We still don’t know whether Nick Saban wants the hypothetical role of college football commissioner given to him over the weekend by Penn State’s James Franklin, but we have an answer from Urban Meyer.
In an appearance on The Herd heading into the quarterfinals of the College Football Playoff, host Colin Cowherd pitched Meyer on the job.
Meyer claimed he has zero interest in such a job, and laid out why trying to level the playing field in the sport will be an impossible task.
“I got no interest at all. None,” Meyer said. “College football right now, everybody’s not the same. They’re not operating under the same guidelines, and it will never be that way. You take an Ohio State, you take the Wolverines, you take Georgia … they’re not the same. So this person (at the top) has to lower the level and this person (at the bottom) has to raise it to get any type of equilibrium. That’s not going to happen.”
Meyer also went on to explain why in the world of NIL (and soon, pay-for-play), there is only so much governance that can work. And particularly given that the NCAA has limited authority under the current format of the sport, big conferences will never willingly give up their financial advantage and on-field supremacy over the little guys.
“Logically, you have to have some kind of guardrails, some kind of system set up. I’m going to tell you this, I don’t think there’s any chance, though,” Meyer added. “The NFL, you’ve got 32 teams and they’re all working together under the same guidelines. College football is (uneven). You’ve got teams with $20 million [in] salaries, and you have teams that can’t do that. Why would (the top) teams ever raise the others?”
In Franklin’s original idea for Saban, the commissioner would largely be responsible for an evening out the competitive playing field and making the CFP a better product.
Yet Meyer, who occupies a similar role as Saban’s on College GameDay as a panelist on Fox’s Big Noon Kickoff, believes that is impossible without overhauling the foundation of the sport. That task, Meyer said, is even more impossible than coming up with a championship that appeases fans and competitors.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.