Houston ? Mack Brown looked oh so cool in a silky burnt-orange polo shirt emblazoned with the Longhorns’ symbol. Kevin Steele appeared as if he was headed to a corporate board meeting in his dark pinstriped suit.

Mike Leach?

“I normally look like hell,” the Texas Tech coach joked Friday in his blue blazer and loose-fitting khakis.

Leach recalled literally bumping into R.C. Slocum at an airport recently and noted how the Texas A&M coach looked so crisp, while he looked like he just rolled out of bed.

“‘Well, hello, coach Leach,”‘ said Leach, sticking out his chest and imitating Slocum’s booming voice.

“I don’t know how he does it,” Leach said with a chuckle.

It was one of several anecdotes the third-year Red Raiders coach related at the Big 12 football media days on Friday that left a ballroom full of reporters in stitches.

I don’t know how Leach did it. Kept his sense of humor, that is. After all, things haven’t quite worked out lately as he probably imagined they would when he agreed to take over Texas Tech’s football program.

When he arrived at Lubbock’s favorite college in 2000, it was, like most other Big 12 schools, a football school. Last year, however, it turned into a basketball school almost overnight when Leach’s boss, athletic director Gerald Myers, hired a good friend, the legendary and sometimes bombastic basketball coach Bob Knight.

Leach didn’t want to talk much Friday about the shifting of the soil under his feet.

“I just try to zero in on the football part and go,” he said.

Clearly, though, he hasn’t been happy about it.

For example, Leach suggested that he didn’t have much to do with a football schedule that he doesn’t much like. The Red Raiders kick off at Ohio State on Aug. 24. Then they play 12 consecutive weekends starting at SMU on Sept. 7.

While Leach was on vacation last month, his boss announced that the football program was way over budget with two months left in the fiscal year, three hundred grand over budget.

So there was Leach on Friday, talking up his entry to the 2002 college football season as only he can.

He said it had more toughness and pointed to running back Foy Munlin from Dallas’ Kimball High School as an example. Munlin accidentally let a weightlifting bar, weighted down with several slabs of iron, crash onto his face. It hit him so hard, Leach demonstrated, that it knocked out a couple of Munlin’s teeth. But did Munlin stop? No, Leach said proudly.

Looking back on the moment, Leach chuckled. He’s gaining more experience at laughing through pain.