Urban Meyer Calls Out Elimination of Conference Title Games with CFP Expansion, 'Breaks my Heart'

Some of Urban Meyer's most memorable wins of his legendary college football coaching career came in conference championship games, and he isn't happy those contests are disappearing next season.

"Yeah, it breaks my heart," he said on The Triple Option, which is an AMP Sports Original Series (57:41 mark). "But, now it's conference champion. You know, people are going to get rings, but they don't deserve them… because no one's going to really win outright probably."

His comments came after the College Football Playoff announced it is expanding from 12 teams to 24 starting with the 2027-28 campaign. As part of that expansion, there will no longer be conference championship games for Power Four schools.

What's more, the new playoff format will feature a first-round bye for the top eight seeds and an additional round of home games on campus:

But Meyer was focused on the loss of the conference title games.

"I'm going to go on record again," he said. "There's nothing other than the big one. There's nothing more rewarding than when you go on the field in front of a giant crowd and you go play for your conference championship and afterwards they give you the trophy and you get a ring. For those who say 'come on'—you haven't played any. You probably haven't coached in it."

Meyer would know better than most what it is like to win on such a stage.

He coached Florida for six seasons from 2005 through 2010 and reached the SEC Championship Game three times. He won it in 2006 over Arkansas and parlayed the momentum from that into a national title before the Gators faced Alabama in back-to-back conference championship games in 2008 and 2009.

Those were the Florida teams with Tim Tebow under center, and the Gators outlasted the Crimson Tide in the first one and then went on to win another national title. Yet Alabama got revenge in 2009 and won its own national title after that victory.

Meyer's conference title game success didn't stop at Florida.

He led Ohio State to the Big Ten Championship Game four times in a six-year span from 2013 through 2018. Meyer's Buckeyes won the conference title in three of those years, including in 2014 when third-string quarterback Cardale Jones directed a stunning 59-0 victory over Wisconsin.

Ohio State reached the CFP in large part because of that performance and then went on to beat Alabama and Oregon to win the national championship.

Meyer has plenty of favorable memories in conference championship games and isn't pleased other coaches and players will miss out on such an opportunity moving forward.