Greg McElroy Names Five College Football Playoff Locks From SEC

There are a ton of massive changes to the sport of college football that are taking place in 2024.

We witnessed a Power 5 conference collapse as the Pac-12 is down to just two teams, elite players again transferred all over, and the College Football Playoff is expanding from four to 12 teams. Now, the latter was a long time coming, and this past year which saw an undefeated ACC champion in Florida State get left out may have been the final straw to force the change.

Heading into 2024 and the new playoff format, there is a premium on winning your conference as you get an automatic bid and a first-round bye. While we fully expect for some of the teams that had monopolized the playoff when it was just four teams to still continue to make it, the expansion does allow for another tier of teams to have a seat at the table.

For a conference like the SEC, which has always been as deep as it has come and only gotten deeper with the additions of Texas and Oklahoma, the expansion truly provides them a chance to put their dominance and depth on display with the seven at-large bids. However, based on a recent episode of Always College Football, ESPN's Greg McElroy thinks that the conference should have no issue getting teams in, especially if they end up going 10-2 specifically.

McElroy went through eight of the top contenders in the SEC, and broke down whether or not a 10-2 record would get them into the College Football Playoff. He ended up having five "locks", three "likely' teams, and just one team being viewed as "unlikely".

In terms of who the "locks" were for McElroy, he listed the following as teams that simply just have to get to 10-2 on the year and they'll be in the dance:

1. Georgia
2. Texas
3. Alabama
4. Oklahoma
5. Texas A&M

McElroy did go as far as to say that Georgia going 10-2 would make them a "100% bonafide lock". When it came to Texas, he did say that they'd be a lock to get in but not at the same magnitude as it would be for Georgia.

Regardless, if the SEC is able to get around five or six teams in the College Football Playoff, the conference would have to be thrilled with that.

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