Mike Leach uses Kentucky Derby’s Rich Strike as reason College Football Playoff should expand

Mississippi State coach Mike Leach has long been a proponent of an expanded College Football Playoff.

On Saturday, he used the 148th running of the Kentucky Derby as another reason why the CFP should have a larger field.

Rich Strike, an 80-1 longshot, won the race.

“That horse winning the Kentucky Derby today, is a good example of why an expanded college football playoff is needed,” Leach tweeted. “That horse hadn’t won all the races leading up, but it got its chance and that’s what happened.”

The College Football Playoff is set to continue its four-team format through the current contract.

However, Leach has long been a proponent of a 64-team playoff.

Back in 2019, he argued the four-team system made no sense.

“And then in addition to that, there’s other good teams out there and the worst of it is they do not necessarily, you know, a lot of these conferences are playing conference championship games,” Leach said back in 2019. “They don ‘t even necessarily take the conference champion. That’s even more, 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 did not. 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 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. ”.

At that point, Leach said, the system would incorporate bowl games, and the teams would be at those sites for just a couple of days, not the traditional week.

“The winner advances, which makes it crazy exciting,” he said. “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 Wednesday night, Thursday night. Then college football does not 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. ”

Mark Heim is a sports reporter for The Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Mark_Heim.