The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Colin Cowherd Podcast - FOX CFB Analyst Joel Klatt on USC to B1G Fallout, Notre Dame Future

Episode Date: July 5, 2022

Colin explains why Kyrie to the Lakers makes sense in a crowded LA sports market. Then, FOX Lead College Football analyst Joel Klatt joins Colin to discuss the major repercussions of USC & UCLA joining the Big Ten, what it means for Lincoln Riley and his former school Oklahoma, and if other big schools like Notre Dame and Oregon will follow the same path. They also make their predictions for the College Football Playoff National Title Game this season. Follow Colin and The Volume on Twitter for the latest content and updates and check out FanDuel for the best wagering and daily fantasy action! #Herd   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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You can bet five or ten bucks in one, $150 or more. If you are new, just download the Fandul Sportsbook app. Get started now. Sign up promo code Colin so they know we and I sent you. The Colin Coward podcast presented by the Fandul Sportsbook. Hi, everybody, and welcome in. to our Independence Day podcast. Joel Klaat's going to join me for 30 minutes of great college football talk.

And we're talking the additions to the Big Ten, USC, UCLA. We're talking SEC. We're talking Notre Dame. Will Oregon get invited to the Big Ten? A broad overview look at the goings on in college football over the last several days. So the Kyrie Irving to the Lakers rumors and the Kevin Doree. rant to the Golden State Warrior rumors, I don't think those deals are going to happen in the next day or two. And I'm not really sure. I'd bet 80-20, KD to the Warriors will not happen. They're

not going to give up the farm, and I don't think deep down KD wants to be a warrior. But Kyrie Irving is in Los Angeles, is not leaving, it's been said, until a deal is done. And this is something to think about that I know a lot of people that listen to my show say, you know, Colin, you talk about LA and California teams a lot because they're all winning. The Warriors, the Dodgers, the Rams, the Lakers won a title three years ago. They're winning. Our soccer teams are good. People are good. Now, Lincoln Riley at USC. When I worked at ESPN for a decade, you had more viable teams in the Northeast. The Giants won a Super Bowl. You know, the, The Yankees were the Yankees.

The Red Sox were, for some of that time, excellent. Right now, New York's going through a terrible state of their sports where their NBA teams and their NFL teams are a mess. One of the things that's really happening in Los Angeles is that when the Rams moved to town, the NFL is so powerful, it is taking market share and big sweet owners and advertising revenue from all the other teams. And when the Rams win the Super Bowl, it's put the fear of God in Jeannie Bus and, you know, the Dodgers group that the Rams are here. They're winning. They're becoming the model of the NFL. And they're not going away anytime soon. And I think this is a big part of Jeannie Bus of the Lakers willing to say, yeah, Kyrie's a headache.

Kyrie is selfish. It seems absurd. My father wouldn't have done this. But it makes sense right now in Los Angeles. to get Westbrook out of town and get Kyrie in. You'll become a playoff team and you'll become relevant again. Inside the walls of the Lakers, they are very aware of the media criticism. And Jeannie is very aware that Steve Ballmer and the Clippers have more money, more net worth.

They're going to build a new arena. And they're going to be a team that is like the Warriors willing to pay a heavy, heavy luxury tax. The Lakers would rather not do that. The Buss family's wealth is all with the Lakers. Steve Balmer's wealth with the Clippers is not. It's not just with his pro basketball team. And so I think there is a sense of, if not desperation or panic, a little fear you've got to make the Lakers relevant again. They'll always sell tickets. You can give away tickets. You can paper the crowd with freebies. But right now in Los Angeles, if USC wins nine or ten games, Rams, Justin Herbert, Dodgers, Clippers, I think have to be deemed as a top five team in the league next year, Paul George and Kauai. For the first time, maybe ever in the last 30, 40 years, the Lakers are in danger of becoming the fourth topic of conversation.

because the Westbrook thing just does not work. It does not work. Kyrie works. And you can talk yourself in as a fan as an owner as a player. You can talk yourself into Kyrie, A.D. LeBron being a championship team. I don't think they are. You can talk yourself into it. You can't if Westbrook is on this roster.

Let's get to Joel Clat. So Joel Clad is the voice of college football on Fox. and we do a lot of deep dives, although we have our TV segment every week where I try to mentor him and he doesn't want to listen. That's true. But I, this is interesting, Joel. About three months ago, Mike Bone and I were on the phone.

I was in my backyard. And he was talking about the challenges of Southern California. It's a very distracted market. And, you know, he was saying, hey, do you have any ideas? And I said, you can't play rice. in L.A. When Pete Carroll was here, there was no NFL, there was no LAAFC, the Dodgers weren't as dominant, the Clippers were a joke. I'm like, the world's changed. You can't play rice.

I said, what I would do, Mike, I would call Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio State, and I would have one to two home and homes every year, Big Ten, because the PAC 12 is so weak, Lincoln, Riley's not going to be challenged by year two. He's just not going to be challenged on a weekly basis. And it was funny. And there were other things talked about during the call, but, you know, he was, we were just talking. Mike's always called me and just asked questions. You know L.A. And so when the moment happened and I got the call on USC moving to the Big Ten, my thought was, well, I don't know if he was teasing me, if he was, but I wasn't shocked by it at all. Or you?

No. Well, let me initially, yes, because I had not heard anything. And normally, and you know this, and you and I talk about this all the time. Like when there are things going on, like you hear little ripples, right? Like little things like, oh, okay, that would be interesting. This was, I felt like very well kept by everyone involved. And so when I initially heard it, I was surprised and I was shocked. And then three minutes later after that wears off, it's like, well, yeah, you know, like, of course this happened.

This was. And I think if you really have any semblance of 30,000 foot view, this was inevitable in some way. So to me it comes down to, and the conversation I'm sure, what he was talking to you about, is economics and exposure. And in the PAC 12, that had degraded both of those things drastically since the beginning of the century, really. You know, since the Leinard Bush days at USC when the PAC 10 at the time was a viable and very healthy. and great conference. And it has deteriorated to a point that it has become a punchline. And I've thrown that line out there and people think it's unfair, but it is fair because

the PAC 12 is literally a hashtag now called PAC 12 after dark. Like, no one watches them play. Right. And when you look at the economics of where the SEC is about to go with their media rights deal and where the Big Ten is about to go with their media rights deal and what's on the horizon for the conferences like the Big 12, the PAC 12, the economics weren't even close. Those conferences were going to start to double up the others in terms of the revenue distribution per school. And you can't sit in that situation. So in some ways, USC's hands were totally

forced. And I know that I'm going to talk a lot about this in terms of USC's because this was USC driven. UCLA is along for the ride. And I know that they'll bristle at that, but they are. And that's kind of the truth. Well, you know, I've said this before. It's easy to beat up on Tom Hansen and Larry Scott. And I don't think either was a visionary as a PAC 10 or PAC 12 commissioner. But there's something I've tried to tell my friends for 20 years because I've lived in all four corners of the country.

The PAC 12 is at a disadvantage. Seattle, San Francisco, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Denver slash Boulder, a lot of these teams are in professional sports markets. That's right. SEC's not. Big 12's not. Big 10's not. So USC and UCLA, University of Washington, Cal, Stanford, Arizona State are competing against pro teams.

It is hard to create the fervor and the interest when there's a game tomorrow with professional players, often in the same stadium or same area code or vicinity. And so it doesn't mean as much out here. I've noticed since the NFL arrived in Los Angeles, UCLA, USC, read the LA Times, listen to Sports Talk Radio. They're not on it. They're just not a topic at all. I do still believe, and I think you'll agree with this, I still believe that USC has that potential.

USC captures the heart of L.A. maybe more so than any other team that's here, even professionally, maybe other than the Lakers. And maybe I'm being too college-centric. But boy, when the USC is rolling, they desperately love it when USC gets going here. Yeah. It's everything about it, the sunglasses on the pan, the Coliseum, the scene. I still believe that USC can be kind of the focal point of the sports world in their market. And no other Pact 12 school can really do that.

Yeah, no, I do agree. Lincoln Riley, you know, it's funny because I got a lot of this. Whoa, Lincoln Riley doesn't want this. But when Lincoln Riley took that Sunday morning call with Rick Caruso, Carol, Fault, Mike Bone, I don't know every word of it, but I do know they sold him on moon shots and the Olympics and big and expansion and playing the best. So he's got two years to load up this roster, two more transfer portal cycles, two more recruiting classes. So by the time he gets into the Big Ten, this team will be ready to play against anybody. I think at home against Ohio State, maybe not in Columbus, but they'll be able to go toe to toe with everybody else in that conference.

So, you know, when I look at the Lincoln Riley situation, and I say to myself, I don't know if he knew going forward, but he's not a guy to me. I think he left Oklahoma because a reality set in. Oklahoma is decreasing in terms of viability, the state, for high school recruits. Texas has oil money, Sark and Jimbo Fisher, harder to apply. pry players out. He's moving to the SEC and going to go up against SEC schools that have been recruiting those high schools for 100 years.

And I think he looked in the mirror and thought, I got to get to a state with more players because it's going to be harder and harder with the NIL to pry away players from Texas, oil money. There's just more money in Texas than Oklahoma. So that's always been my takeaway, why he left. He just looked at the reality of his program, Texas, the SEC, and thought,

I got to get to a bigger state. It could be a Florida school. It could be a Texas school. It could be a California school. If Kirby Smart was struggling, it could be the Georgia job. But I got to get to a state that is mine where the NIL money generated by my state can compete. I think that there's only four schools in the country that can open up their back door and be within an hours drive, not flight, drive of a recruiting base that could finish number one in the country. country. I think it's Miami. I think it's Georgia. I think it's probably LSU or Texas or combination of

those two and then USC. Yeah. So, you know, and maybe you throw A&M in there because of the proximity to Texas. But my point is that it is a really small number and it does not include Oklahoma. It doesn't even include Ohio State. You know, they've got to be a national recruiter. It doesn't even include Alabama. They can't sit in Alabama. They've got to go out. They've got to win battles in Texas and Louisiana and Georgia. I mean, you know this, right? And so it's really made what Nick Saban has done even more remarkable. But USC is one of those places where you can open up the back door, you can get in your car, you can drive south on the five for an hour, you can drive north on the five for an hour, and you can have a roster that can finish this in number one class in the

country. That's, I mean, that's the truth of it. I think that was a big reason why. And I think that he saw, and I'm going to get crushed for this, but I don't think Oklahoma's totally tapped out, but I think he saw how perfect it had to be in order for Oklahoma to win a national championship. And I think that USC probably has more wiggle room in that because of what I was talking about in recruiting. And that is not a knock on Oklahoma. So I want to be abundantly clear here for everybody that listening to this. I believe Oklahoma is a top tier. blue chip program in college football. I think that they will win.

I like Brent Venables a lot. I think they can win at the top level. I believe they'll win SEC championships in the future, and I think that they still and can win a national championship. I do believe that it's harder there than it can be at USC. And I believe that even more so now after this move with USC going to the Big Ten. This baseball season turned K's into cash, big hits into big ones, into big wins with Fandul Sportsbook.

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I don't care what you're saying. Yep, that's me. Clever Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skis. The reactions, my journey from basketball to college football, or my career in sports media. Well, somewhere along the way, this platform became bigger than I ever imagined. And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with some of your favorite athletes,

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And I think it makes a lot of sense. I would agree with that, by the way. I'll jump in. I completely agree with that. I don't think they expand anymore unless it's Notre Dame. I agree. I think it's harder and harder to be independent. Let's touch on that because Notre Dame was independent forever, then conjoined with the ACC

half the way. Why can't you be independent and viable anymore? Explain that. Oh, that's a great question. The revenue is too great from conferences? Yes, because there's only six or seven games that you're selling as an independent. You've got to find the revenue out of your road games. Okay, when you're in a conference, so Ohio State, let's just bring up Ohio State in Notre Dame.

That's the difference. Ohio State is essentially in the Big Ten selling both their home games. and their away games. So they're maximizing their brand regardless of where they're playing. Notre Dame doesn't do that. So Notre Dame is maximizing their brand in their home games because those are the ones that they own. But they have to have some sort of other arrangement for a grant of rights for their road games in order to supplement the rest of the revenue that a team like Ohio State would get from their conference. Now, the tradeoff is that Ohio, State then has to go and share evenly amongst the other schools in their conference.

I do believe that it is getting to a point where Notre Dame is sitting there and they're thinking to themselves, we are leaving money on the table by being associated with the ACC in our loose affiliation with them in a football sense and then obviously with the other sports versus potentially two other options. So let's let me walk through the options. Here's what I think Notre Dame, this is what's on the table for Notre Dame. I do believe that they can stay independent, maybe not for a long time, but at least for the near term.

As long as they were to leave the ACC scheduling partnership that they have, they leave all their other sports, they basically leave the ACC. join the Big Ten in every other sport but football and then get the loose scheduling agreement with the Big Ten. I believe that they would garner enough revenue at that point where they could stay independent. There will become a time when that just is going to be moot and they're going to have to fold themselves into the Big Ten. There is an air of inevitability that Notre Dame will at some point be a Big Ten member.

I just don't know if that's in the next three years, five years, or ten. 10 years. Yeah. I hope I answered your question there. I think you were asking why can or can't you be independent? I believe, you know, I think I did. Yeah. It's funny.

I think football, because of the scarcity of games, is the easiest part for a Texas, Oklahoma and the SEC or a USC, UCLA in the Big Ten. That's the easy part. There's five road games. And remember, Iowa, Nebraska, those are not difficult flights. Those are pretty quick from Los Angeles, right? Three hours-ish. Chicago's three hours, 15 minutes.

These are not difficult flights. And if you only play five road games, you know, you may not even play back-to-backs. USC or UCLA will play three out-of-conference games at home. And then they'll have, you know, ten more games, and they'll do five on the road. I don't think weather is a big issue. September, October, and early November, you've been. at those Big Ten stadiums, it's gorgeous. And you may play your last game, which is Thanksgiving weekend for the Big Ten,

you may play your last game at home many years. So your last road game, maybe November 16th, I'm sorry, Ann Arbor's not Buffalo. It's fine. It's going to be okay. I think the Olympic sports, it's really, really hard. And you're going to lose more money than you've ever lost because of flying teams all across the country. But, you know, when I look at all this stuff, there's a part of this that in the past 20 years,

the amount of corporations in America has been cut in half. It used to be 7,500. Now it's 3,700 because of consolidation. People get gobbled up. Now, we know that, you know, unlike college football, nobody's getting gobbled up. But what we're seeing in a sense is consolidation. Yes.

Is that the English Premier League was almost gobbled up, right? The big dogs were like, why are we splitting revenue? So for the remaining... I mean, you call them a step. going to golf right now. The best golfers are like, I don't want to share revenue with guys at the bottom and playing pro-ams on Wednesday. That's right.

So I look at the Oregon Ducks, for instance, and I say to myself, man, that's a pretty viable. That's a pretty viable football program. I look at Kansas. I think, that's a pretty viable basketball program. And there are these random programs now that are hovering out there and you're thinking, where do they go? right Joel where do they go

okay this I think now now we're into the nuts and bolts because we just went through a conversation that

makes every fan depressed in those from those other schools right the conversation being the big ten is not going to expand

unless it's Notre Dame right because the pie doesn't grow big enough to then because the slices become smaller. You take Kansas in, you take Oregon in, they're not going to do that. The president at Ohio State and Michigan and Michigan State and Penn State and Wisconsin, they're not

going to vote to have Oregon come in so they can take less money. They're not going to do that. So that's why you're not just, all these people are like, well, okay, obviously Washington and Oregon will end up in the big tent. No, no, like that's the problem. And so I feel you, if you're a fan of those programs. I feel it, man. I trust me, I went to Colorado. I feel like we're this proud program, AAU institution, top 20 media market, own the mountain time zone, won a national championship, Heisman Trophy. Stuck! Like, we don't grow the piece of pie large enough to get goggled up. So what do you do? I think that you've got to be proactive. Those that are reactive in this, and this goes back throughout the history of conference realignment,

I do believe that those that have been reactive have been left holding the bag, if you will. And only those that are proactive are getting themselves into the right position. Now, that doesn't guarantee that you're going to be in the right position, but it certainly helps. I think you've got to be creative. And I think that you might have to move quickly. Here's an idea. I know people might not like it. Maybe they do. If I was the Big 12 and the PAC 12 at this point, I would see the handwriting on the wall that I have, there's maybe 8 to 10, maybe 11 valuable properties out there. Now, you're not going to get Big 10 money or SEC money, but maybe you can maximize revenue for those schools. But you've got these other schools that are also loosely tied to you. because of their conference affiliation. I think if those two conferences, let's say,

consolidated, morphed into one conference, and then you had a top-tier, bottom-tier, with relegation possible, you could move down, you could move up. The top tier of the conference would get a larger section of the revenue share, the bottom section of the conference would get a lesser share of the revenue share.

That, I think, could be a viable opportunity. but you cannot get into a situation where you've got equal revenue distribution with all of those schools and think that you're going to be on equal footing with the SEC or the Big Ten in terms of competition, exposure, economics, any of it. So I said my view of what the Big Ten will look like going forward in football. The top four will be Ryan Day in the Buckeyes, Lincoln Riley and the Trojans, Harbon, Michigan, and James Franklin at Penn State. Those will be the big four.

The next four will be Mel Tucker, Michigan State, Chip Kelly, UCLA, Kirk Ferrence, Iowa, and Paul Chris, Wisconsin. Northwestern Pat Fitzgerald, P.J.J.Fleck and Minnesota will be bowl teams. But I believe your first four, and that's your next four. And I said today on Fox, I said, if that's half your conference, that is a heck of a conference. That's a really good conference.

And I touch on that, Joel, because I think college football has a big game problem. If I take the NFL schedule every week, there's maybe one game a week. Texans play the Jags. I refuse to watch. The other games I'll watch. In college football, Labor Day weekend, 95 games. Georgia, Oregon, Notre Dame Ohio State. Those are the ones you want to see.

Yep. Yep. It's the reverse of the NFL. It's the reverse of the NFL. Following weekend, 95 games. Close. Bama, Texas. and I'm interested in Lincoln Riley's Pack 12 debut with Stanford.

They have a big game problem. And to me, Texas, Oklahoma to the SEC, USC to the Big Ten, I'm going to get combined those four teams, 12 more great games on television a year. This is entertainment now. And it's really about inventory is what you're talking about. Valuable inventory. It's a business at the end of the day.

No one wants to talk about that. And I know that fans bristle about that, but it is a business. And you need to create more valuable inventory. And that's what just happened. More valuable inventory was created. There is a massive big game problem. I believe that, and I've talked to you about this at length, I think that we still need to fix the way that we make non-conference schedules in college football

in order to drive more interesting matchups, more meaningful matchups, and more valuable inventory. I think we still should get to a point, and this is where we're headed. Now we're going to have these two conferences that are really the power brokers in this sport, and they're going to have the same amount of the teams. I believe that the SEC and the Big Ten should start talking about crossing over and doing some sort of non-conference challenge where you hit the top, you know, one versus one from the previous year, two versus two, three versus three, four versus four, five versus, and now you start talking about the inventory in college football going way up. And I think the

value in those games going way up. And I think that that's probably where we're headed. Without a powerful governing structure, which without a visionary looking out for the global structure of the sport, so in its current fragmented state, we are headed towards two super conferences. There will be some that are left out. There will be some that might get in, that aren't in at this point. But college football in the future will be major college football, at least, will be limited to at most, I think, 40 schools. I don't think you're wrong.

And, you know, if you take the SEC with Texas, Oklahoma and the Big Ten with USC, UCLA, there's obviously about five schools out of that Miami now with Christobal, Clemson, Notre Dame, at its best, Florida State, Oregon, that are going, hey, we're good enough to compete with you guys. I don't think you can put them in a conference geographically. It's just asking too much. And so I don't know how it comes out, but I say this all the time. The PGA wouldn't be. in this much trouble had they not taken care of the elite performers. Greg Norman's been complaining about the PGA for 20 years. Mickelson for 10. College football wouldn't be in this problem.

They have no CEO. This is why the UFC stole so much market share in the fight game from boxing. Boxing had no, they just had a bunch of individual commissioners and promoters, right? So I don't, I feel sympathy for the Oregon's and the outsiders. I do. But this is what happens. It doesn't matter if it was the Saudis, Amazon or Apple.

The PGA was vulnerable. It doesn't matter if it's the Big Ten of the SEC. College football was vulnerable. So to me, this was just bound to happen in this consolidation world we now live in. And it was also unfair to think that we were just going to thrust onto the backs of programs like USC and, you know, Miami in some sense in the ACC and the Alabama's of the world and the Ohio states of the world, like Texas. Texas is a better example. Texas and OU.

USC, you've got to make all the money for all of us and then we're going to split it equally. It's like, hold on. Like, time out. Like that can't be your model. That model is going to get blown up. I think it's unfair to expect USC to remain loyal in that situation. That's not a popular opinion, obviously. People want the idealistic world and the utopia world where, you know, it's all kumbaya and everything.

But that's just not reality. And that's what you're talking about is like economic reality, business reality. College football has been vulnerable for a long time. And the reason is is because no one's been looking out for the hole. There's a reason the NFL is sitting where it's at right now. And it's not just because it's the tailor-made sport television. That's helped. But it's also because way back when, boy, they circled the wagon.

and they came together and they said, this is the model that's going to make us ultimately more valuable than anything else. They've stuck to it and look at where they're at now. By the way, I think Ohio State will face Alabama for the national title this year. I've looked at both schedules. That's my takeaway this morning.

Your thoughts? I think Bama enters the season as the number one team. They've got, you know, obviously the incumbent Heisman Trophy winner and Bryce Young, and I think they've got the best defensive. player in the country coming back. So that's, they're going to be very tough. They've done well in the transfer portal.

They obviously recruit really well. They're a better team than they were last year when they won in the, when they lost in the national championship. I think Ohio State is the best remaining team outside of Alabama, going into the season at least. I don't know how you stop that offense. I think it could be an offense that we put into the same category as the Burrow, LSU Tigers, the Mack Jones, Alabama Crimson,

tight. It has the feeling of that. Great running back with electricity, depth at running back, very good offensive line, quarterback that could potentially win a Heisman trophy, distributes well, as deep or deeper wide receiver quarter than anybody in the country with all different styles, guys that can body you up, guys that can beat you in the slot. Ohio State's going to be sensational, and it comes down to one question for them. Can they play defense? But they're going to be my two favorites closely following that are three schools that I think are rounding out the rest of my top five. I think A&M is going to be very good. Jimbo is recruited at a high level. They've got some serious dudes there. I think Notre Dame is going to be really good.

Yeah, I think it's the best Notre Dame team in 25 years on the field. Last year when I did their game against Wisconsin, they were winning and Brian was doing a good job with him, but even to his own credit, he admitted to me, we're a year early. This offensive line is not ready yet. They're going to be very good next year. It's one of the reasons I was a little bit surprised he went, but he got so much money he had to go to LSU. They're going to be better this year. And then the last one, and this is what's going to be interesting because I do believe USC is going to be vastly improved and maybe the class of the PAC 12, but Utah is going to be really good. And I'm going to put Utah in there as my last team in the top five.

All right. I don't know if I agree with that last one. Yeah, I know. I knew you wouldn't. I knew you wouldn't. But that's okay. The skiing is good. Not quite Colorado, but listen, I'm biased. Well, happy Independence Day to you and your beautiful family, my man. We'll talk soon. Yep, absolutely. Always great to bang around college football with you. I appreciate it. The volume. Make sure to check out the Dramon Green Show. I brought Dramon Green into the volume because one of the more entertaining voices in sports, unique perspective, understands behind the rope. Also chops up with guests like Gary Payton, Zach Levine, Tracy McGrady.

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