The Joel Klatt Show: A College Football Podcast - BONUS Mailbag Episode: Did Michigan create a new blueprint to win National Championships?

Episode Date: May 30, 2024

FOX Sports’ lead college football analyst Joel Klatt discusses whether Michigan has established a new blueprint to win National Championships with their veteran-led team that wasn’t built on Top-5 recruiting classes. Klatt also provides his bucket list of sporting events that he’d love to attend. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome into a bonus edition of the Joel Clad show. We have got a mailbag short for you here. So let's get right into it. Remember, subscribe to the show wherever you are watching. All right, let's dive in and get to the mailbag. And we're going to do this cold, by the way. I thought it would be more interesting than me reading these emails beforehand and searching for the answers, building out the answers. So I'm going to read these emails for the first time here, right here on the air.

So let's get right to it. This one comes in from Thomas. Hey, Joel, huge fan. Appreciate it, Thomas. I'm a staff sergeant in the Marine Corps. Thank you for your service. Please pass along to your father, Simperfi. Yes, my father was a Marine as well. So, Thomas, I appreciate your service more importantly. My question is, in the world of NIL and the transfer portal, do you feel college teams lose a lot of veteran leadership that could be key contributors in the locker room and how important is it that veteran leadership to build a national championship program? case in point Michigan in their 60 years slash senior heavy roster. Thomas, great question. And I talk a lot with coaches about this. I think that experience is starting to become really the currency that we should be talking about more in college football. We've talked about stars and talent. Yes, that's important. And I'm not saying that it's not important. But I think that having a veteran team is maybe more important. I think Michigan was evidence of that. Washington in a lot of ways was evidence of that. The older that you can be, I think the better that you're going to be in college football.

in particular when you're starting to see teams that are built on a year-in and year-out basis. So the depth at which their leaders can lead and that they can play is going to be minimized. Whereas if you get a veteran team, I think that their ability to win and their competitiveness could increase. And I think Michigan, to your point, is a case study in that. I would also say that that's why a lot of coaches that I talk to have talked to me about the importance of when they're spending their NIL dollars, and remember, NIL dollars are being spent as pay for play. So if you listen to Monday show, you'll,

you know exactly what I talked about in terms of the pay for play. Coaches are spending money on their own players to retain them at a much higher level than they are to acquire players that aren't on their team. Now, that doesn't mean that money is not spent on players in the transfer portal to acquire them through name, image and likeness deals. Okay, the pay for play, as I like to call it, whatever. It's just that the money is more well spent on players that are currently on your roster. I think Ohio State could be a case in point of that this year, moving into next season.

Michigan was last year. Ohio State kept a lot of that roster, and they had to invest heavily to do so. All right. And by the way, that veteran leadership, that veteran presence, at least in Ohio State's case, they're hoping pays off just like it did for Michigan to the tune of a national championship. All right, let's

get to one more here in our bonus edition of a mailbag Joel Clatt show. Let's go to Steve in the mailbag. Steve says, Joel, what's a sporting event outside football and baseball that's on your bucket list or that you've already attended

and it exceeded your expectations? That one's easy. I have not been to masters and I would desperately like to go to the masters. Now, I feel like that's a little bit of low-hanging fruit and anybody could have probably guessed that because I think if you, well, maybe I'm a golf nut. I absolutely love golf. I love everything about golf. I can't wait to someday potentially, hopefully, prayerfully play Augusta National, but I also have not been to the tournament and I have not been to the Masters. So that's one sporting event that is certainly

on my bucket list. Everything else I have basically been to. I'd love to go to a Rider Cup, another golf event, in Europe, and then I want to go to a Kentucky Derby. I think those are all good. And by the way, there's a lot of other ones. Like, I'm also an eclectic sports nut. I want to go to a lot of different things.

I want to go to a great Champions League soccer match in Europe. I think that would be incredible. I want to go to a World Cup game, if you're thinking about soccer. I want to go to an Olympic event, any Olympic event. I think that would be incredible. In particular, if it's like track and field in the summer Olympics, by the way, that's coming to Los Angeles here. What is it?

Four years from now, not this summer, but, yeah, that'll be 2028. Like, I'm hoping to get tickets and take my boys to the track and field in the Olympics. I know I listed a lot of them, but I'm game for all of it. I'll go to the fencing in the Olympics. I think that that would be a really cool deal. Yeah, those are the ones. Those are my bucket list. Steve, great question.

Appreciate you sending them in. Remember, anybody can send us a question. You can ask us a question about sports overall. You can ask a question about college football specifically. You can ask me a question about life. Any of it, I'm all fair game, and I try to be an open book. You can send those questions to the Joel Clatshow Mailbag at gmail.com. And as always, subscribe wherever you're listening.

Thanks for listening, everybody. me.