The Joel Klatt Show: A College Football Podcast - 5 Takeaways from the NFL Combine, Travis Hunter vs Shohei Ohtani & the future of the CFP

Episode Date: March 3, 2025

FOX Sports’ lead College Football analyst Joel Klatt gives his biggest takeaways from the NFL Combine over the weekend including which players improved their draft stock. He also reacts to Travis Hunter’s comments when he was asked to compare his two-way feats to the Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani. Klatt dives into the debate of whether it’s more impressive to play both ways in football or baseball. He also discusses the recent College Football news and lays out why the Big Ten and SEC’s emergence as the two power brokers in the sport can lead to an improved Playoff along with other secondary benefits for the sport as a whole. He also weighs in on several programs electing to cancel Spring Games this season and why the fans are the ones getting the short end of the deal. Klatt wraps up the pod by discussing recent GM hires in CFB and how that’s the latest evolution in a sport that is going through a lot of change. 0:00 Intro 2:00 NFL Combine Takeaways 3:40 Texas WR Matthew Golden 6:30 Jalen Milroe's Draft Stock 8:50 Shedeur Sanders & Cam Ward 14:43 Travis Hunter vs. Shohei Ohtani 21:53 Future of CFP 36:40 Spring games no more? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Travis is right and wrong all at the same time. College football has never been better. Interest has never been higher. I believe that we are at the dawn of the golden age of college football. It was an epic day of college football. It was one of those days where you fall in love with the sport all over again. Hey, welcome into the program, everybody. I'm Joel Glad.

This is the Joel Clatt Show. And this show, as always, is brought to you by Hampton by Hilton. We are very glad that you're joining us here. Lots to get into today. We're going to talk takeaways from the NFL scouting combine. I've got to get in on some college topics that happened while I was on vacation. But first and foremost, hey, just remember you're watching on YouTube probably. Go ahead and subscribe to the channel.

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You can find me personally on X at Joel Clat. Okay, let's get into this. I've got takeaways from the NFL scouting combine. And then I have not touched on the news coming out of college football last week about this this playoff change with the Big Ten and the SEC kind of how would you put it? Maybe exerting power, if you will, on college football and maybe changing some of the landscape of how this playoff may look in 2026 and beyond. Since I was on vacation, I didn't get a chance to touch on that. So I wanted to touch on that here tonight and I will do so a little bit later in the program. But let's start with the NFL scouting combine. We just watched it. Okay, so Indianapolis was a buzz with the scouting combine.

First and foremost, do I love this event? No. I'm sorry to be a buzzkill, but I've never really loved the combine is what it is. I think that the combine is about touchpoints and confirmations. You know, teams are trying to confirm what they've seen on film by getting you in the room and talking to you as a player. That's what they're trying to do. Maybe some of them are trying to confirm some of the traits. that they see on film and they're trying to get a measurable on that trait.

They think you're fast, are you fast? They think you're twitchy, are you twitchy? They think you're strong and powerful, are you strong and powerful? They think that you're tall, are you tall? So on and so forth. That's what the combine is for. Now, we've made it into something a little bit different, and it's entertaining. And I'm entertained and you're entertained.

And so because of that, I do enjoy it, but its value for me is a little bit hit or miss. I do have some takeaways from the combine because it doesn't mean that you can't help your stock. The fact that I don't think it's like a great venue doesn't mean that you can't go there and help your stock. So let's talk about like five points from this combine. And I'm going to start with a guy that I actually think in tandem with his late season run. And then his run at the combine improved his stock. Now, how much? I'm not sure.

I think that this player could get into the middle of the first round potentially. I really like his game. I'm talking about the Houston transfer. It goes to Texas, Matthew Golden. Matthew Golden ran out, man. 429 in the 40 is going to raise some serious attention in those circles. When they look down at their stopwatch, when they see the official results, they're going to look around all these NFL evaluators, and they're going to be like,

okay, well, guess what? Yep, we need fast players. And in particular, a guy that can make plays. This is not just a track star out. there. He makes plays. Remember what I just said. The way that he played late in the season, he was really the go-to guy. The passing game for Texas largely ran through Matthew Golden. And so he's a guy that can do that. And he has shown now this top-end explosive speed, which everybody is after. So Matthew Golden clearly helping himself at the scouting combine.

And by the way, how about Texas just having like blazing fast 40s in the last couple of years? I know everyone, and it wasn't a joke, and I love Sark, and everyone knows that. I'm a big fan of Texas. I'm a big fan of Sark. And there's a reason why they've been in the national semi-final two straight years. All-gas, no brakes is not just a slogan out there. I mean, they have been all gas. They really have.

You look at some of the 40s that they've put up over the last couple of years. Worthy ran that blistering 4-21 last year. Ed and I Mitchell ran a fast-for-y. He was sub-4-4. Matthew Golden this year, He goes, what do you go, 429? Jaden Blue goes 438. Isaiah Bond right there around 44 just subbed that, all 23 miles an hour. Like, these guys can roll.

So that's five Texas players in two years that have all got sub 44 and higher, faster, if you want to call it that, than 23 miles an hour. That's like, okay, all gas, no brakes. Texas, we get what you're doing. But it does speak to kind of the program that Sark is building. we should not anticipate Texas taking a step back. And I know none of us do, but just taking, you know, what we see at the scouting combine can confirm things that we know about programs

in college football. And if you're a college fan, we know, like, Texas is here to stay. And here they are. They're in the national semifinal. They represented the SEC and the SEC championship game. And they're going to go nowhere because Sark is accumulating talent. We can see that by that speed that we saw. over the last couple of years. By the way, Isaiah Bond, the Bama transfer, did come into Texas,

and then he did say, like, yeah, I'm going to go after Xavier Worthy's record. Not quite, 439. Nothing to scoff at. But when you say that you're going to go after that 422, like, you better get closer than 439. It makes 439 feel slow, although it's not. Trust me. It's not. So that's my first takeaway. I thought Matthew Golden really helped himself. And like I said, maybe middle of the first round, maybe even higher. Second takeaway. The combine is a perfect location for a player like Jalen Milro. You know how I feel about Jalen Milro. I really love Jalen Milro. I really do. Now, is he inconsistent? Yes. Does he show top end talent and traits? Absolutely. And that's exactly why he is tailor made for a combine. Now, I wish he would have run because I think that would have really grabbed some attention amongst the evaluators in the NFL.

I think it would have created buzz. It would have created buzz outside of the evaluators within the media. It would have created buzz within the evaluators. But he didn't. Okay, that's fine. But just watching him throw and watching him on tape, seeing him in person, trust me, when you see him in person, you're like, oh, my gosh. Like, this guy is just, he's an Adonis. And athletically, he does things other guys can't.

And from an evaluator standpoint, whenever you see something that you can't teach, it raises your eyebrows. And it draws you in and it draws your attention. And so this type of setting is perfect, perfect for Jalen Milrow. And in a lot of cases, it's similar to kind of the Anthony Richardson phenomenon. I think teams are going to fall in love with his potential. Now, is he consistent enough to be a really good NFL quarterback yet? No, no, he's not. And he needs to get more consistent.

But the problem is that there are few and far between guys, quarterbacks in particular, that can do the things top end, the ceiling that Jalen Milrow can do. So when you're projecting, a lot of times evaluators and teams and coaches believe that they're the ones that can produce the floor for a player. If your floor is really low, they can develop you to a point where your floor is no longer low and then you can capitalize in the top end talent. That's what Andy Reid thought with Patrick Mahomes, and he was right. And he was right. Okay. So even though he has shown some inconsistencies,

and namely, you know, the film against Michigan is not going to help him out. That top end stuff, man, I'm telling you. People are going to fall in love with that. And Indianapolis is certainly a location that that type of love affair starts. Third, and let me stick with quarterbacks here. Cam Warden should do or not doing on-field drills, not throwing. And here's the deal. I know that some people like to criticize them because they want to see them compete. And I'm not here to tell you you. You can't criticize these guys. If you want to criticize these guys, that's fine. I think it's easy to sit on the sideline and tell the guy at the blackjack table with a huge stack of chips like, hey, man, split the eights, split the tens, whatever you want to do. And,

there's just not a lot of upside for Cam Ward and Shador Sanders. There's just not. So what's the incentive for those guys to go out there and throw? Can they help themselves? Likely not. Can they hurt themselves? Yeah, maybe. And did you see, like I saw, the disjointedness that occurs when you're trying to throw to receivers

that are just out there trying to run as fast as they can that you've never thrown before that they're running routes that they just got taught literally while they're standing in line. And it's like, run to this cone and then run to that cone and they're like, hey, throw the ball on time. And it's like, listen, timing in that setting is not a thing. And so a lot of these quarterbacks, like they would throw a ball and everyone's like, what a terrible throw. It's like, I mean, that's really tough. It's incredibly tough. So will you hurt yourself in that setting? Maybe. Maybe. And it's certainly not a setting that you can dial in, control, and be at your best. Now, if you can help yourself, then you throw. This is kind of my same take that I have for guys when they're opting in

and out of what we would call like meaningless bowl games outside of the playoff. And I always say, if you can help yourself in your stock moving forward, you should play, which is the majority of players. I think that the majority of players should go out there and actually compete in the NFL scout and combine. Now, there are rare players that are at the top of their position groups or the top of their round that it's like, are they really going to help themselves? Probably not. So we saw several of these guys not participate. Shador and Cam didn't participate. Travis Hunter, Ashton Jentee, Teteroa McMillan, Mason Graham, although he did bench for us, which is the most Mason Graham thing ever, right? It's like, no, I'm not going to participate, but you're all like, I'm going to bench. It's like,

well, of course you are. Of course you are. Mason Graham. Oh, I love that guy. Then there's some other guys like injury stuff. And, you know, that's Colston Loveland, Abdul Carter, Will Johnson, Michael Williams. And that's a different category. But again, think of the guys that I mentioned. Travis Hunter, he's the, I would argue, the top overall prospect in the draft. Can he help himself at the combine? Probably not, although I'll get to him in a moment.

Cam and Shudor, top quarterbacks in the draft. Are they really going to help themselves? No, they're going to be top three picks, so they can only hurt themselves. Ashton Genti, top running back in the draft. all he can do is hurt himself. Tetero McMillan, likely the top wide receiver in the draft. All he can do is hurt himself. Mason Graham, top defensive tackle in the draft.

So you get what I'm trying to say here. That is reserved for a rarefied group of players. Go ahead, man. Set it out. If you can't help yourself, then what are you doing there? That's fine. Go do the injury, you know, marigle round, go through all the tests, and then meet with the teams.

If you can help yourself, go ahead and participate. and then try to do well, which guys did. You know, again, like Matthew Golden, or how about these two guys, and this is my number four takeaway. I thought that the two Ohio State running backs performed really well, Travion Henderson and Quichon Junkins. Now, there were other guys that were really good at the combine, and they're not the only ones,

but they stood out to me because they needed to run fast, and then I was interested to see, like, what is Judkins actual measurables? Now, I was next to him in the lunchroom all year, and I thought to myself like, yeah, he's probably six foot. And he's like, he's thick. And then you watch them move and you watch those drills and you're like, man, these guys are really good players. Now, they might not be the first running backs taken in the draft, but they're going to be at least second round players, which in the modern day NFL draft, that's really good for a running back, very good for a running back.

And so I look up and Trayvion runs 4-4-3 with a 38 and a half vert. And I'm like, okay, man, that's the explosiveness that is consistent with what I see on the film. Obviously, some of those long runs in particular in the playoffs, like they were special. Against Oregon, he had the long run, the screen pass against Texas that really broke their back before the half. Like, he's an explosive player. And then Q rolls in and it's like, dang, man, six foot, 221 and broad jumped 11 feet. That's some serious explosiveness. And by the way, at 221 to run sub 5-4 or 4-5, he's 4-8, 11-foot broad jump.

That was first among running backs, 38 and a half vert, and he's 221 pounds. So again, these guys took a lot of carries off of themselves by sharing the load. They did not have a great offensive line because of injuries to Josh Simmons and others, McLaughlin in there at center. And so they couldn't really run the football the way that they wanted to run the football, in particular late in the year. But these are guys that are ready for the NFL. So those two guys, I thought helped themselves at the Combine.

I won't be surprised if both of those guys aren't off the board before the third round in the NFL draft. And then the last thing from the Combine that I thought was kind of newsworthy was everybody's wondering, I think most people, because it's one of the questions that I get the most actually. If I'm just out and about and people stop me, they're always like, hey, is Travis Hunter going to be a two-way player? in the NFL. You guys know how I feel about that. I do believe that he will be. I think that he can be. I think that he's special. He is special. And then he was asked about that at the scouting combine and in a kind of a fun way in terms of another, quote, two-way player, Shohay Otani. And he was asked, which was harder? Otani or what he does? Here was his answer.

What's more difficult? Probably me, what I do in football, because it's a lot on your body. You know, Tony, he's a great player, but you got to do a lot of your football. Okay. Okay. So here's why I wanted to touch on this is most of you know in my past, and granted this was a lifetime ago, I was drafted out of high school to play baseball by the San Diego Padres. I was drafting the 11th round.

And I signed and I went and I played three years of minor league baseball before I quit baseball and went back to school, and then I walked on at the University of Colorado. So that's my path. Okay. So I was a multiple sport guy my entire life all the way through high school, and I have a good bit of knowledge of football and baseball. Okay. So Travis is right and wrong all at the same time. he is right that in terms of the physical toll that his body will take trying to do what he does in the sport of football, it's harder than what Shohei Otani is doing in baseball, being a pitcher and a hitter. Now, that's where it ends because everything else is way more difficult for Otani,

way more difficult. And again, I'm not trying to say like, oh, he's wrong. I just thought this was a fun topic in particular with my background, because he says like, oh, what I do is harder because of my toll on my body. Okay, that's fine. And that's fair. I will just tell you that no. No.

No. Travis Hunter is a rare, rare talent, rare. And what makes him great is the fact that he's got this incredible fitness level that allows him to take these traits. that make him a great wide receiver and a great DB and use them for a longer period of time than others can use them. That's where his greatness is, okay? Because the traits, the explosiveness, the hand-eye coordination, the spatial awareness, the speed, the agility, all of that stuff, everything that he's using as a wide receiver is the exact same things that he's going to need as a defensive back. Okay. So the, the, the, two,

things that he is doing are not opposed. They're similar. It's more in line with a basketball player being a great offensive player and a great defensive player. Okay. It's, it's, it's similar. Now, that doesn't mean that it's not impressive because it is. But what Otani is doing is opposite. Okay, what you need to be a great hitter is not technically what you need to be a great pitcher. And he is a top five to, I don't know, two to five pitcher in the sport and hitter in the sport, which is insanity. Because again, they are opposed. The way that you would train to become a great hitter, a power hitter in Major League Baseball is virtually opposite of how you would train to be a starting pitcher in baseball. they are opposite skills.

And plus, when you're looking at this, in football, you can achieve some level of success just via effort. And again, part of this is just the cardiovascular fitness level of Travis Hunter, which allows him to then utilize this skill set on both sides of the ball. But that's very different than what Otani is doing. These skills are totally different. And I can just tell you right now, there is no amount of effort, okay, or try hard, that you can use to hit a baseball.

Trust me on this. I barely hit above 200. There's a reason I had to quit baseball. I don't love that that's the fact, but that's the facts. Okay? It is ridiculously hard. There are so many minor league baseball players and professional baseball players

that could succeed playing college football. And there are like almost none. They're like a couple of guys in college. football or football in general that could succeed playing professional baseball. It's because baseball is a skill sport versus an effort, size, strength, speed, and schematic sport, which is what football is. So while Travis Hunter is right that, yes, on his body, the toll on his body and the physical pounding that his body is going to take is more difficult to maybe do what he does playing

both sides in one game, what Otani is doing right now in baseball is. is it's breathtaking. And I don't think people actually appreciate it enough. I know we make a lot of it. But I for one, don't think we make enough of it. Imagine for a moment if Michael Phelps in Beijing was rolling out there and he's like, what did he win? Eight gold medals in the pool in Beijing, right? Those Olympics. And then he was like, oh, yeah, you won those gold medals. And then he like rolled out to the track and was like, I think I'm going to win the 100 now. That's what Otani is doing. They are opposite skills. Like what you do to be a great hitter is not what you do to be a great pitcher. You need to be twitchy and explosive to be a great hitter.

And you need to be fluid and pliable to be a great pitcher. Again, they're opposite. So I'm not going to belabor this point, but like guys, like Travis, I love you, man. I love you. And while, yes, physically the toll on your body in football is different, what Otani is doing is just ridiculous. Now, because of that physical toll that football puts on your body, I tell you what was a big deal at the scouting combine was the fact that Travis Hunter weighed 188 pounds.

There was some kind of consternation amongst NFL evaluators that he was going to come in at like 178, 180, 176 because he looks slight on film. And they didn't think like, hey man, you can't put a guy out there on both sides of the ball that doesn't have like some thickness. And so at 188, I think there was, I think that there was some level of acceptance among the evaluator circle that it's like,

okay, yeah, he's big enough. He's thick enough. And he can do it. He can take the physical toll. So from a measurable standpoint, that was big coming out of the combine. All right, let's move forward to some college football. As you may have heard, and this happened like right after a couple of weeks ago, our boys in California, we do this thing called ski week or winter break, which I never realized what that was when I was growing up in Colorado, we would just have like a spring break in the spring semester in March. Well, here, our kids get a week off in February and a week off in April. So we get a spring break and we get this like winter break, which is wild. But anyways, everyone calls it ski week. I don't like to ski. My son, Sam, by the way, my middle guy,

who's awesome. He fractured his ankle over New Year's when we were trying to be like a ski family. and it's like, I don't really ski. I don't know what I'm doing. And he gets up there. He fractures his ankle in a ski boot, which is like, how does that happen? I don't know, but it happened. And so what did we do?

It's like, well, nope, we're going to the beach. So we go on a beach vacation. And so that's where I was at. We go to Hawaii and we get there. And immediately, it's like, all hell is breaking loose. All the reporters and people in college football are screaming and clutching at their porals because the Big Ten and the SEC, ah, the mighty.

They're going to exert their power. and change the playoff. No! And I'm like, can we relax, please? My goodness. Oh, I'm sitting there by the pool, reading some of these articles, and candidly laughing, laughing. Because again, that's what it felt like. It's like this clutching at the pearls.

Like, oh, they're changing college football. College football has never been changed. Everything that is being proposed or talked to. about behind closed doors in regards to the college football playoff are changes that would make the college football playoff better, period. If you don't know what this story is all about, here's what's going on. The Big Ten and the SEC are more powerful now than any other conferences in college football. Therefore, they have exerted that power onto the rest of college football, and now they can make changes to things like the CFP

without a unanimous vote of support from everybody else. Okay? And again, these are like broad terms, general kind of strokes. So the Big Ten and the SEC are probably going to change the college football playoff in 2026. This next year, it might look similar, although they may try to change some of the seating process, which they need to because it was kind of a mess this last year in the first version of the 12-team playoff.

But in 2026 and beyond, there is a good chance that it's going to look different. And that started to leak out because these meetings started to happen. All right. And everybody again, like the clutching at the pearls out there. And listen, if you're one of those people that is really upset about this, you need to like take a step back and ask yourself, why? Why am I so upset about this?

Because I'm here to tell you that some of these proposed changes which I've actually talked about for over a year will be better for college football. Some of the proposed changes are things like going from 12 to 14 teams and then giving the Big 10 and the SEC four automatic spots into the college football playoff and then the Big 12 and the ACC two automatic spots. Then Notre Dame would have an opportunity to earn their at-large bid and then there would be a group of five bid or an at-large bid out there. Okay.

So that's how you would get to the 14. this is a model that's been talked about a lot. And by the way, it's the exact model that I've been talking about in a bunch of my episodes. I can't remember exactly when it was published, but I did a commissioner's episode. And I talked about this exact model, this exact model of which they will be moving to. And again, there's a lot of reasons why this is going to be better. First and foremost, you have to understand that you can't just yell that everything used to be better. All right. Nothing perfect lasts forever except in our memory, is that line from a river runs wild. And it's the same in college football. What we had this year with the 12 team model was, I think, better than the 14th model, but that model still needs to morph and change and evolve into something better. There were a couple of problems, a few actually problems with last year's 12 team model. Number one is I thought that the seating was a mess. I don't think that we needed four buys. that led to some of the seeding issues because we were trying to to shoe in buys for conference champions. And then all of the sudden you had champions that probably didn't deserve a top four seed that were getting a top four seed. And so we got matchups that were totally lopsided. And the team had actually end up penalizing was Oregon,

who ended up having to play the Death Star Supernova Ohio State Buckeyes in what Oregon's first round game, which turned out to be the Rose Bowl. So it was a flawed model, okay? It was a flawed model. We again have this subjective criteria out there, and everybody's screaming about who gets in and why and what conference and so on and so forth. And again, there is a better way to go about this. And let me just start by saying this. I believe that the Big Ten in the SEC, garnering more power, is actually better for the sport. You can disagree with that, but I'm here to tell you part of the reason why we're in the mess that we're in right now, as it relates to the transfer portal, as it relates to NIL, and as it relates to our overall governance and I would say structure of the sport, the reason that we're in the position we're in is because there were too many cooks in the kitchen

for years. So it didn't allow college football to be nimble. And it was a reactive sport. And so for years, they knew, they knew that they were going to have to do something in NIL. Ever since, basically, you can go back to 1992 when the dream team was allowed and professional athletes were allowed to start competing in the Olympics. It's like the handwriting was on the on the wall for college athletics then. Again, so we're talking about decades here, decades, that the handwriting is on the wall and they didn't do anything. Why?

Why didn't they do anything? Because they are slower than the Titanic. Because you've got to get everybody unanimously agreeing on the same direction. And everybody in intercollegiate. athletics and in universities around the country and conferences around the country have different incentives. Okay, so the old model with all of these people having to get on the same page was actually bad and detrimental for the sport because it didn't evolve when it clearly needed to evolve until it was pushed off a cliff via legislation and they were told

you got to pay players and they were told players can transfer whenever they want. And no, they couldn't get out in front of any of these issues. Why? Too many cooks in the kitchen, not nimble enough, moving slower than the Titanic. And it's because they needed this unanimous consent to do anything. Okay, so when two conferences start to inch out their way ahead, let's face it financially, and they exert their power financially. They garner more, what I would call like brands. They get stronger. They get bigger. They generate more. They generate more. more power. They generate more revenue. And now they can become decision makers. You see, if you've ever been in sales, like my wife was in sales when she was working back in the day. And she was actually

copiers. She sold copiers for Canon and business to business, not easy. And I remember her always, always saying she would come home and she would just be like, well, I just got to get to the decision maker. I just have to get to the decision maker. And anybody in sales knows that you just got to get to the decision maker. In college football circles, they talk about, well, who's the decision maker in the recruiting process? You know, is like, is mom going to make the decision? Is the player going to make the decision? Is the agent going to make the decision maker?

Well, in college football, there was no decision maker. Now, at least they're starting to become inching out in front. The Big Ten in the SEC can be the decision maker. So when I'm talking about the consolidation of power is good for college football, that's what I'm talking about. The reason we're in this position is because there's been no leadership. We need leadership. We probably need a commissioner. Everyone's been talking about that. So when we get people in conferences that inch out and start to lead, let's not tear them down. Because that leadership, I think, is actually going to be good for college football. And those

conferences, by the way, they deserve more spots than the other conferences. They're tougher. It's just the way it is. I know that that sounds rough, but it is the way it is. Now, I do believe that this type of a model that they're talking about is better because it defines the path to the college football playoff rather than leaving it in the hands of a committee and a 13-person committee in a ballroom conference room in Dallas, Texas. I think that the committee has been detrimental to college football. That does not mean that the committee has not had great intentions or that there haven't very integrous and great individuals on the committee. But the committee and what they are doing and what they are charged to do is detrimental to the sport because it's too subjective. We are not

figure skating. There is a scoreboard. Let's go by it. Why not? And defining the path to where and how we get to the playoff is a good thing. So when you're talking about automatic spots, you can clutch at your pearls that the Big Ten, the SEC will get four, the ACC will only get two, but I think that that's the wrong thing to talk about. What you should be talking about is if you have automatic spots in every conference, think about what you can do in those conferences as it relates to meaningful football games from about middle of October on. because now if you're a team that is sitting there in the SEC or the Big Ten

and you're in the top seven teams in those conferences, you've got a chance. You've got a chance. Those teams are separated all by like one game from like the third place team to the eighth place team at times. One game here or there. So now you are increasing the amount of teams and fan bases that are in it late in the year. That's a good thing. That is a good thing.

Same could be said for the ACC and the Big 12. Now you can have a play-in weekend rather than just a conference championship game weekend, which is largely going to be, I would say, ineffective, outdated. And as we move forward, now you can have a championship game with one and two and the SEC in the Big Ten. Their champions would get the top two seeds and the buys. And then you can have play-in games outside of that. Three faces six, four faces faces five, winner goes to the playoff. In the ACC and the Big 12, you can go to a one versus four, two versus three, winner goes to the playoff. You are expanding the base of people that feel like they are playing top-end games in our sport. This is a good thing. I have been saying this for so long.

I'm getting animated because when I saw some of these articles and just the overall animus that people were having towards these ideas, I thought to myself, what are they talking about? These ideas make the sport better. It also allows the conferences to control schedules much better. They can form scheduling alliances because left to a subjective committee, left alone, if we continue to be the Titanic, if we continue to try to have unanimous, support before doing anything. Here's what's going to happen. We're not going to have any quality non-conference games. Nebraska and Tennessee already canceled their home and home series for 26 and 27. Why? Because left to their own accord, why do they need to play those games? The SEC is not playing nine conference games yet. The Big Ten is playing nine conference games. So why in the world would

Nebraska play Tennessee? That doesn't make any sense because in a subjective figure skating world, the committee is just going to look at the wins and losses. Why not define the path? Why not start to control scheduling? Why not try to control not only in conference scheduling, but out of conference scheduling? All of this is better for the fan. It's better for the fan.

I firmly believe this. Matt Rule said on our boys' podcasts here, he was on with Urban Meyer, he was on with Rob Stone, with Mark Ingram, on the Triple Option podcast. which is awesome. Those guys are doing an awesome job. He says, quote, why would you ever play one of those games? He would go on to say, why in the world would a Big Ten team,

who's already playing nine conference games, why would you ever play one of those games? Absolutely honest and absolutely right. So when they start talking about things like changing the CFP, working on the scheduling agreements between the conferences, these are things that need to happen and need to happen in order to modernize the sport to get away from the subjective committee,

to define the path into the playoffs so that we can have more teams that are playing meaningful games late into the season. And if you can't see that, then I can't help you. I cannot help you. We don't want to lose games.

We don't want to lose what I would say, like great non-conference games. We don't want to lose that. And because of that, we want to take scheduling away from teams and put it into decision-maker's hands, get to the decision makers. So now we're starting to have a few decision makers,

and now we need to allow them to make decisions that we think would be best for the sport. We don't want to lose games. And speaking of losing games, we might be losing a lot of spring games. A lot of spring games being canceled out there. Nebraska, Matt Ruhl being one of those. They've decided not to do a spring game.

USC, Texas, Ohio State, Florida State, among others, not doing traditional spring games. Now, there's a variety of reasons for all of them. this. And I would just say, traditional spring games, like you think of them from the 90s and 80s or maybe before, they've been gone for a long time, a long time. Now, coaches have always bristled at the spring game for two reasons. If your offense looks good, that means your defense doesn't. And basically meaning like one side of the ball is always going to struggle. And then number two is you don't want to get anybody hurt. That's reasonable. I think it's

plenty of reasonable. But now there's another reason. And Matt Rule, again, I like Matt Rule. He kind of speaks his mind and he tells it how it is. I think that that comes with the fact that like he's been at Temple. He's been at Baylor. He had the Carolina experience. And now he's at Nebraska. And now like, I don't think he has a lot of time for the BS. So here he is talking about spring game. canceling the spring game and why? You know, last year, we're one of the more televised, we were one of the more televised spring games and I dealt with a lot of people offering our players

a lot of opportunities after that. So to go out and bring in a bunch of new players and then showcase them for all the other schools to watch, that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. The word tampering doesn't exist anymore. It's just absolute free, open, common market. And so I don't necessarily want to, open up to the outside world.

I don't want these guys all being able to watch our guys and say, wow, he looks like a pretty good player. Let's go get him. True, true. Everything he said right there is absolutely true. Absolutely true. This is an indirect effect of the portal era, of the NIL era. And, you know, there's a couple of things that I would want to talk about here.

Now, let me first give a quick defense of spring games. twofold. Number one is, I think spring games are great for the fans. As everything in life becomes more expensive, the spring games, and I experience this as a player, and then I experience this now as I go around and cover some of these, it's still one of those games that is cheap enough where, like, you really get the fan that maybe can't afford to go to the big game in the fall, they can bring their kids out to the spring game and get access to these players and get access to the program that they love. So to lose a spring game from a fan's perspective sucks.

And I do think that we need to be very cognizant of the fans in our sport. The fans are the reason that we're all here. If you're listening to this, you're the reason that I have a job. You're the reason that I'm sitting here behind this microphone. I care that you're informed. I love this sport. I love that you love this sport. Candidly, I'm really grateful for you.

Your passion provides my job. And I don't want to lose sight of that because there are some things that might look better on paper. and maybe aren't as great in practice. I feel like Frank Shirley was, of course, Clark W. Griswold's boss. The fans are being squeezed in our sport. I think it happens in the CFP. It happens with all the neutral site games.

And that's tough. That's really tough. Like when you ask a fan base to go to a conference championship game, first week of December, then go to the second round game, you know, three weeks later, then go to the semi-final game, and then maybe even go to the national championship game. You're talking about four neutral site games in a month and a half. And there's the holidays in there. You've got Christmas.

You've got New Year's. Like, that's a lot. That's a lot. And that's not good for the fans. It's just not. So it sucks to lose like the traditional spring game. I hope that all of these teams do some sort of spring showcase, that they do some sort of showcase that they can bring the fans out and like really have an interaction with them, draw them close to the program and and keep that intimacy. Because again, like our sport is more tribal than than professionals. Our sport is is as much. much more travel. It's more family, I even should say, than the NFL. Because those people that go to the spring game, those people that go to the games in the fall that are trying to cobble up the money to go to the neutral side games, a lot of them, if not all of them, feel like they are part of the fabric of that program because they identify with the program. You can't identify with a professional sports team. You can be a fan of them. You can be a fan. 100%. 100%. Like, I'm a Bronco fan. Guess what? I was

never a Bronco. But I was a buff and my dad was a buff and my sister was a buff. And everybody that ever went to Colorado, whether they played or didn't, they're a buff. And wherever you went to school, maybe you went to Ohio State, you're a Buckeye. Maybe you went to Georgia. Go dogs. And that is a part of the fabric of who you are as a person. Okay. So college football cannot become too corporate that we lose that tribalism and family feel that we have that is inherently a better part of our game than what it is in the NFL. Okay. So when I talk about not squeezing out the fans, that's really what I'm speaking about. We need to be aware of that. The other part of defending a spring game is there are players, and I'm one of these, I'm going to raise my hand that are just

far better in a scrimmage than they were in practice. If it was just about practice, I would have never been the starting quarterback at the University of Colorado. In fact, my first spring that I ever competed, through the first six practices of that spring before we got to a live scrimmage, I was third on the depth chart. We go to the first live scrimmage. We're all live. Thank God, by the way, because what I needed was a play clock, a huddle, a live rush. I needed the operation because playing a live game is far different than just practicing or showcasing your skills on the side. This is part of the reason I don't like the combine. So players that are more gamers than practice players, this hurts them. This hurts them. So that's my defense of the game. Having said that,

last thing that I'll just talk about is we need to find the happy medium where we are supporting fans, allowing kids opportunities to develop and compete for a job in different ways, not just through practice, but also we need to build the calendar so that we don't have the issues that Matt Rule is talking about. See, that's an issue. So we need to, we probably need to think about that and fix it. We should never, and I've talked about this before, we should never be competing and roster building at the same time. And we shouldn't be roster building and preparing at the same time. You see, there's three distinct, I would say, well, four, four distinct periods within the year for a college football player or a professional football. football player. You're competing or playing. Then you're building or constructing the roster. You are preparing yourself and your team and you're resting. Okay. And those shouldn't overlap. If they overlap, we're doing it wrong. And the fact that we have these roster building and construction moments while we're

competing, while we're in preparation in the offseason, I think that that's bad. Now, what's the answer? I don't know. That's a complex answer, and I'm not sure what it is. I would love to see roster building happening before preparation, before spring ball. Others would say, no, you have to do it after the spring semester and allow the transfer portal then. But I do know that it shouldn't happen all at the same time. Roster building, that's a big deal. Last thing I want to touch you on, more and more general managers in college football. You think that roster building isn't like now first and foremost amongst everybody's

thoughts and everything out there. New era, man, I'm telling you. We might be losing spring games, but look at what we're getting. Oklahoma hired Jim Nagy as their new GM. He was the executive director of the Senior Bowl forever. Nebraska hired Patrick Stewart. He was with the Patriots for 13 years in New England, multiple stints. Last year was the director of player personnel. Ruhl spent some time with him, by the way, I think like three years in Carolina. Other GMs that have been hired this offseason, Michael Lombardi goes to with Belichick to North Carolina. Andrew Luck at Stanford. Notre Dame just hired Mike Martin. He was a long time NFL Scout. He's been with the Lions. USC hired Chad Bowden. It's happening all over the place.

And here's the thing. College football is evolving. And while there are still things from its past that are true like talent acquisition is the lifeblood of college football. But in the past, you wouldn't call it talent acquisition. You would call it recruiting. You would say recruiting is the lifeblood of college football, right? And if you were a great recruiter, you were going to be a great program. Well, now it's talent acquisition is the lifeblood of college football. And so you've got to go acquire that talent, whether it's high school kids, whether it's transfer kids, or whether it's your own players and maintaining them. And then the other part of this is in the era of NIL, whether you're raising the NIL dollars or moving forward after April in this RevShare model that we're going to get via

the house settlement, you've got to value that talent. So it's not only a, evaluating whether this player is a good fit, whether his skill base is a good fit, his personality is a good fit. But it's also valuing that talent. If we have to pay too much for him, then he's not going to be good for our roster. So this is why it's so important for all of these programs

to look at someone that can do those things and do them well and has an expertise in that evaluation and valuation. And those are really important. And it's something that these college coaches have not really, had to do. It just calls into question. I look at this. This job, the traditional college head coach is like, you can't be everything to everyone like they used to be. They used to be like dictators, man. And they could do it all. They could call the plays. They would build the roster. They would hire. They would do everything. The head coach was the end all, be all. That can't really happen anymore.

It's become too big. It's become too big. It's become too. big. I think the evidence of that was, heck, man, even our last national champion, Ryan Day, he had to give up play calling duties because of this, because he had to go out and build a roster and raise money and do lots of different things that weren't necessarily preparing just to go call plays. I think that's a big reason why Ohio State was able to develop and change internally during the year. It's his ability to evaluate what they were doing and what went wrong against games like Oregon or even Michigan, and then adjust accordingly and become better. So this job is becoming too big to do it yourself, and it's going to morph. It's going to develop.

You're getting the theme here, right? Everything that we're talking about is that this sport is evolving and you've got to evolve with it. You can't just yell that it's changing and you don't like it. Okay. So those of you writing articles that are, so mad about college football changing, it has changed, it has always changed, it will always change, and you've got to have some belief and some parameters that the change is for something better and not just for change's sake. That's kind of my last thing. By the way, Michael Lombardi, rumor has that he's going to make a million and a half dollars being the GM at UNC. So these are like not small jobs.

Really good for personnel people all over the country. If you're like a scout in the NFL and you're like, hold on a second. I can go be a GM at a college. Like, not a bad gig. Not a bad gig. Michael Lombardi, a million and a half. I'll tell you what, that's believed to be the highest out there in college football, but we don't really know.

Okay, that'll do it for us today. We'll be back next week with another episode of the Joel Clatio. Remember to follow us on all the social medias. Joel Clashio. Make sure to subscribe to this YouTube channel right here. Hit that notification button, leave a comment below, and we will chat it up with you. We'll be back next Monday. Enjoy your week, everybody.