On Monday, former Ohio State Buckeyes head coach Urban Meyer went to bat for the Texas Longhorns' College Football Playoff hopes, and he did it on one of the biggest stages in sports media.

Joining Colin Cowherd on The Herd, Meyer argued that No. 14 Texas "deserves to be in" the CFP field and ripped the idea that the Longhorns should be punished for scheduling Ohio State in Week 1.

"Texas deserves to be in," Meyer said. "I would not penalize that loss against Ohio State. You can’t do that… If they didn’t play Ohio State, we wouldn't be having this conversation."

Texas opened the season with a 14-7 road loss in Columbus, then later fell to Florida and No. 3 Georgia. But the Longhorns have battled their way back into the playoff conversation, most recently with a massive win over rival Texas A&M, which entered that game ranked No. 3.

Texas has now faced five top-10 opponents and gone 3-2 against them, with its losses coming to the No. 1 and No. 3 teams in the country.

What makes Meyer's stance even more interesting is that earlier in the year, after Texas lost to Florida in early October, he essentially wrote the Longhorns off as a CFP threat.

Now, with the full body of work in view, he’s flipped, and he's putting the pressure squarely on the committee.

"Right now, if I'm Chris Del Conte and Sarkisian, there's a chance they're going to be left out of the playoff because they played Ohio State in Week 1," Meyer told Cowherd. "Why would you do that?"

It's a question that cuts to the heart of a bigger problem.

If programs are punished for scheduling heavyweights in nonconference play, why would anyone keep doing it? Meyer warned that docking Texas for the Ohio State loss would push coaches toward soft schedules and "some of the worst out-of-conference games ever."

The real issue is the lack of transparency. Every committee seems to play by a slightly different rulebook: strength of record, head-to-head, conference titles, injuries - the emphasis changes year to year.

That inconsistency leaves bubble teams like Texas guessing not just on Selection Sunday, but years in advance when they're signing contracts for future marquee games.

If Urban Meyer is right and Texas gets punished for daring to play Ohio State, the message to the rest of college football will be loud and clear ... schedule scared, or risk staying home in December.