Mike Greenberg: CFP expansion could lead to end of college football ‘as we know it’

Credit: Get Up on ESPN

Rarely do you see a sports story that gets Mike Greenberg riled up enough for a snarky rant, but few discussions have enraged sports media quite like the potential looming expansion of the College Football Playoff to 24 teams.

Discussing the clear momentum toward a 24-team postseason for college football on Thursday on Get Up, Greenberg expressed his fear that loading so many teams into the CFP not only devalues the regular season, as others have argued, but moves college football toward something closer to a sideshow than a serious sport.

“What I can tell you with certainty is that good teams, championship-worthy teams getting left out of the Playoff is a good thing, not a bad thing,” Greenberg said.

“If you put every single team that might win the championship into the Playoff … you might just as well not play the regular season to begin with. If we live in a world … whether Ohio State and Michigan rest their starters for that game at the end of the season because they’ve got the potential of five playoff games still sitting in front of them, then college football as we know it ceases to exist.”

In recent weeks, a top coaches’ association, as well as the Big Ten, Big 12, and ACC, have all endorsed the 24-team plan. The SEC remains the lone holdout, and unless commissioner Greg Sankey splits with the entire rest of the sport to nix the expansion, the CFP will double in size.

The 24-team Playoff does not appear to have many supporters among fans across the country or in the media, where several prominent voices have pointed out that the plan seems like a cash grab that will .