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Urban Meyer states SMU getting in College Football Playoff with loss to Clemson would 'hurt' sport

IMG_6598by:Nick Kosko•12/07/24•

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SMU must win the ACC Championship Game to get into the College Football Playoff, according to Urban Meyer.

The former coach doesn’t have a good feeling about the Mustangs losing to Clemson and still getting in. The way it shook out in the penultimate rankings, SMU and Alabama would vie for the final spot if Clemson gets the auto bid by winning the ACC.

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But SMU over Alabama? You can’t do that, according to Meyer.

“If SMU loses to Clemson Rob, they’re out. You can’t do that,” Meyer said on The Triple Option. “I’m going to say that that’ll actually hurt college football, because … why play a difficult non conference schedule? Don’t do that. If I’m SMU, I change my scheduling philosophy right now, because you’re a big boy now you weren’t a big boy earlier. I’d go start scheduling some really good teams. I know some people that are involved in SMU. The minute they made a decision, a lot of people donated to said, let’s go play big time football. And they did. 

“So now go schedule an SEC, or a Big Ten opponent early, or maybe two of them, because you have to, or the non-conference schedules go away, right? You can’t do that.”

This exact scenario has been debated all week. It’s something SMU head coach Rhett Lashlee warned the College Football Playoff committee of: do not “open up that door.”

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“I think if you open up that door, you’re going to see a lot of people do a lot of crazy things,” Lashlee said of dropping a team that lost its conference title game out of the field. 

“We’re not going to. We’re going to go play in Charlotte, and we’re going to try to compete for our championship, because that’s the right thing to do. That’s what competitors do.”

Essentially, if SMU is penalized from being a projected bye week team to out of the playoff for losing its extra game, a conference championship mind you, teams would have more incentive to not play their conference championship.

“If our team all got COVID today and didn’t play, we’re in,” Lashlee said. “We’re in, right? We don’t have another data point to drop us below anybody that’s behind us.”

SMU and Clemson square off for the ACC Saturday at 8:00 p.m. ET.