub, but what has Leach ever really done beyond filling up a stat sheet?

Sure, the action is frantic and can be fantastic all at the same time, but at the end of a season, or a college career, the players he has commanded are little more than a headline/footnote in record books, and have little hope of cultivating a meaningful professional career.

Don’t get me wrong, it has to be thrilling for Heupel, Couch, Kliff Kingsbury, B.J. Symons and Graham Harrell to know that they are being mentioned in the same breath as some of the most accomplished college passers to ever take a snap, but once that university uniform has been tossed in the laundry for the final time, what happens to those signal callers who have become synonymous with Leach’s exploits?

Couch left Kentucky after his junior year because his draft stock was so high, the 1998 SEC Player of the Year being taken with the first overall pick by the Cleveland Browns. Ironically, Couch took over the Browns from another seminal college passer, Ty Detmer, but after five years in the league ended up with more interceptions (67) than passing TDs (64) and was labeled by some as a bust.

Heupel, a consensus All-American, the AP Player of the Year and the Walter Camp Award winner in 2000, led Oklahoma to the BCS National Championship with a 13-2 victory over Florida State in the Orange Bowl. The Heisman Trophy runner-up that year Heupel, who also had stops at Weber State and Snow College before arriving at Oklahoma, attempted to sign on with the Miami Dolphins as a sixth-round draft pick in 2001, but he failed to make the team.

Now the head coach at his alma mater, Kliff Kingsbury was another passing prodigy for Leach at Tech from the early days, establishing 39 school records, 12 Big 12 Conference records and seven FBS marks before leaving campus. Kingsbury was the poster child for journeymen football players as he made stops at New England, New Orleans, and with the New York Jets all in the NFL, before heading to the Cologne Centurions of the ill-fated NFL Europe, and finally the Montreal Alouettes of the Canadian Football League.

Aside from becoming the only Big 12 coach to begin his career with seven straight wins, Kingsbury had little to celebrate when it came to his professional exploits on the field, regardless of the country in which they took place.

Graham Harrell sat behind Cody Hodges for a season before getting his chance to become the latest pet passing project for Leach in 2006. In that, his sophomore season, Harrell threw for 4,555 yards, the most by any second-year performer in the Big 12, but that was met with a 7-5 overall record and an invitation to the 2006 Insight Bowl versus Minnesota.

Harrell locked up the Sammy Baugh Trophy, which recognizes the nation’s top passer, as a junior and a year later he was fourth in the Heisman voting and was named the winner of the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award. But after being the first NCAA player to have multiple 5,000-yard passing campaigns, the Texas native went undrafted and wound up signing with the Saskatchewan Roughriders of the CFL.

The Green Bay Packers eventually took a chance with Harrell in 2010, being signed in May, released in September and re-signed a day later to the practice squad. The prodigious college passer was also on the New York Jets roster for a few days in 2013 but was again released without fanfare.

In April of this year, Harrell was reunited with Leach on the WSU coaching staff.

And then there’s Symons, the NCAA’s single-season record holder for passing yards (5,833) which he set with the Red Raiders in 2003. Like Harrell and Kingsbury, Symons also took home the Baugh Trophy. Stemming from just the 2003 season, Symons set 11 individual FBS records, ranging from the most games with at least 400 passing yards (11), most passes attempted in a season (719), and total yards (5,976).

Symons was drafted by Houston in the seventh round of the 2004 draft before heading to the Frankfurt Galaxy of NFL Europe. The quarterback bounced back to the Chicago Bears for spell and then headed to Europe yet again with the Berlin Thunder in 2006. A year later, he was back on American soil with the Tampa Bay Storm of the AFL, but was released from his contract in 2009 before the team went bankrupt. The last known location of Symons was somewhere in the Lone Star State, involved in investment banking.

Sounds like Halliday has the right perspective on his recent achievement, but hopefully he’ll be able to somehow rise above the disappointing outcomes of his predecessors.

Categorized in: NCAA Football