Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh has some wild thoughts on how the playoff should be formatted.
With Harbaugh regularly disappointing with the Wolverines, I’m not surprised he wants changes to the current format. Hell, we all want more than four teams, but the man in Ann Arbor’s takes might be a shade too hot. (RELATED: David Hookstead Is The True King In The North When It Comes To College Football)
ESPN wrote the following about Harbaugh’s plan:
And so the Harbaugh Plan emerged: 15 games, 11 teams, starting with each Power 5 conference champion, determined within a 12-game regular season by conference record and tiebreakers, similar to how the NFL chooses its division winners. He then suggests using the BCS system to rank teams 6-11 to determine the rest of the field.
The No. 1 seed would be the highest-ranking BCS Power 5 champion. The No. 1 and 2 seeds get a bye. There’s also room for a top-ranked, non-Power 5 team like Notre Dame, and a worthy Group of 5 champion. On the first Saturday of December, instead of playing conference championship games, the playoff begins.
Harbaugh also added that the teams that lost right away in December under his plan would then play in bowl games.
Only Jim Harbaugh could come up with something this needlessly complicated and over the top. Eleven teams? Eleven teams, Mr. Harbaugh?
I’ve never heard anybody pick an odd number of teams for the playoff. What an impressively stupid idea. It’s almost like somebody dropped a ton of acid and then their brain got to work on how to make the playoff as bungled and confusing as possible.
The thing is, Jim Harbaugh’s brain works that way sober, which is why he’s one of the mad geniuses of the sport. Most of us are trying to simplify things. He’s out here talking about the old BCS system, putting losers back in bowl games and much more. It’d almost be funny if this wasn’t 100% authentic.
There’s no reason this has to be complicated. You make it eight teams, the Power 5 champions all get in, you have the top-ranked undefeated Group of 5 team and then you have two at-large bids.
Look, I just solved the playoff question. Now, the NCAA can write me a check for about a billion dollars for doing their job for them.
Never change, Harbaugh. Never change.
