Urban Meyer believes College Football Playoff will value strength of schedule more moving forward

Following the opening round of the College Football Playoff, which featured nothing but blowouts, many are wondering if the CFP could change its process going forward. Urban Meyer included.

In fact, the long-time college football head coach suggested there might be two changes coming in the future. One from the committee as a result of the outcomes, and one by teams as a result of the selections.

Get your team’s official College Football Playoff watch from AXIA by CLICKING HERE: “Watches that tell so much more than time”

“I think the reality is that there’s two things that I witnessed,” Meyer said on The Triple Option podcast. “No. 1 is the College Football Playoff, I think, is forever changed now. And that means if you don’t play anyone you’re not going to get in. I think that’s been — if you don’t beat a ranked team or… I think the public spoke. I kind of paid attention the best I could, and I think that you’ll take a team that plays a rugged schedule over a team that just doesn’t play anyone. That was the feedback I got.”

Of course, that was a big question mark going in. Teams like Indiana and SMU were selected for the field despite playing a less rigorous schedule than programs like, say, Alabama or Ole Miss.

Meyer leaned into his point about teams with tougher schedules getting in in the future based on the way things played out, then seemed to think twice of it mid-sentence.

“I think a three-loss team… the minute I say that, though, I mean Tennessee gets their ass kicked in,” Meyer said. “I don’t know. It’s tough.”

One thing that is clear? The College Football Playoff is not a perfect system.

“You know what’s amazing, the BCS was a flawed system,” Meyer said. “The College Football Playoff four-team was a flawed system. And here we are with a 12-team, it’s a flawed system somehow. But it’s great to the fans to a point.”

The new College Football Playoff format certainly keeps the regular season interesting for longer for a broader swath of teams. That’s just the nature of the operation with more teams getting in.

Of course, it doesn’t necessarily instantly produce compelling playoff games.

“Some of the games were awful,” Meyer noted.

So how does the conundrum get solved going forward? Well, there’s a tug of war going on between anticipating what the committee might do versus reacting to what it already has done.

That’s where Meyer’s second point comes in. The teams themselves may adjust to bolster their College Football Playoff odds.

“I think if you don’t play someone and you’re a lesser team you won’t get in,” Meyer said, reiterating his first point before moving on. “The second is, and I think we’ve discussed this before, why would you ever play a tough team in the opening game? Why would you do that? You look at Tennessee. Tennessee had one of those ridiculous preseason schedules. They did play NC State, but they played UTEP, Chattanooga and Kent State. So college football fans, get ready for some 50-7 games in the preseason.”