Greg McElroy discusses Deion Sanders, Colorado 'cutting' players from roster

With Deion Sanders cutting some players from the Colorado roster, former quarterback Greg McElroy understood the process.

It may look a little unconventional, but Sanders is in the middle of reshaping a roster that went 1-11 in 2022. In fact, the Buffaloes haven’t had much success at all over the last 20 years.

If they want to be competitive the way Sanders envisions, they’ll have to make moves like this as McElroy explained.

“Now as far as I understand it, once you enter the portal after a semester or two, you are no longer on scholarship,” McElroy said on Always College Football. “That it is your choice as a player to enter the portal. Now if you are cut from your team, and every place is a little bit different, your scholarship will be honored, but you will not be a part of the football team.

“So it’s your determination as a player: do I want to go elsewhere, potentially forfeit my scholarship in pursuit of playing time and the opportunity to continue my career? Or do I want to stay at Colorado, retain my scholarship and finish my college experience as a normal college student? So those are one of the two options.”

As far as McElroy, and others, are concerned, Colorado and Sanders honor scholarships but don’t expect all of those players to play. Heck, they might not even be on the team come fall.

“What’s going on at Colorado is it sounds like they’re honoring the scholarships but they’re not necessarily guaranteed to be a part of the team,” McElroy said. “Sounds like they’re kind of following in line with what teams have done in the past. So good question. It seems ruthless. But in the era of NFL man, this is par for the course. It’s professional football in a lot of ways. You can earn money you can make money on your name and likeness but you’re not guaranteed a roster spot at any point. 

“Because of that, we are moving more in the direction of hey, the roster is going to turn over if it’s not up to snuff. So it’ll be interesting to see how this thing follows, what the long term ramifications might be for Deion Sanders and company. But either way, I think that they’re trying to turn over the roster of a team that was terrible last year. So it’s kind of understandable that they’re going about it this way.”

Colorado opens the football season September 2 on the road against TCU.