Jim Harbaugh: How come a 16+ team playoff works for other sports but not Division 1-A CFB?

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The first College Football Playoff Top 25 poll was released Tuesday, and Michigan was nowhere to be found.

But that won't stop Jim Harbaugh from talking about the four-team playoff. Chalk him up as one who wants to see it expand to 16, a format already used in the Football Championship Subdivision.

"They've got a great system," Harbaugh said Wednesday morning on "Jamie and Stoney" on 97.1 The Ticket. "It's been in place for many years. My dad (Jack) won the national championship at Western Kentucky, when they were I-AA in 2002.

"I think that is the best system. When you look at every other sport, they have a playoff."

"And it's not a four-team system," Harbaugh said. "Basketball goes from 64, I think, (note: it's 68) to the Final Four. I think that's the way it should be done to crown a national champion.

"Like they do in gymnastics. Like they do in basketball -- men's and women's. Lacrosse. Every other sport you can think of."

If 16 teams is too big a leap, Harbaugh says, then he'd be fine with expanding to 12. He's well-versed in the arguments against it, too, and realizes a playoff format of that magnitude could mean two teams playing as many as 16 games in a season.

His answer for that?

"An 11-game season," Harbaugh said.

"Some of these conferences that are 14 and 16 teams, you win your conference and only one team goes?," Harbaugh said. "One team may not have played the other good teams in the conference. We see that already in the Big Ten. Strength of schedule is a big determination of what your record is going to be.

"It doesn't have to be just one team from each conference. You could have 16 teams. They vote them in in the FCS. I think you could do that in the (FBS) as well."

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