Mike Leach Says College Football Should Have a 64 Team Playoff

New Washington State University football coach, swashbuckling, pirate loving Mike Leach thinks Division 1 college football should have a playoff. A lot of coaches and fans think the same way. Leach though thinks it should include 64 teams. That's pretty insane.

In a long interview with Fox Sports, Leach outlines why and how it should be done. The coach says at minimum the playoffs should include 16 teams, but that 64 is ideal. He proposes cutting the regular season down to 10 games to get this accomplished. It's not going to happen.

The first thing that will stop Leach's idea is money. There's too much to be made with a 12 game season and the many conference championship games. The games bring in too much revenue for the schools to cut them out. 

The next issue that comes into play are all the bowl games. Yes, there are way too many and not all of them are profitable for the schools who play in them. But the people who run the bowls love the perks and the money that they make that comes with them. 

A playoff that big would take too much time. The NCAA Basketball tournament has 64 teams, but they play two games in three days each round. You obviously can't do that in football.

I do agree with Leach when he says the other sports play way more games and their athletes still go to school. The NCAA's assertion that a football playoff would harm student-athletes in the classroom is ludicrous, as most of the playoffs would occur during winter breaks, unlike all the other sports.

The main problem is that the NCAA doesn't even run football's post season. The BCS is a separate entity and is in charge of the so-called championship. That's probably not going to change anytime soon.

Even though every other level of college football is run by the NCAA and employs playoffs, they don't have the tradition and more importantly, money grabs, that are the bowls.

The BCS could possibly be on the way out, as the power conferences are reportedly considering a final four as early as 2014. College football fans can only hope.

Article by Eric Gray