Urban Meyer Gets Honest About Whether the New CFB Playoff Format Can Match the Charm of March Madness

The first round of the new CFB playoff format wrapped up, and it didn’t exactly live up to the hype. What was supposed to be a fun-filled round with possible underdog teams sneaking through, ended in multiple blowouts. Now, pundits are questioning whether it’s a good format at all, and rightly so. Former college coaching legend, Urban Meyer, also weighed in with his thoughts and didn’t hold back on his critiques.

Meyer expressed that college football fans initially believed the 12-team CFP format would be as intense as March Madness. However, they overlooked the fact that college football rarely sees upsets, and the first round of the playoffs proved just that, with all lopsided wins.

The former Florida coach then questioned whether fans would continue to enjoy such weak-strong matchups year after year, knowing full well who would win.

“The people wanted to have the imagination of March Madness. But the reality is, upsets in college football happen, but not to the extreme like they happen in March Madness… I’m just wondering if college football is fan ready for first round blowouts every year,” Meyer said on the latest episode of The Triple Option.

The closest matchup of the first round was Indiana vs. Notre Dame, but anyone watching the game could tell you the Fighting Irish had the game well in hand. Penn State kept SMU at bay for so long, that they couldn’t even record a passing touchdown till the fourth quarter.

The mismatch of the matchups even caught the attention of Chad Johnson and Shannon Sharpe, who have been against the format from the jump. The Nightcap did not hold back on their critiques of the first round of the CFP, calling it a boring set of matchups with easy wins for big schools.

Johnson even stated the lower-seeded teams just “didn’t belong” with that level of competition. However, let’s not forget that this is only the first year of the new format.

While it’s easy to get up in arms, like Meyer, about the watchability of the games, it’s still refreshing that college football is trying something different. Just last year, an undefeated Florida State team missed the four-team playoff because their starting quarterback was injured. This 12-team format ensures that something like that won’t happen again.

Sure, maybe that FSU team would’ve gotten waxed by Washington or Alabama or Texas — but that’s beside the point. The point is that they were undefeated and deserved the right to be in the playoffs. Two one-loss teams made it in over them just because their teams were healthy.

There needs to be more clarity on what goes into the decision-making process from the selection committee. As of now, it just feels like a group of older individuals who get to arbitrarily pick and choose who they want to make the playoff based on roster strength. And that’s not how it should be.

That’s not how it is in the NFL, NBA, MLB, or any major sports for that matter. If you have a better record than your opponent, that should trump all other arguments. What else does a team have to stand on other than their record?

Maybe we fans just aren’t ready to see first-round blowouts. But it’s what feels more correct than allowing an Alabama team with terrible blemishes on its record to slip through. Or Miami with their shaky track record.

Let’s just all take a deep breath and move on from this one. It was the first year of the format, and the committee should get better at this moving forward. On the Bright side, the next round of matchups looks stellar.