Urban Meyer reacts to Big Ten's 24-team College Football Playoff proposal: '24 is probably too much'

Last week, the Big Ten Conference distributed an internal document detailing what the league’s expanded 24-team College Football Playoff proposal would have looked like using 2025’s final CFP rankings. The document included an image of the full 24-team bracket with two rounds of on-campus home games.

Of course, the Big Ten’s proposal is one of two that have been considered by the CFP management committee, which has been debating further expansion of the current 12-team field since it was implemented in 2024. And while any format changes won’t take effect until 2027 at the earliest, the leaked 24-team field provided by ESPN’s Pete Thamel received plenty of reaction from fans and college football administrators alike.

For his part, FOX Sports analyst Urban Meyer — the former Ohio State and Florida head coach — refused to toe the company line and rejected the idea of completely doubling the current format. And while he agreed the Playoffs could stand to expand after the first double-digit seed made last season’s national championship game, a 24-team field is a stretch too far for Meyer, especially given its potential impact on a college football season that is already nearly six months long.

“I think that’s too many games, too many teams. I like the idea (of expanding), because … I think we’re in the golden era of parity in college football. I mean, you had No. 10 Miami really should’ve won the (2025 national championship) game. I was there, they should’ve, they could’ve and I stood there and watched them warm up; they were a national championship-looking team,” Meyer said during a Tuesday appearance on FS1’s The Herd with Colin Cowherd. “So my initial reaction is it’s too much. But with what’s going on in the world with parity in college football right now, … I still think 24 is probably too much. Because I think one thing we better look at is this darn calendar. When you’re (still) play(ing) games and it’s the 25^th of January, and you keep adding games, I think that’s too many games.”

Cowherd suggested a 16-team field, which is what the SEC has proposed, might be a nice compromise, and that was an idea Meyer could get behind. The SEC’s 16-team proposal is a 5+11 model that would include five automatic qualifiers for the four Power Four champions and the highest ranked Group of Five champion, which is similar to the current 12-team format. That would leave room for 11 at-large bids to the next highest-ranked teams in the final CFP ranking.

The big sticking point with regard to the 24-team model centers around how transformative it would be to the current college football structure, including the end of conference championship games. The Big Ten document called conference title games “artificial,” arguing teams that play them assume unnecessary risk compared to teams that don’t still make the Playoff without that additional matchup.

While no final decision seems likely anytime soon, the ongoing power struggle between the Big Ten and SEC leaves the rest of college football waiting in limbo.