It's fair to say that college football fans have long been intrigued by Mike Leach and his offense, but that intrigue isn't limited within U.S. borders. A group of American football players and coaches from Keio University in Tokyo visited Washington State football practices spring last week to take in the Air Raid in person.
Former Hawaii defensive lineman David Stant, who coaches at Keio, brought his assistant and three quarterbacks to Pullman, wrote the Spokesman Review's Jacob Thorpe.
With college and NFL games more available than ever on Japanese TV, the sport is growing and so too is the desire to learn new strategies to gain an advantage (enter: The Air Raid).
"Now they have flag football and kids play at a younger age, so the parents are getting into it," Stant told Thorpe. "A lot of kids are coming to America to either study or go to school. So, it’s changed a lot of people's lives."
But the trip wasn't just meant to gather information on Washington State's offense. Stant and his assistants also wanted to pick the brains of the Cougars assistants about the other Pac-12 schools since teams in their league have started to borrow offenses and defenses from other Pac-12 teams.
"What we do is we actually start watching Oregon games in America, to see what they're trying to do, and see what defenses are doing against Oregon," Stant told Thorpe. "We also face a team that plays like Utah."