Greg McElroy explains how the 12-team Playoff slows down direction of college football

Greg McElroy was a guest on “The Dan Patrick Show” on Tuesday discussing the College Football Playoff’s expansion to 12 teams in the near future.

The expanded playoff, which will include the 6 highest-ranked conference champions and 6 at-large teams, will begin no later than the 2026 season, the season after the CFP’s current TV contract with ESPN expires. However, its board of managers is pushing to launch the format starting with the 2024 campaign.

Patrick, on Tuesday, wondered if the college football landscape over a 3-year period was changing to a system where “50 or 60 teams” represented the “haves”, with the remaining programs being considered the “have-nots”. McElroy, though, felt otherwise with the pending changes to the current playoff system.

“I think that actually the 12-team playoff kind of slows that down a little bit, Dan, to be honest with you. I thought that that was were we were heading,” McElroy responded. “And I wasn’t sure if there was going to be a 3-year period, a 5-year period, a 10-year period…I think the 12-team playoff cools further expansion for the moment, and partly because of the automatic qualifiers.”

Sydney Hunte

Sydney is an Atlanta-based journalist who has covered everything from SEC and ACC football to MLS, the U.S. men's national soccer team and professional tennis. His work has appeared on such platforms as SB Nation, Cox Media Group and FanSided.