Jim Harbaugh’s CFP failures should make him think long and hard about the Broncos

The style was different for Jim Harbaugh’s Michigan men, but the result was the same as it was last year — a College Football Playoff semifinal loss.

Exactly 12 months earlier, Georgia overwhelmed Harbaugh’s Wolverines. Michigan fell, 34-11, in a game that was not as close as the score indicated. A Wolverines team that won with power found itself overmatched against the bigger, stronger, faster SEC champions.

This time, it was TCU’s speed that caught Michigan off-guard. TCU looked faster than the slow-starting Wolverines, sprinting to a 21-3 lead. And while Michigan nearly caught all the way up, its proclivity for blitzes helped doom them in a 51-45 loss.

So, once again, Harbaugh’s side fell short in the CFP.

Which means rumors about Harbaugh going to the NFL — and perhaps the Denver Broncos — could be set to hit fifth gear.

Remember, after last year’s loss to Georgia, Harbaugh interviewed with the Minnesota Vikings about their head-coaching vacancy.

“Yeah, explored it. I don’t apologize for exploring it, and I don’t apologize for wanting to come back and be the head football coach at the University of Michigan,” Harbaugh said on the In the Trenches Michigan podcast last February.

Harbaugh signed a contract extension with Michigan last February. If he leaves, he owes a buyout of $3 million right now — a figure that drops year by year.

But to most NFL owners, $3 million is quite affordable. And to the Broncos’ ownership group — the wealthiest in the league — it’s change in the sofa cushions.

That said, the outlook is hazy.

Had TCU’s first-half dominance resulted in a second-straight blowout semifinal evisceration, it might have been enough to make a coach say, “I’ve taken this as far as one can.”  But a 51-45 loss in which the Wolverines had more total yards and more first downs? With quarterback J.J. McCarthy back for the 2023 season and a likely Heisman contender?

It makes the situation murkier.

Still, the national championship has been the domain of SEC and ACC schools for all but one year of the CFP era, which began in 2014. Further, the Big Ten — where Michigan resides — has just a single national championship since 2003.

With that landscape, one could see Harbaugh taking his talents back to the NFL — and possibly to Denver. After all, the NFL has far more parity than big-time college football, which has increasingly become the SEC and the rest.

And the cash from a potential offer could be as clear as the Denver sky on Thursday, a day after the Wednesday snowstorm.

While Harbaugh could have multiple NFL suitors — including the Indianapolis Colts, the team with which Harbaugh earned his “Captain Comeback” moniker in the mid 1990s — the Broncos have bottomless resources.

What’s more, CEO Greg Penner appears poised with the gumption to use said largesse to turn the team around.

And a coach who has won everywhere he’s been — and in San Francisco took a team that had eight consecutive losing seasons to three-straight seasons advancing at least as far as the conference-championship game — could be the best candidate to do just that.

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