College football\u2019s loudest voices have spent the last few weeks falling over themselves to demand that the College Football Playoff limit or outright ban Group of 5 schools from future consideration.<\/p>\n
The complaints began before the Tulane Green Wave and James Madison Dukes failed to make their first-round matchups competitive<\/a> last weekend and have only intensified since<\/a>.<\/p>\n The logic behind many of these arguments has been mostly suspect<\/a>. Some argued that the games are blowouts, conveniently forgetting that there have been blowouts in every CFP<\/a>, with schools like Oregon, Ohio State, and Notre Dame on the receiving end.<\/p>\n Others have argued that G5 schools haven\u2019t earned the right to play because of their schedules<\/a>, as part of a broader push to devalue winning in the sport<\/a>.<\/p>\n Another argument is that it\u2019s a safety issue\u00a0<\/a>to let G5 athletes compete<\/a> against Power 5 programs, even though these teams play one another all season\u00a0and no one bats an eye.<\/p>\n The only honest reason as to why you\u2019d want to exclude G5 schools from being in the CFP is because you care about TV ratings first and foremost<\/a>. Everything else is just a rhetorical trick.<\/p>\n Fox Sports\u2019 Urban Meyer has been among the most vocal critics of G5 schools<\/a> participating in the CFP, and he shared his latest reason why on\u00a0The Triple Option podcast<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not the twelve best teams in America. It\u2019s really not even close, to be honest with you,\u201d said Meyer. \u201cAnd, from what I saw? I guess what\u2019s amazing to me is, what did you expect? You know, maybe there\u2019d be a gigantic upset or something like that, but to throw those guys out there and say, okay, you guys are going to go fly across and play at Oregon? You know, I\u2019m just not a fan of that. When I saw it hit, I thought that\u2019s not \u2013 it\u2019s really not fair for the players involved, it\u2019s not fair to the coach, and it\u2019s certainly not fair to those two teams that were left out.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was kind of embarrassing for college football to have that happen, you know,\u201d Meyer added. \u201cLike I said, what did you think was going to happen? You know, that was going to happen, and it did.\u201d<\/p>\n The deck is incredibly stacked against G5 schools and similar programs when it comes to how the college football media treat them, and Meyer\u2019s reasoning here is a perfect example of how their status is weaponized against them.<\/p>\n First, as Meyer alludes to, it is entirely possible that a G5 school could upset a Power 4 school in the CFP. The potential thrill of that is what drives excitement in March Madness and is not without precedent in college football. Not every playoff game has to be a showdown of top-ranked teams. There\u2019s plenty of room for both.<\/p>\n Second, Meyer\u2019s insistence that the CFP slot is \u201cnot fair for the players involved\u201d is incredibly infantilizing. James Madison lost to Oregon by 17 points. Yes, the game got out of hand early, but the Dukes proved they didn\u2019t give up and ended up closer than many powerhouse programs have been in their playoff games over the years (Oregon lost to Ohio State by 20 last year, and no one called for the Ducks to be banned).<\/p>\n Also, the JMU players had the chance to play in front of a national audience and elevate their program\u2019s status. They might have lost, but they never gave up<\/a>, something that we\u2019ve been told we\u2019re supposed to appreciate about college football.\u00a0Several of them will parlay this season\u2019s success into transfer opportunities at bigger schools<\/a>. Incoming head coach Billy Napier<\/a> gets to sell a CFP appearance to recruits.<\/p>\n The idea that the CFP appearance and subsequent loss were \u201cnot fair\u201d to the players or coaches is infantilizing, disengenuous, and disrespectful.<\/p>\n Third, Meyer said that the outcome of the games was \u201ckind of embarrassing for college football to have that happen.\u201d We assume that he thinks the same of Ohio State\u2019s 28-point loss to Alabama in 2021, Alabama\u2019s 28-point loss to Clemson in 2019, Tennessee\u2019s 25-point loss to Ohio State last year, and TCU\u2019s 58-point loss to Georgia in 2023. All embarrassments to the sport that demand answers, according to Meyer.<\/p>\n The real embarrassment to college football is the way so many media members are handling themselves over this topic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"College football\u2019s loudest voices have spent the last few weeks falling over themselves to demand that the College…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":631876,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2026],"tags":[88643,332,7,81559,21207,38602,4711,12518],"class_list":{"0":"post-631875","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-2025-college-football-playoff","9":"tag-college-football-playoff","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-group-of-five","12":"tag-james-madison-dukes","13":"tag-the-triple-option","14":"tag-tulane-green-wave","15":"tag-urban-meyer"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115790044453449708","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=631875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}