Bucknell University Athletics
Mike Leatherman Leads Bison with a Blue-Collar Approach
11/4/2003 7:00:00 AM | Football
Nov. 4, 2003
By Andrew Borders
Introduce yourself to Mike Leatherman. Ask him what position he plays.
"Linebacker," he says.
As you suppress the puzzled look on your face, go ahead with your follow-up question. He anticipates it as though it were an opposing offense's next play.
Aren't you a little small for a linebacker?
After a slight roll of the eyes and a smirk that shows he's been asked and told the same countless times before, he explains he's more of a combination linebacker-defensive back, or a "knocker" in Bucknell's football parlance. Unlike those six-foot-four, 250-pound "traditional" run-clogging linebackers of whom Leatherman is a half-foot and a cattle farm worth of cheeseburgers short, Leatherman's job is to read the offense's play, and stop the run as well as the pass.
The five-foot-ten, 205-pound senior co-captain may not look like the stereotypical linebacker at first glance. But as he has been saying all year, Bison head coach Tim Landis reminds all the skeptics not to judge his players because their uniforms may not be as snug as those of other school's athletes.
"It's the little guys with the beady eyes who are really going to hit you," Landis says. At one o'clock on Saturdays, Leatherman's eyes look mighty beady, and once-doubting opponents now know that he can put quite a lick on anyone in a different-colored jersey.
It has been the blue-collar Leatherman's play and leadership that have helped propel the Bison to their whiplash-inducing turnaround from last year's 2-9 squad. But the size of his mouth does not make up for his frame. And in an era of athletes who make demands on their coaches and call out their teammates for all to see, Leatherman's approach is quite refreshing.
"I do get loud sometimes before games, but I don't feel like I have to go around and motivate guys. They should be self-motivated, otherwise they aren't going to be very good players out on the field," says Leatherman, who has never missed a varsity game in his career, a streak currently at 40 straight contests.
His former coach, the late Tom Gadd, knew a good player when he saw one. It only took a swayed Bucknell assistant coach, five of Leatherman's John Carroll High School coaches, and a snowed-in Denny's restaurant to make Leatherman's signing with Bucknell official.
"We were in the middle of a snowstorm, all the schools were closed and many of the roads were impassable, so I called my high school coach, who brought most of his assistant coaches, and Coach Gadd met me at a Denny's. He said he'd never seen so many coaches so convinced on a player before," Leatherman recounts.
Four years later, everyone in Orange and Blue is sold on Leatherman, too. He is having a breakout season in 2003, with 43 solo tackles and 64 total stuffs, putting him second on the 2003 Bison squad to Kevin Ransome, who leads the Patriot League with 85 tackles. He had 78 total tackles coming into this season, playing primarily at free safety and on special teams.
Over those four years, Leatherman has shepherded a team through difficult times, most notably the loss of the coach who recruited him. Returning for this year's squad, he also served as an integral part of the transition from Tom Gadd and his coaching staff to Tim Landis and his assistants.
 Mike Leatherman moved from safety to linebacker last spring.  |
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"People didn't know how to act last year. Coach Landis came in, set his goals for this year, and it went smoothly. No one on this team wants what happened last year to happen again," Leatherman says.
Through the first eight weeks of the season, Leatherman and his teammates are fulfilling their own wishes. They doubled their win total from the 2002 campaign and had a watershed 31-10 win at defending league-champion Fordham that will remain in the minds of Bison fans for years to come. Picked to finish last in the league in the conference's preseason poll, Leatherman and his teammates are currently positioned instead in third place at 2-1.
Perhaps Leatherman earned his knack for dissecting opposing offenses from another rather complicated hobby, serving as the Bucknell football team's de facto auto mechanic.
"My dad and I like to work on cars," Leatherman says. His teammates aren't shy about coming to him with questions about their own rides, and Leatherman happily admits to surgeoning his own car and those of his teammates as only a true grease monkey could.
Leatherman does plan on making a career out of working with his hands, though his automotive talents will remain a hobby. Though he is a management major, his neckties will stay in his closet, reserved for occasions where they will actually be useful.
"I'm going to be looking for a good job as a construction manager. A lot of the work I've done has been with concrete, like basements and driveways," Leatherman explains. But he won't be showing blueprints or fancy miniature models of skyscrapers to budget-conscious corporate types. Instead, in much the same way he works now, he will be the one toiling at the job site every day as the foreman of his construction crew.
Showing that football is just one of many areas in which Leatherman flourishes, he speaks of his most recent construction project, using his interest in concrete works to build a sidewalk and patio as a birthday gift for his mother. Judging by his proud tone, the project came out much better than something only a mother could love.
If his talent in the construction field turns out as well as his career on the gridiron, nailing opposing receivers and running backs for the Orange and Blue will be far from the last success Leatherman enjoys.
