Mike Leach has been a vocal proponent of expanding the field for the college football playoff for a while now. Yesterday, fresh off their latest convincing win over Oregon to get them to 6-0 on the year, Leach took a chunk of time to make his case publicly.
In typical Mike Leach fashion, his case wasn't strictly a sound byte, it went on for a full ten minutes. That ten minutes , with more than a few stories, analogies, and other misdirection along the way.
One of my favorite points from Leach starts around the 38 second mark, where he starts by noting the local youth football club knows how to set up a good expansive playoff, and high school associations in states like Texas, Florida, and California do too, so how hard could it really be for college football? Then he gets into Division III, II, FCS (or as he refers to it, "I-AA"), and then the NFL, who all also have large playoff systems that work beautifully.
In his 10-minute rant, Leach also points out how it's silly that college football just hands off the month of December to the NFL when there could be playoff games going on.
As for some of the details: In the Mike Leach playoff system, all teams would be guaranteed 12 games, and around week five or six, half the country would enjoy a bye-week, while the other half plays, and then those that played would have a bye the following week. That way everyone has a built in break. Teams that know they won't be one of the top 64 teams in the country would be able to schedule during that mid-season bye, which would be another interesting wrinkle. Leach would also like to see one of the 12 games each year be a local match up within a team's region as well with the team with the best record hosting the game.
The biggest hurdle for his system? Leach says it would be figuring out who gets the money being generated.
Hear more, including details on scheduling and some of the finer points in the full clip. This is something that Leach is clearly passionate about.
https://youtu.be/y_nuMEtwUW4