WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama gives his seal of approval to a college football playoff, plans to welcome his hometown Chicago Bulls to the White House as NBA champions sometime in the next “five years” and says he’s “been on the Jeremy Lin bandwagon for a while.”

In an interview with Bill Simmons of Grantland.com, Obama was asked how often he hoped to welcome the Bulls as NBA champions.

“Every year,” Obama said. “And it hasn’t happened yet, but it will happen.”

He later said he has “another five years” to welcome them, though he stands for re-election in November.

The President says he would prefer to see an eight-team major college football playoff rather than the four-team one that is being considered, but called four “a good place to start.”

As for Lin, Obama says Secretary of Education Arne Duncan tipped him off while the two played basketball together.

“He said, ‘I’m telling you, we’ve got this terrific guard named Jeremy Lin at Harvard,’” said Obama, himself a Harvard alum.

“And then one of my best friends, his son is a freshman at Harvard, and so when he went for a recruiting trip he saw Lin in action. So I’ve been on the Jeremy Lin bandwagon for a while.”

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