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Greg McElroy isn’t sold on Chip Kelly’s idea for the format of college football on the latest edition of “Always College Football.”
Kelly said that college football should split from conferences and make an independent 64-team Power 5 conference and 64-team Group of 5 conference while maintaining regionality.
McElroy explained his stance with a “bird in the hand” metaphor, meaning it may be better to happy with something already secured.
“The conferences and the security that comes with conferences is the bird in the hand,” said McElroy. “The possibility of going independent, that’s the bird in the bush. It might be beneficial to be independent, but scheduling might be difficult, and you could very easily get locked out.”
Notre Dame is one of the examples of an independent team in football. However, McElroy explained that it works for the Fighting Irish because of the brand the program has.
“Notre Dame’s fortunate because they have an agreement with the ACC for their scheduling and they’re also a desirable product,” said McElroy. “With respect to fill in the blank university, not everybody moves the needle like Notre Dame.”
Lastly, he stated that college football as a whole may be moving toward independence already. The recent realignments in college football showed McElroy that.
“Now, when we talk about the idea of putting together 64-teams in the P5, 64 teams in the G5 and then you maintain regionality, one thing I would say about that is we’re kinda already moving in that direction,” said McElroy. “You see 16, 18, and 14 teams in specific leagues. That to me is already the direction that we’re going.”
Grant Bricker was a former freelancer for The News TN in his hometown of Nashville, Tennessee. He now freelances for Saturday Football. Follow on Twitter @GrantBricker.