Alabama Football Playoff Semifinal Sugar Bowl 2015 vs OSU
Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer signals in during Alabama's 2015 Sugar Bowl and college football playoff semifinal game with Ohio State, Thursday, Jan. 1, 2015, at the Superdome in New Orleans. (Vasha Hunt/vhunt@al.com)
Urban Meyer's Ohio State Buckeyes will face Oregon for the college football national championship on Monday, but he's not in any hurry to see the playoff field expanded in the future.
Meyer appeared as a guest on The Dan Patrick Show Thursday and said in no uncertain terms he was opposed to expanding the playoff field to eight from its current four-team format. He said that if the College Football Playoff Selection Committee did expand the field, they would be doing so against the best interests of players and their families.
"You can't do that," Meyer said. "Now that I've done it and, once again, there better be coaches on these committees. I think we learned a lesson, you know with all the family travel and there better be student-athlete representation on any conversation and I'm going to be very outspoken about that if there's any more conversation about adding games there better be coaches on that and there better be student-athletes."
Meyer cited NCAA scholarship limitations (currently at 85 per team) as the biggest reason for his opposition to an expanded playoff. A team's depth chart would be stretched beyond its limits and individual players' health would be jeopardized by adding an additional round of playoff games, he argued.
"You can't," Meyer said. "You better give us 110 scholarships then, because you're down. I can't speak for Oregon, I can speak for Ohio State. That when they added -- When they [set the limit to] 85 scholarships there were 12 games. Now there's 15. And the last three they added aren't against smaller -- they're heavyweight prizefights. You just can't do it."
You can watch the full interview below (playoff comments begin around the 6-minute mark):