Steve Spurrier reacts to Big Ten proposed College Football Playoff format, loss of conference title games

When Steve Spurrier was still roaming the Florida sideline in the 1990s, any talk of a playoff to determine college football’s national champion was nothing more than a pipe dream of some forward-thinking fans. In fact, the BCS was still in its infancy when The Ol’ Ball Coach surprisingly left the Gators following the 2001 season for a failed two-year stint in the NFL as the head coach of the then-Washington Redskins.

It’s because of that experience that Spurrier can’t even imagine a situation where conference championships are simply pushed aside in favor of play-in games within a potential 28-team College Football Playoff format, which was recently proposed by Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti.

According to ESPN’s Pete Thamel, Petitti recently floated the idea of further expanding the current 12-team Playoff format to 24 or 28 teams, which would inturn provide the Power Four conferences (ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC) multiple automatic bids that would be determined by play-in games set for Championship Weekend, replacing longstanding conference title games.

“(The SEC Championship) was the game because there wasn’t a format at that time for national championships, but that was … we had, what, five or six power conferences around the country, without a Playoff system,” Spurrier recalled during a recent appearance on the Another Dooley Noted Podcast with longtime Florida beat writer Pat Dooley. “So that was the goal you had a chance to win, I mean you could still win a national championship, but that was a goal that was reachable every year and we got it 7 out of 12. And in the years we didn’t, we almost got it. You don’t win every year, nobody wins every year.”

As Spurrier mentioned, his Gators represented the East Division in the SEC Championship game through the first five consecutive seasons since its 1992 inception. That included winning the league title four straight times between 1993-96. Spurrier’s 1996 Florida team, led by Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Danny Wuerffel, was also the consensus national champion after blasting rival Florida State, 52-20, in the 1996 Sugar Bowl. The Gators also made it to Atlanta for the league title game in 1999 and 2000, including winning the program’s fifth SEC Championship Game in 2000, before Spurrier took his talents to the NFL following the 2001 campaign. Florida also won the SEC in 1991, the year before the SEC Championship Game was implemented.