College football is about to get a massive makeover, and everyone has an opinion on it, including legendary coach Urban Meyer. Recently on his podcast, The Triple Option, Meyer opened up about the heavily rumored move to a 24-team College Football Playoff format. While he shockingly admitted that he now supports the expansion, he couldn’t help but shine a bright light on one massive issue that comes with it.
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According to Meyer, the biggest flaw in this new blueprint is that it completely destroys one of the greatest traditions in sports: conference championship games.
For a long time, Meyer was a vocal critic of expanding the playoff field this far. He feared that letting nearly two dozen teams into the tournament would mean a bad game in October wouldn’t carry the same life-or-death weight anymore. However, the modern era has completely rewritten the rulebook. The sport has evolved so rapidly that he felt forced to rethink his old-school stance and embrace the chaos.
Reflecting on his change of heart, Meyer explained: “At first, I couldn’t stand the idea. You know, I just thought you would dilute the product. But what I’m witnessing this year, and we’re all learning, is the parity is unbelievable. The only concern I have, and I’ll keep saying this as long as I’m around, those who say that conference championship games are not important, I will say never played in it, never coached in it, and never won a ring.”
The three-time natty-winning head coach doubled down: “Conference championship games are one of the most exciting things that ever happened in my lifetime, and certainly for my players. And they’re gone. They’re gone.”
Meyer is not the only coaching legend changing his mind while warning about the consequences. Just like Meyer, former Alabama coach Nick Saban drew a strict line against a 24-team setup, warning that pushing the field this far is purely about money and strips the game of its core traditions.
But even though he is on board with the expansion, Meyer is deeply mourning what college football is losing to make it happen. To fit a 24-team bracket into a calendar year without breaking the players physically, college football leaders have to trim the schedule somewhere. The current solution on the table is to completely axe conference championship games.
For a traditionalist like Meyer, who won multiple SEC and Big Ten titles during his coaching career, this feels like an absolute tragedy. Stripping away those historic trophies takes a layer of meaning from the sport that a corporate bracket just can’t replace.
If this 24-team model goes through as planned for the 2027 season, the schedule is going to look quite different.
The top four power-conference winners and the highest-ranked Group of Six champion lock in automatic spots, leaving a massive 19 at-large bids wide open for everyone else. Mid-December’s first-round playoff games are going down right on the higher seeds’ home campuses.
Imagine a playoff game under the freezing lights of an absolutely packed stadium in the Midwest; it’s going to be an electric environment for fans, but a gauntlet for the players.
To make room for this massive tournament, the entire college football calendar is going to shift. Cherished events such as the historic Army-Navy Game and the Heisman Trophy Ceremony will need to be pushed back a week to early December.
On top of that, conference commissioners are actively discussing playing first- and second-round playoff games on weeknights. Because the NFL completely dominates weekend television windows in December, college football will likely force fans to stay up late on a Tuesday or Wednesday just to watch their teams survive and advance.
Interestingly, Meyer’s defense of conference title games actually puts him at odds with many active coaches today. The American Football Coaches Association actually voted in favor of the 24-team model precisely because it cuts out the conference championship game. Many modern coaches would rather trade a high-stress conference title game for an opening-round playoff game where a single loss won’t totally ruin their national championship dreams.
Still, Meyer’s warnings serve as a loud reminder that as college football chases massive television payouts, it risks losing the very soul and tradition that made fans fall in love with it in the first place.