Mike Leach said this week he was ready to sign a new five-year contract with Texas Tech before the university tossed in new terms to its final offer that the coach refused to agree to.

What were these terms? Well, Leach was happy to tell ESPN what they were:

The aforementioned terms, Leach detailed, were:

• That if he is fired, his contract is only guaranteed for 12 percent. Texas coach Mack Brown, Oklahoma's Bob Stoops, Kansas State's Bill Snyder and Kansas' Mark Mangino are all guaranteed for 100 percent, while the league average is 55 percent. Leach's current contract puts his guaranteed portion at 40 percent.

• Leach's current buyout, which is $500,000, would increase to $1.5 million (Brown, Stoops, Snyder and Mangino do no have buyouts.)

• Leach would have to receive permission from Texas Tech to speak with another school or risk owing Tech $1.5 million.

• All of the money from his personal speaking properties, whether he makes an appearance or authors a book on his life in Wyoming, would go to Tech.

In fairness, Leach was happy to detail the information because it had already been made public. Apparently, both Texas Tech and Leach's representatives kind of forgot that, since Tech is a public university, information on his hiring and firing is subject to open-records laws.

LUBBOCK, Texas -- Contentious negotiations on a new contract for Texas Tech coach Mike Leach have stalled largely on questions of what happens if he tries to leave the Red Raiders.

Leach and his agents have taken issue with termination and buyout clauses and a provision that would trigger the coach's firing and a $1.5 million penalty if he interviewed for another job without permission, according to documents released by the school Friday.

It's that latter provision that really seems to be the biggest sticking point. As ESPN's Tim Griffin wrote on February 6:

Leach's existing contract doesn't penalize or restrict him from discussing another job opportunity with a third party. Tech's new offer dictates that Leach would have to be granted permission by Myers before talking to others about employment opportunities. If he didn't abide by that rule, Leach could be terminated for cause. Leach's agents have learned that several Big 12 schools require notice, but none allow the coach to be fired for cause. Myers explained his position on this in a Jan. 26 e-mail to Baldwin that read, in part, "This prior approval would not be withheld unreasonably, but we want you as his agent to stop shopping Coach Leach everywhere and him not saying anything to deny that he's looking for another job."

Emphasis added, because that seems to be the real point. Just after this season, Leach went up to Washington to talk about that job, did not deny that he was interested in it, and basically left Tech dangling to see if Washington was going to offer him more money.

It's somewhere between the 3rd and 10th time that Leach has done that, I think, and Tech is getting pretty tired of it, so they're trying to write in his contract that he needs permission to go apply for other jobs, which Tech is willing to state, in writing, "will not be withheld unreasonably." They want him continually leaving the school dangling to be cause for dismissal, and therefore are lowering his guarantee (dispute point #1). They want him to stop dallying with other schools so they want to increase the amount he pays to buy out his contract (point #2), and they want to grant permission (point #3). Point #4, I suspect, is related to Leach saying that these trips are for "personal speaking" reasons as a way of getting out of the fact that his agents are essentially floating him as a candidate for every Division I FBS coaching job that becomes available. (Leach's agents deny this has happened, but the telling word is that they'll only say that the coach has had only one "direct job interview" in his nine-season tenure. They did not rule out that he had "indirectly" floated his name for other vacancies, as Tech alleges.)

If Mike Leach really wants to stay at Texas Tech, as he keeps indicating, he can walk the walk and stop giving the impression that he'll flee Lubbock as soon as any large school is willing to pay him a similar amount of money. Since he has consistently refused to do this, despite being told it was a problem, he can try his luck on the open market or he can pay for his actions with a more restrictive contract. But for him to pretend this isn't all about his behavior? That's bunk.

In two simple parts:

1. Wal-Mart keeps strong profits and increased sales during economic downturn by driving everyone's wages down.

2. In spite of this, Wal-Mart lays off career employees at its Bentonville, AR headquarters.

The FDA enters the 21st century with a Flash widget that shows you the latest products recalled due to salmonella-prone peanut butter!

I wasn't going to embed it here, but heck, why not: it's useful information, even if it's in Flash:

The most eye-opening thing? Try searching for "organic" in the widget. Marion Nestle was shocked by another "natural" food name in there:

The recall that I find most surprising comes from the Hain Celestial group, which just called back nearly 900,000 pounds (!) of frozen chicken products because they contain peanut butter produced at the Georgia plant that caused all the problems. Frozen chicken satay? Why is peanut butter in chicken?

And if you locals think we don't live in a national food economy, try searcing the widget for "Braum", as in "Braum's." Yes, our local chain of ice cream and dairy stores has recalled "Premium Peanut Butter Pretzel Ice Cream" because the peanuts or peanut butter in the confection came from the Georgia plant, even though the ice cream is supposedly made about 25 miles from where I'm sitting.

Wouldn't it be nice if the last administration hadn't spent the past eight years removing all the inspection and enforcement around food safety, because it interfered with the magic free market? Ah, memories.