Three days before one of the biggest games of his career, Mike Leach is walking down the mean streets of Pullman, Washington.

"The dog's tail keeps wagging," he yells to a passerby. "It looked like a kid in the backseat waving at me, so I waved back. How about that?"

Those are words you won't read from another coach in America. These are attributed to the Washington State coach as he chats with an acquaintance on the street.

As noted, Leach apparently mistook a dog's tail for a child in a car. That seems to fit the coach's profile just about right.

"Are you the coach?" says the passerby.

Those are also words you would not hear from the average citizen of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, if Nick Saban walked down the street.

But Saban won't be caught walking anywhere because of the potential for being mobbed. Here for a 56-year-old coach in The Palouse?

"This is the quickest way and, of course, I walk to school so I can get something done," Leach says. "Walking to work, getting the phone calls done. Multi-task."

Amazing. In his sixth year at Wazzu, Leach is off to his best start as a coach (4-0) since 2008. Friday night's game against No. 5 USC is his biggest since that time and the program's biggest since its last Pac-10 championship in 2002.

All of it reflects Leach's renovation of two programs, both afterthoughts in their conferences. He first spent a decade shaping Texas Tech into a national story and sometimes a national power.

Those 2008 Red Raiders started 10-0 and rose to No. 2.

After being fired in 2009, he surfaced at Washington State in 2012, taking over a last-place program.

By Year 4 in 2015, the Cougs had a nine-win campaign. Since 2015, only USC, Utah, Stanford and Washington in the Pac-12 have won more games in a season.

Leach comes into Friday with the nation's most accurate quarterback and the Pac-12 leading passer (Luke Falk). A win against the Trojans pushes a Leach-coached team into the national conversation once again.

In reality, the streets of Pullman are neither mean nor particularly long. That's what allows Leach to walk to work in what he calls a "true college town."

On Friday night, Pullman will be rocking. For now, its coach is merely walking.

And he loves to walk. I know. A few years ago, I spent an entire day walking around Key West, Florida, on a Leach-guided tour. Eight hours, five miles and few watering holes later, I was back in my hotel room, exhausted. 

"You run into folks along the way," he said this week. "The guy next door to me has this big concrete Cougar in front of his house."

With that, he is off again. A multi-layered man and coach, Leach is famous for his admiration of Pirates, Geronimo and the Air Raid offense.

On that last subject, he is one the godfathers of the spread. In an age when almost everyone has stolen from his innovations, he is still innovative.

Friday marks another high point in his career. Eight years after being fired by Texas Tech, he still agonizes over money Leach says the school still owes him.

CBS Sports caught up to him this week to ask questions that would hopefully illicit some of Leach's famous quirky answers.

Editor's note: The answers below have been truncated for brevity.

CBS Sports: How often do you get recognized on the streets?

Mike Leach: "Pretty often. This guy [today] was a little more aggressive about talking. It'll happen again for sure."

CBS Sports: How big is Friday?

Leach: "Most teams are like this. We're still kind of a young team at various positions. We've seen what it's like when we don't play good. We'll see what's like when we do."

CBS Sports: How did you find Luke Falk? (The quarterback came to Wazzu as a preferred walk-on in 2013 and worked his way from seventh on the depth chart.)

Leach: "We were short on quarterback numbers. We needed to add another arm but then also wanted a guy you could potentially turn into a starter. It had to be a walk-on because all our scholarships [were] given away. That's kind of what you want to do with every quarterback.

"He'd been overlooked. The only thing he had going was to go to Cornell or go to our place. I did think he was a Division I-quality player. I just didn't have a scholarship. I was pleasantly surprised no one was in on him."

CBS Sports: How much do you remember of that 2008 season when you reached No. 2 in the country?

Leach: "We were on Gameday three weeks in a row."

CBS Sports: Why have you been able to be so successful with your offense while everybody uses some form of it now? If Chip Kelly came back today, he'd be looking at himself.

Leach: "The biggest thing is just making choices. The hardest thing for any coach is what you're going to be good at and locking into it. There is a lot of stuff out there, and it's temping. You've got to do some stuff different."

CBS Sports: Do you think this in any way vindicates what you accomplished at Texas Tech? (Leach was fired after allegations he mistreated a player.)

Leach: "There's been cheating, there's been paying players, there's been guys cheating academically, there's been grade changes, there's been rapes, there's been sexual assaults and even a couple of murders.  But only one school has refused to pay their coach, and it's Texas Tech."

CBS Sports: Is there something about West Coast football that's different? You've coached a lot of places in your career.

Leach: "There's kind of an optimism with West Coast kids. They think anything is possible. How would I categorize it? If you tell them to do something, they seem to want to ask for more reasons. 'Why do you want me to go to the right?' 'Maybe because I told you so,' isn't fully satisfactory. … They're obstinate, they just want to know why."

CBS Sports: How would Geronimo approach this game with USC?

Leach: "Definitely aggressively with some tricks up his sleeves. Looking forward to it for sure, but definitely a difficult challenge."

CBS Sports: What is The Palouse? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palouse

Leach: "This patch of dirt has been around before the ice age. That's what the Palouse is … a volcano that blew up all this nitrogen rich soil. The whole state and area was covered with it. The ice age came and washed most of it back out in the ocean except a path that is like 160 miles by 60 miles. This patch has this insane yield per acre."

CBS Sports: What's it like to recruit at Wazzu?

Leach: "It's not bad at all. Nobody has a visual of it. The first question I always get is, 'Oh, so it rains there all the time, huh?' No, it doesn't because we're in the foothills of the Rockies.  We're a true college town. No interstates. Lowest crime rate of any major school. We seem to do well in Southern Cal because they want a breather from freeways and wild neighborhoods.

"We're one of the few true college towns. This place here is something they'll remember for the rest of their lives."