Mike Leach picked his team captain because of his ‘Price Is Right’ experience

There are many reasons to choose someone as your football team’s captain. There’s locker-room leadership, of course, big-play ability and the intimidation factor: Sending your biggest, meanest guy out there for the coin flip is sure to send a message to the other team’s captains.

Or you could be like Washington State Coach Mike Leach and pick your captain solely because he’s been on “The Price Is Right.”

Leach’s logic here actually is quite sound. What does the captain really do besides go out there and pick heads or tails? So why not go with a guy who already has shown off his picking skills on a nationally televised game show.

“We really only need one guy” to be captain, Leach said Monday. “And he’s gotta be smart enough to call heads or tails, that’s it. So then I thought about, ‘Well, should I get the biggest guy on the team or the littlest guy on the team?’ And then I thought, ‘Well, Jamal Morrow was on “The Price Is Right,” and was fairly lucky and went to the final round and almost won the sucker.’ And so I figure, ‘Well, Jamal Morrow’s a lucky guy and plus he’s got a pretty good energy to him and stuff like that, so why not Jamal Morrow.’ And so Jamal Morrow goes out and did have an amazing knack for winning the toss. … I don’t know what his record is but it’s something incredible.”

- FWBP Digital Partners -

Morrow, a fourth-year junior running back from California, was selected for “The Price Is Right” as a freshman in 2013 after waiting in line for about five hours with his mother. He won his one-bid round and lost in pricing game but eventually spun the big wheel well enough to advance to the Showcase Showdown, where his guess on package that included a car and an iMac was about $400 off the mark. Still, he walked away with about $2,000 worth of clothes.

“I tried not to think about what I didn’t win,” he told the Daily Evergreen back in 2013. “Instead I thought about what I did win.”

As for how he goes about picking heads or tails for the Cougars?

“Gotta feel what way the wind blows and see if the coin is gold or silver,” he tweeted.