SEC
Mike Leach is one of college football’s most fun personalities and a media favorite. The Washington State coach never shies away from sharing his thoughts on any subject, football or otherwise.
Leach recently joined the Sports Gambling Podcast to discuss a number of fun topics, such as what position Bigfoot would play on the gridiron. The subject of the college football D1 championship also came up. Leach has long been a vocal critic of the four-team playoff. On the podcast, he described how fun it would be for fans if the sport adopted a 64-team tournament a la March Madness.
The podcast’s site provides a transcript. Leach and host Colby talking about the college football playoff can be read below, with minor changes:
Colby:
Mike, I call our college football playoff an invitational and I think you share the same opinion here that I think 64 teams is what needs to happen or at least at least 16 or 32.Mike Leach:
The minimum 16 some minimum one AA does [in] Division III, Division II and a lot of the major high school, you know, a kind of regional playoffs and things like that. The thing is the 64 works out so well numerically. It’s hard to ignore. And I have a lot of respect for Gonzaga and their basketball program who are right up the road and Spokane. But I’d be on the east coast and somebody will have some Gonzaga gear on. So I’m thinking, all right, well this guy, he’s from Spokane, or maybe even Pullman, you know, and I’ll go up and say, “Hey, are you from Washington?” The guy’ll say, ‘no, I’m from New York’ or North Carolina or somewhere. I go, “Well you’ve got all this Gonzaga stuff on. Do you have relatives in Spokane?” He’ll say, “Where’s Spokane?” The guy just liked getting Zaga gear because he’s been infused with all this energy and enjoyed watching Gonzaga play in the course of the tournament.And then of course, if advancing in the tournament, I think it’s shortsighted to think that, you know, everybody’s got their team or their alma mater, and once that team’s out, they’re going to quit watching, or rooting for it because that doesn’t happen in NCAA basketball. Nor would it happen in football. They’d adopt another one to root for somebody else. They would hang out in bars, they’d talk to their friends, they’d brag to their buddies when their team won and they pick them in there, buddy picked somebody else. That is the way you’d do it, it works out nearly perfect. And you don’t have to to add a week or any of this business.
Leach shared his vision for how a 64-team tournament could be completed by New Year’s Day:
… but if we did 64, you cut the regular season back to 10 games and then somewhere in the middle half of America’s teams have an off week and then half are playing. And then the next week, the other half are off. And then, you never have to play anybody that had an off week and you didn’t. And then as it starts to shake down at the end, everybody’s guaranteed 12 games. Everybody gets 12 games. So if somebody knows they’re not gonna make the 64, they start, start scheduling other 12 games. Cause after the 10, you make that an off week. And then they can schedule it up and get ready to play. And so you have football that week and then they sort out the 64. And then the first runs you do home and home.
Then after that, you incorporate the bowls for the rest of the games and a number of those bowls works out nearly perfectly. And then instead of being at the bowl site a week, you’re at the bowl site for like two days. The winner advances, which makes it crazy exciting. If you get eliminated early, you have another game, you have to have another game to play, what you can do in the natural breaks or you can do it on the Wednesday night, Thursday night. Then college football doesn’t just relinquish a whole month to the NFL where they’re not offering anything. Then in the end, the target number of games is 16, 16 for the champion. And then you could have the whole thing done on January 1st.
Many coaches would object to the injury concerns of playing on back-to-back nights among many other logistical issues, but Leach’s vision is fun to entertain.
This whole premise is just ridiculous.
This needs to happen. The same few teams who are included in the “invitational”, or excuse me, I mean playoff, probably love the current system. But lets, for once, get a system that will determine a true champion.
This wouldn’t determine a true champion. It would simply be its own goofy tournament. When 64 teams get into a playoff after only 12 games, the sport becomes a joke. The college football playoff is designed to give us a champ from the regular season. It does that.
Well if that were the case, you would need, at minimum, a playoff that included 6 or 8 teams. The current system excludes at least one, sometimes 2 P5 conferences. Not to mention the G5 and at large teams.
The cutoff has been pretty clear the past few years. Pushing it to 6 or 8 teams would introduce even more controversy because people would be debating between the 3rd place SEC team and another Power 5 runner up, or a Go5 team.
The current systems picks the best teams. Your conference only matters when talking about SOS. Why should a 3 loss PAC-12 CC be put in while 1 loss teams sit home. I would rather a team earn the slot than be given it to them.
Dartha, your argument doesn’t hold water. A tougher conference could lead to a conference champ with multiple losses. For example, the SEC may have a 3 loss champ which is better than a 1 loss Big12 champ. The problem is that you don’t actually know which team is better unless they meet on the field, which is why the expanded playoff is necessary.
And Kirby, that argument is worth having because, in my opinion, putting in a team that may not deserve it is better than leaving out a team that does.
Well, the more you expand it, the more likely you are to leave out teams that have equally strong arguments compared to the teams that you put in. Right now there’s at most 2 teams that can complain about being left out. If you expand the playoff, the number of teams with legitimate arguments that would have to be left out would expand at a faster rate than the slots made available.
It also lowers the value of the regular season and surviving a grueling schedule.
Once a team like Clemson gets to 10 wins, they could just go on cruise control for the rest of the time and rest up for the tournament. It’s stupid.
Kirby, you’re still missing the point.
No one in this thread cares about leaving someone out that has ‘an equally strong argument to be in”. If it was a 32 team or 64 team playoff I doubt many people think # 65 has a chance to win even if their argument to be # 64 is “equally strong”
We are only concerned that by not allowing in # 5,6,7,8 you may be excluding the true champion.
/\ /\ What this guy said. If you’re one of the top 8 teams in the country, you didnt get there by hitting cruise control. You still have to win your conference or be an at large team. I dont know a single head football coach who would ever consider hitting cruise control unless it’s the 4th quarter against a cupcake and they are up by 4 TDs.
I can guarantee you that no team outside the top 5 is ever deserving of appearing in the national championship game. There is still obvious strength-differentiation in the 4 team playoff as it is, given that at least one of the games tends to be a comfortable, if not blowout victory.
The playoff now isn’t designed to give us champ from the regular season. Wisconsin, TCU, Auburn and UGA have all had top 4 regular seasons but were left out because they lost a game that they earned to play..
CCG’s are just an extension of the regular season and are part of the process. Those teams lost that part of the process. That’s on them.
It’s a reward for having a successful regular season therefore shouldn’t factor in the postseason the way the playoff is now. If it is part of the process then teams that didn’t make their CCG shouldn’t be allowed to go to the playoff because they lost that part of the process.
The playoff committee’s job is to pick the four best teams after all the games have been played. If the SEC wants to stop having CCG’s, then do be it. And CCG’s aren’t a reward, they are a game that is played to determine the conference champion. They count, in a big way. Teams that don’t go to their CCG’s are not excluded from playoff consideration, nor should they be.
If you don’t make your CCG then you lost that part of the process.. that’s on them.
If you win the east/west your reward to play in the CCG.
Mike Leach is very entertaining and possibly a genius. The idea is fun to think about but wouldn’t work.
I certainly hasn’t worked in basketball.
The difference is that college basketball is a sloppy mess to watch during the regular season and few pay as much attention to the regular season compared to football. People watch the NCAA tournament for the drama and Cinderella storylines, and I think CFB has so much more tradition and rivalries that it would never translate well.
College basketball is a sloppy mess in the regular season? I know UGA is terrible but that is far from the case. When Auburn was in the dumps I watched all the games and others as well. There’s a game on every night pretty much starting in December and it’s great all through the regular season..
It’s just not entertaining for me personally due to the total disparity between NCAA and NBA offensive skill levels.
But yes, watching UGA play is a wholly different level of bored frustration.
I once ate supper while watching the game and in that entire time span saw them make 0 3s and maybe a couple jumpers.
Crean will turn it around. I have no doubt about that. Probably a top 5 coach in sec but has to get his guys.
There is a simple answer to make everyone happy. Have an 8 team playoff. 1-5 go to the P5 champs, power-ranked from best to worst. 6 and 7 are At-large bids. These are either independents (Notre Dame), or teams that didn’t win their Conference. Lastly, at 8, you put the best G5 team. Last year would have looked like this:
(1) Alabama vs. (8) UCF.
(2) Clemson vs. (7) Georgia.
(3) Oklahoma vs.(6) Notre Dame.
(4) Ohio State vs. (5) Washington.
Interesting Slate. It would still end up being Clemson vs. Bama, however.
Yep, and what an awesome slate of games. There are literally idiots out there who think that a playoff like that would make college football less interesting during the season. or they make some asinine excuse that people will still complain about who got left out.
Quit spouting common sense. Before you know it, ADs and commissioners will be agreeing with you and we will have to kiss the current joke of a playoff goodbye.
I’m for this but not an automatic non P5 school. I think they should be on top 10 to make it. If none in top 10 then make it 3 at large.
Yeah-let’s make young adults whose brains aren’t still fully developed (26 is commonly accepted) play for free in 4+ more games where they can get CTE. All while delivering a lesser post-season product.
They currently play up to 15 games, so we’re talking about one more game for the 2 teams who advance in the playoff final. And NFL players play 16 games plus playoffs, and many (most?) NFL players are age 26 or less.
And despite the wailings about it making the season/post season worse, none of you whiners have presented an argument as to why that would be the case.
Yeah, CTE isn’t a big deal-just ask Junior Seau
Where did I say it wasn’t a big deal? I said the number of games isn’t increasing for the vast majority of college football players. And a good portion of the players on any team playing in the national championship are already hoping for a NFL career anyway. So a couple extra games in college is literally insignificant. Nice try though.
64 game tourney is more than a couple for many teams. “Nice try though”