The Joel Klatt Show: A College Football Podcast - Commissioner Klatt’s Fixes for College Football

Episode Date: January 13, 2025

FOX Sports’ lead College Football analyst Joel Klatt puts on his Commissioner hat and takes a look at the areas that the sport could improve. From topics like the Playoff format to Targeting to the Transfer Portal, Klatt brings his own ideas to fix the biggest issues in college football. He provides answers for the sport’s hectic calendar as well as a very unique solution for non-conference scheduling that will provide the sport with more top-end matchups that fans love (along with creating a must-see offseason event that would become appointment viewing for any fan of the sport). 0:00-4:43 Intro 4:44-19:01 College football playoff/postseason 19:02-28:07 Calendar 28:08-35:08 Scheduling 35:09-44:47 Player rights and movement 44:48-52:36 On-field rules 52:37-53:59 Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Commissioner Clats open for business and what's one of the first things he's going to do in 9-1-2 scheduling format. College football has never been better. Interest has never been higher. 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. Welcome into my office. I'm Commissioner Clatt.

And this is the Joel Clat Show, brought to you by Hampton by Hilton. Hey, thanks for coming in. This is a very special episode. where we're going to talk about some of the fixes in college football, what could be in college football. Before we get into that, just remember wherever you're listening to this podcast, go ahead and rate and review us. We'd really appreciate that.

If you're watching on YouTube, make sure to subscribe to the show, hit that notification button so you know when all of our content drops. And then more so than even the regular episodes, I want to hear your thoughts in the comments below on YouTube. Leave a comment or even an idea if you have one to add to the list of things. that I'm going to talk about here today in our commissioner episode. And last thing, wherever you like to social media, we are there. Yes, the commissioner is out on social media at Joel Clat Show.

You can follow us there. Okay. I want to kind of set expectations and a framework for what's going to go on today. First and foremost, this is not a doom and gloom podcast about all the things that are wrong in college football. Because if you're following this show and you've listened to this show for any amount of time, you know that I am incredibly optimistic about this sport. Again, this is the down of the golden age of college football, and I truly believe that.

So what this is is an episode talking about some fixes, talking about some things that we could do in college football that would take our sport from very good to great. Because I believe college football is in such a great spot right now, and like anything, it can always improve. So that's where I wanted to start off with. This is not a negative podcast. This is a lot of good stuff that could help a sport that we all love.

And then a couple of things that I wanted to talk about just from an objective and importance standpoint. As I think about our sport, one of the things that I constantly have in my mind is this word protect. I think that we need to protect the sport. I think that we need to protect what we love. And really, that falls into three categories. I think that every change that we could implement in college football needs to protect players, protect programs, and protect the fans. And that's the one, I think, category that sometimes can get left out.

And I'm sure you're sitting at home or you're listening to this podcast and you could think to yourself like, hey, some of the things that have happened over the course of the last few years seem to have left the fan behind, tax the fan with more neutral sight games, made it harder to follow your own team in terms of roster construction. And I hear you. I hear you. So some of these changes have you in mind because I want to make sure that we're protecting this sport for you, the fan, and for the next generation,

which hopefully is going to be as passionate of fan base as we all are right now. I think that we do all of those things by increasing opportunities, both for players, programs and fans. I think that we need more big games, more fans that can attend those big games. And then the last thing is, is like, this is actually a really important exercise. And I know it seems kind of frivolous and it can be kind of tongue in cheek, but it is vital that somebody get the reins of college football. It's vital that there is a more centralized governing body just of our sport. And the reason is is because the entire intercollegiate,

athletic model rests on the back of college football. And it will in the future as well. If we decouple completely, then the rest of the intercollegiate model falls apart. And there are far too many thousands upon thousands of opportunities for young men and young women to go and compete in the sport that they love to gain educational access, which is important to our country. Lots and lots of people that are doing incredible things throughout your community and mine are former college athletes. And the things that they learned as college athletes were forged because of the opportunity given by college football. And we must maintain that. We must maintain that. So that's kind of a PSA of like, this is not frivolous.

This is important that we figure all of this out. So without further ado, let's talk about what a commissioner clat would do right away in office. So this is like first week, New Year's resolution style issues that I would address immediately in college football. And let's get after the one that we're all enjoying right now that we all, let's face it, have wanted for a long time, but we know there's a few little problems with the college football playoff and the college football postseason. So here we go. I would change the college football playoff from a 12-team model to a 14-team model.

I believe that after watching this 12-team model play out, I believe that it is very apparent that the 14-team model would be better than a 12-team model. Now, let me just kind of like walk through what that would look like. Okay, in a 14-team model, there would only be two buys, which I think would be good for the sport, rather than the four that we have now and we could get away from this idea that just the four best conference champions would receive buys. Okay. Now, in a 14-team model, I do believe we could also define the criteria for how you get into the playoff.

And I just want to want you to understand. As I'm fixing the playoff, I have things like elevating the regular season in mind, defining a pathway to the playoff. I think that we need to elevate the prestige of our champion. I think that we need to expand the access and engagement for more fan bases around the country as it relates to the playoff. So as we go through all of these things, this is what I have in mind. mind with this model. A 14-team model, I think, addresses some of those issues that I just talked about.

So 14 teams, this is what it would look like in my estimation. You would have automatic qualifying spots per conference. Four in the SEC, four in the Big Ten, two in the ACC, and two in the Big 12. That leaves two more. Obviously, Notre Dame would have a chance to automatically qualify, and then you would still have the group of five representative. Those are important ways to define the way that we get into the playoff. Now, how would that happen? Through qualifying games. That's right. We would play our way into this thing. It would not be a committee just assigning all these at large spots. Now, I know some of us love that subjective, argumentative nature of what goes on in college football at the end of the year, but let's face it, I think it would be healthier,

much healthier for the sport if we had defined criteria like automatic births. And we knew exactly how those automatic berths were going to be handed out. This is how I would hand out those automatic bursts. It would be through a qualifying weekend of games. So in this model, the top two seeds would be the SEC champ and the Big Ten champ. I know a lot of people are going to say like, oh, you're going to give way too much credit to the SEC and the Big Ten, but let's face it, they are the two best conferences. They're going to get the line share of these spots.

And we're going to reward their championship game. Therefore, their champion out of their championship game would get one of the top two spots, the SEC champ and the Big Ten champ. Boom. Those are your first two round, the first two seeds. And those are the only two teams that get a buy. How do you get everybody else? Okay. The first two automatic qualifiers are the teams that played in those championship games, but lost. They're automatically in the playoffs. So the second team plays from the SEC and the second team second place team from the Big Ten. The others would happen through qualifying games. And I think this would actually be incredible, incredible. Think of the last weekend of the year. Rather than just conference championship games, you would have qualifying games, which means in the SEC and in the Big Ten,

let's just say, the three seed in the Big Ten would face the sixth seed in the Big Ten. So the team that finished third in the regular season would host the team that finished 6th. They were playing in a play-in game. You win that game, you're in the playoff. Three and six would play, four and five would play. I believe the SEC and the Big Ten could do this, and it would increase the valuable inventory,

and it would expand the access. You think of the six best teams in each conference and those fan bases and now coming down the stretch in November. Your team is eighth in the conference or seventh in the conference, and you would have this push to try to get into that top six in order to play in one of those automatic qualifying games. So you'd be expanding the meaningful games throughout your entire conference in each of those conferences.

It's still meaningful at the top because trying to get to the championship game is important for that buy and that one or two seed. And I'll get to exactly how I'm going to reward those teams in just a moment. So those are the qualifying games for those two conferences. How does it play out for the ACC and the Big 12? Well, in the ACC and the Big 12, I wouldn't do a traditional. additional conference championship game, I would just put them in qualifying championship games. One versus four, two versus three. The two winners go from those conferences. That way we can get

away from this idea that 13 people in a committee room are just going to give us a 12-team playoff or a 14-team playoff. We would see it on the field. And think of all of those games that we would be seeing on conference championship game weekend, it would be incredible. There would be, it would, it would mimic the first round of the NCAA basketball tournament. We would see upsets. We would see blowouts. We would see home field environments on campus with everything on the line with teams that you wouldn't normally think would get an opportunity for that type of a game. I think it would expand the meaningful access. It would expand the meaningful fan experience for teams across the spectrum.

So that's qualifying games in the 14-team model. Now, the seeding would happen like this. It would just be based on the rank after you get through the qualifying weekend. You get through that weekend. You've got your teams. You've got the best group of five team. You've got Notre Dame if they qualify. If they don't qualify, it's just an at-large spot.

That would be the only at-large spot. You've got the top two seeds, the winner of the SEC, in the winner of the Big Ten, and then everybody else is just ranked. That's where we bring the committee back in. Now, I would also expand the committee. I want two committees and a computer, similar to the BCS style of how we rank teams, so that, to be quite honest, you would have less statistical variance of one rogue input. I know it's a long, I'm a math guy.

I just understand that the more variables you have in an equation, then the less the answer is going to change is one variable tends to fluctuate. So we need more variables in the equation so that we don't. Don't have rogue votes changing these seedings and just one 13 team. I keep saying team, 13 person committee. Two committees and a computer. We're just seeding them. So you got one and two, and then you've got three through 14.

Bang, there we go. First round is going to be played on campus. All right. So those six games get played on campus. And then here's what happens after that. This is the beautiful part. The second round, we're also going back to campus. No more of this neutral site stuff.

I'm going to protect you the fan. I don't want you having to go to five different neutral sites to follow your favorite team through their magical run to a potential national championship. That's not right. We need to go back to campus, and it also rewards those teams that have the higher seeds and played better in the regular season. So let's go back to rewarding the regular season. If you're a champion out of the SEC or out of the Big Ten, you not only get the buy

and one of the top two seats, you get to host. We saw this play out, folks, right before our eyes. We've got four teams in the national semi-finals or had them just this last weekend that did not get the buy. And all the teams that got the buy in the 12-team playoff lost. Why is that? Well, in some of the cases, they got favorable matchups. Penn State got a favorable matchup. Texas got a favorable matchup after losing their conference championship games because we awkwardly rewarded Arizona State and Boise State with buys.

Once we get away from that and we just seed teams, you know, one, two, and then three through 14, we go back to campus in the second round and the one seed would get the lowest remaining ranked team. That's how we incentivize being the best team in the country. How do you incentivize Oregon going undefeated? You give them the best matchup in the second round in their building. We got to reward teams, programs, and fan bases for having great regular seasons, and that's how you would do it. Now, the rest of the playoff, I think it's a bit up in the year,

and I would have to take my next couple of weeks as commissioner to really figure out what I would want to do with the national semifinals. Now, I do believe that it should stay on campus. I'm a campus believer. You see that play out in this year's playoff. The home field advantage is a huge part of college football. I'd love to see him on campus. I don't know if we would be able to get to a campus setting in the national semifinals.

So you could rotate among some of the big bowl games. But one thing that I do know, and I've already stated this before. We're ending on January 1st. The Rose Bowl is going to be our national championship, and that is how we elevate the unique prestige of our champion. No longer are we going to be able to say like, oh, well, we crowned a national champion in football,

just like they did in rowing and crew, or crew and rowing are the same thing, and field hockey and lacrosse and soccer and volleyball and swimming. They all compete for a national championship. Why are we competing for the same thing in college football? Let's raise the unique prestige. of our champion by putting that game in the Rose Bowl on January 1st. That way you're not a national champion.

You're a Rose Bowl champion. We don't call the NFL champion the NFL championship. No, no, no, no. We did away with that. Why? Because you're a Super Bowl champion. We don't say you're an MLB champion. We say you're a World Series champion.

You win an NBA finals. And we need to do the same thing for college football. Raise the unique prestige of our sport. That would be great by doing it for our champion. That's one of the reasons why I think we should end the season in the Rose Bowl on January 1st. It also helps with calendar issues, which I'll get to in a little bit. And it also helps, think about this way, helps us tie back to our history. One of the things that's tough in the modern college football is making sure that we have tiebacks to our tradition.

And tradition is part of our sport. And it should remain part of our sport. There is nothing more traditional than a Rose Bowl. It's actually the best event that we have outside of the rotating Super Bowl in sports in our country. So like, hey, we should grab it if we're a college football landscape. And as a commissioner, I would do that. The Rose Bowl is our champion. And we're going to crown that on January 1.

So that's how the playoff would work. That's how the seating would work. And then we get to the postseason. And a lot of people have asked me as commissioner like, well, what would you do with the bowl season? I'm actually a huge fan of the bowl season. And I think that there are ways that we could elevate the bowl season even with a 14-team playoff. A lot of people think that the bowl season and the playoff cannot co-mingle.

And as it's structured right now, that is the case. So what would I do in the postseason? I would end conference alignments with bowl games. I think that that would be huge. End conference affiliations with bowl games. And if we're able to do that, then what we can do is anybody that is not qualified or hasn't qualified for the playoff would then just be ranked behind the playoff teams. And then we can tier or pod bulls. So think about it.

The next best bowl games that maybe aren't semifinals or if bowl games aren't a part of the playoff, they would be sitting right there teams 15 through 21, those six teams. And those best bowl games get to take one of those teams regardless of conference. You see, so if you're one of those great teams, you get a great bowl. And then you just pod them as you go down. Now, I think we could probably remove a couple of the bowl games, but you would just pod postseason bowls with no conference affiliation. That way, you're actually earning your way.

into tiers of bulls and more exciting matchups. That's how I would retain bowl season. That's how I think bowl season could even be, to be candid, like more special than it is now because right now it doesn't feel that way. At some point, as commissioner, I'm probably going to encourage some sponsor or bowl game to incentivize the winner with a monetary prize.

That way you get more kids playing in that game. Maybe people like that. Maybe people don't. I'm not sure, but I do know that ending the conference affiliation with the bowl game and tiering the bowl games and potting those sections of teams. And then you can take any one of those games. So let's say this sake of argument, right, let's just say the Sugar Bowl is not a national semifinal. And it's a, it's a tier one bowl game for that year. Well, then you can sit there and it's like, well, I'm sitting there and I can take from this year, I could take like Ole Miss and I can take somebody else.

Right. And you can just take one of those teams that finished just outside of the playoff. You can pit them against each other in your bowl game. I think that that would really help the postseason. Again, and I do think that this is important, all of those things needed to elevate the regular season, it needed to expand access and expand what I would say engagement throughout college football, it needed to take the pressure off of fans,

and needed to reward the teams that played great in the regular season, and it needed to elevate the prestige of our champion. This does all of those things, and that's why I would do it in my first week as commissioner in the new year. Okay, let's move on. Another category here. We also need to fix the calendar in college football. We desperately need to fix the calendar.

And a lot of people have talked about it for a long time. The current calendar is totally unsustainable, completely unsustainable. And I've thought about like, well, how do I talk about the calendar being broken? And it's actually pretty easy. In college football, we operate throughout a calendar year and we overlap sections where we're building rosters and competing. That's crazy. We have to fix that. So the basis of fixing the calendar is removing the overlaps so that we can have puzzle pieces and sections.

like a train car of competition, roster building. Competition, roster building. That's how we operate. That's how all of this needs to be thought of. And so that's the mindset going in. Remove the overlap. So number one in the calendar, and I'm going to go back to the bullet,

the first bullet will kind of link back into the playoff. We have to have a cornerstone date. The cornerstone date for college football is January 1st. It's historic. it's the Rose Bowl, it's the national championship game. So the first thing that I need to do in the calendar is the cornerstone. And the cornerstone is the national championship game at the Rose Bowl. Once that date is set, now I can build the rest of the train.

I can decouple these areas where I have overlap of roster building and competition because I know that I've got this national championship game that is not leaking into the new year in January 20th. It's not leaking into the spring semester of academics. Now I can really get after it as far as fixing the calendar in college football. And I think that that is a huge part of this. Another thing that this also does, and it's an important piece of the calendar fix as commissioner, is it removes the rigid competition of trying to go against the National Football League during our playoff. I think college football is too special to sit there and go against the behemoth of the National Football League.

if we can stop and crown our Rose Bowl champion on January 1st, that means that we can just play the regular season and go right into the playoff and retain all of our momentum without even getting into this idea that we're going to battle the MVP for their playoff race in week 16 and 17 and their MVP race where they're sucking some of the oxygen out of the air. And they're taking away some of our valuable windows that we could be using to televise these games, which should be the showcase games of our sport.

So again, that's another calendar fix for college football can make us more prestigious. It can make it more special. And part of that is the cornerstone of the Rose Bowl on January 1st. So we're shoving our season, our competition season, closer to the regular season is just continuing the playoffs. I'm continuing it right away. Now, some would think to themselves like, well, Joel,

that presents a huge problem because we play conference championship games, then we play Army Navy, then we have a week off and then we start the playoff. Well, first of all, I don't think that we should take a week off. And I don't think that we should have Army Navy right after the Conference Championship games. I believe that the Army Navy game is one of the most special events that we have in our country.

It's one of the great football games on the planet. And it's getting pinched where it's at. I know it's the traditional time frame and season point of season, but think about it. Army and Navy are now in a conference, and yet their game doesn't have any bearing on whether they're going to the conference championship game or not, which we just saw this year with Navy. And then they've got to play that game, which is, you know, is going to mean everything to them and should and should. Because, again, in a lot of ways, outside of the Rose Bowl, it's the most historic college football game that we have. So what do we do with Army Navy?

It's getting pinched by the Heisman. It's getting pinched by the playoffs. We now play a bowl game on the same day. It's not in the right spot. Army Navy needs to start the football season. Week zero of football. And mind you, I didn't say college and I didn't say the NFL. It's because it's both.

Army Navy is the national anthem to our sport and to the fall. In a lot of ways, folks, I know that we're celebrating the new year right now. But doesn't the new year feel a lot? like the start of the fall. Isn't that when people are going back to school, going to college, kids are back in school, the summer has ended, you're kind of restarting your work life. It's a de facto new year right there. And we need a national anthem to our favorite time a year. The favorite time of year in our country is the fall. It just is. And Army Navy could be the national anthem to our sport. We could showcase it, man, in August and really kick things off

early. And if we move that game to the beginning of the season, we can make it more special. We can have everybody there. All the commissioners, the dignitaries, it would be a huge event. Only game that day, and it's kicking us off into the fall for the regular season. And now we can start sometime late in August and play our way through college football. And then we could start the playoff right after that qualifying game weekend and we're getting after it and we're going and we're ending on January 1st. So calendar. We've got to have to have. have a national championship game Cornerstone. That's going to be the Rose Bowl in January 1st. We can do that by moving the playoff close to the regular season by starting Army Navy in the

beginning of the regular season in Week Zero, if you want to call it that. We're going to blow it out. It's going to be the most special game maybe of the year. It goes like Super Bowl, Army Navy, Rose Bowl. That's the way we're going to do this. We're going to make it special for Army and Navy with their kickoff to the whole thing. The next thing that I would do for calendar and think about it again like a train car. We need to remove the overlaps between roster building and competition. And part of this thing is that the transfer portal is completely broken because we overlap. Now, this, in part, is going to be fixed if we finish the season on January 1st, but we need to get away from this December transfer portal window.

That more than anything else is probably the most unsustainable thing in our sport. It's probably the most problematic thing for coaches. cases players and certainly fans. So we need one transfer portal window. One. We don't need two. We need one. Now, you can make an argument that we could have it in January and you can make an

argument that we could have it in May. I favor the idea of having one transfer portal window in May. In May. I've thought about this a lot. I thought about like, oh, you could still have two. You could still have January and then you could have spring ball and then you could have May. And then I thought to myself like, no, no, no, no, hold on.

Hold on. Why should you get like a free look in the spring? We should make it a bigger decision to transfer. It should not be as frivolous. And by making it just one portal window, and in my estimation should be May, then you're forcing players and teams and programs to really make quality decisions

because they only get one for that year. They only get one. And that's an important piece. and in some cases, if it's in May, it's after Springball. Now, there's talk about what you could do with Springball, make it more like OTAs, and maybe you'd have some practices after this May window. And yeah, listen, Commissioner Clatt's office is open. Okay, so I'm open to ideas in terms of how we operate on the field in the spring semester,

but I want one transfer portal window, and I want it to be in May because I think players and coaches should make more quality decisions and think of it from an academic standpoint, which I haven't mentioned yet, but if you're in school in the fall, you have to finish the school year at that location. Like, stay for the school year. That's just one of the things that the players are going to have to give up. They're going to have to give that up. I want one transfer portal window, and I think it would be better for the sport.

I think it would be better for the sport. Now, which players can transfer? That's coming up in a little bit because there are going to be some changes to the transfer portal. that's the calendar. Calendar is a big piece of this. And when I talk about protecting players, protecting programs and protecting fans, that calendar is a big one for protecting programs. And within programs, I'm talking about, you know, administrators, yes, but more specifically, coaches.

You know, how do you build your roster if you're trying to compete and build your roster at the same time? That's crazy. We need to get away from that. So some of those calendar fixes would be big for that. Now let's get into scheduling. All right, what's Commissioner Clack going to do with the, schedule. How are teams being scheduled in college football? And here's the deal. First and foremost, super conferences have made schedules really difficult. And we've seen that play out now this

year. So you've got favorable schedules. You've got non-favorable schedules within these super conference teams or conferences. And so the premise being, we need more games of power four against power four. Preferably everybody is going to play a similar number or the same number of conference games. And as commissioner, that's what I would mandate. Every conference is going to play the same number of conference games. And then I also believe that we need to take away scheduling from athletic directors. Like, we don't let NFL owners build their own schedule. So why in the world do we let athletic directors build their own schedule? I think that needs to be a centralized process. And if we do that, we can increase the valuable inventory, five, six, seven,

10fold. I'm looking at you fans and I'm like, I'm about to give you more of what you want. And I think that we're going to be leveling the playing field from a schedule standpoint so that we don't get these drastic differences in terms of favorable schedules within conference and non-favorable schedules within conference. Okay. How do we do this? We've got to have an aligned schedule format. That's where we've got to start. And as commissioner, my suggestion for an aligned scheduling format, which every team would take part in, is a 9-1-2 model. Follow me here. 9-1-2. Every team in the country, nine conference games. Every team in the country, one non-conference game against another power for opponent.

And every team in the country, two games against the group of five to help with their budget. So that's how I'm getting to 12. Everybody would play the exact same format, okay? Aligned scheduling format. And I know what people are going to say is like, and this is where you start getting kind of those tangential, if you want to call it. Yeah, tangential questions and thoughts about, well, what do you do with Notre Dame and what do you do with that? Okay, listen, we're going to be tackling all of that sometime in the future. This is a New Year's resolution.

This is our first week on the job. Commissioner Clats open for business. and what's one of the first things he's going to do in 9-1-2 scheduling format. All right. So SEC, you're about to play nine conference games, which you should anyways, but now you're going to play nine conference games. ACCC, same thing. And then we've got to get into this non-conference.

How in the world do you schedule this one non-conference game? Well, this is where I really love this format. Are you ready? Are you ready? I believe that that one power-for non-conference game is going to be scheduled for you by my office based on where you finish. the previous year. So I talked about pod system, grouping system in the postseason with the bowl games, but the same thing is going to happen here on an annual basis in terms of your schedule.

Where you finish in your conference will matter for the next year. So I'm going to kind of borrow and adapt from the NFL model because I do think that they have it right in this regard. And I think that this would be better for the fans. This is not turning college football into the NFL this is giving you more of what you want. Okay? So when you pod teams, based on where you finish in your conference, then you would get, for example, the top three teams from every Power 4 league in Pod A or Tier A, Tier 1, whatever you want to call it.

Every one of those teams would have to play another one of those teams based on a blind draw. We're just drawing those games, like a lottery, like the World Cup draw. It would be incredible. So now we've got a non-conference game draw. That's how we're scheduling your one non-conference power for a game. So let's just say for sake of argument, we've got these teams, right? So we've got the 12 teams from Pod A this year. And let's just say like, okay, we're here on the game draw.

And let's say Fox is going to televise it. And all the ping pong balls are down there. And we say, okay, like, who's at home? And this is going to be the home team. And it's like, shunk, you know, the ping pong ball kind of like pops up. And it's like, Oregon, bam. And it's like, Oregon fans are like, all right, we get a home game in our non-conference. Who is it going to be?

Well, now the other Big Ten teams are pulled out of the lottery. And so now it's just the other non-conference teams. And it's like, who's going to Oregon? Balls are going. And it's like, you hit the button and shunk. Here it comes up. And who is it going to be? Tennessee. Tennessee goes to Oregon next year in the non-conference, and everyone's like,

all right, giving you more of what you want, folks, quality inventory. This would be incredible. And you would have tier one, you would have tier two, you would have tier three, you would have tier four. Trust me, I've thought about, yeah, I know that there's not similar number of teams in every conference, but listen, it's not that difficult if you just make Notre Dame a quote ACC team and then you can schedule on the back end for those conferences, ACC and the Big Ten that would have kind of 18 team. I've thought about all that. You don't want to hear about that because that's the minutia. I can tell you that right now. But I do know this, that this scheduling fix would be awesome. The non-conference draw, we're helping with the budgets of the group of five. We're getting

more of the quality games that we want. By the way, two teams that would be in tier two for this February's draw for next season, Ohio State, who finished fourth in the Big Ten, and Alabama, who was not in the top three in the SEC. So you could get an Alabama and Ohio State game. Oh, that would be incredible. By the way, we can do it again. And so now it's like, everyone's like, all right, Tennessee at Oregon, here we go. And Commissioner Clatt's sitting there and he's like, oh, yeah, yeah, no problem. And then quiet everyone down, quiet everyone around. Home team, Shunk, Miami. And everyone's like, all right, who are the Kings playing? What are we doing? You take the rest of the ACC teams out and you're like, Shunk, BYU.

And everyone's like, all right, here we go. Miami and BYU, and here we go. Because college football is awesome. And I want to have more games like this. Quality opponents facing quality opponents. And by the way, if you're a good team and you finish high in your conference, you should have to play a more difficult schedule. You really should.

I don't want to see these teams that all of a sudden get like cake schedules, even though we know that they're really good. You know, Texas looking at you within the SEC. That's one of those things. Not a knock. It's just a truth. Just a truth. So that's the scheduling fixes that I would have as commissioner, mostly driven for you, the fans. Player rights and movement. We've got to address player rights and movement.

We can't just do all these fun things with the schedule and everything. We've got to talk about what's going to happen with player rights and movement. Because again, this is kind of the major topic in college football. First and foremost is I want to participate. Protect players rights, but I also just want to protect players. Okay. So the first thing that I think has to happen, and this is where it's a little bit out of my purview as commissioner, and I would lobby hard, because I do think that this would take federal legislation. And I know people, their eyes glaze over when I say that.

But end game here would be we need to collectively bargain with the players. There needs to be a collectively bargained agreement with the players. If we don't have that, then all of these fixes, whether it's schedule or transfer portal, eventually a player will just sue and probably win. And so, like, we have to have the parameters of a collectively bargained agreement. And once we have that, then you can make some fixes. Now, why would we need this now and why would players agree to this? Well, I think that they should and probably have to because why? while no one wants to say this, they are becoming employees.

We're about to revenue share with the players. How's that different than being a professional? It's not. It's not. And it's our reluctance in our sport to dance around these terms, which I think has hurt in a lot of ways held back college football. And as commissioner, I won't dance around those terms. If we're going to share revenue with the players,

then we should be able to collectively bargain with them, period. period, because this is not just about their name, image, and likeness, which they can still go out and do. No, no, no, no. This is about them sharing in the revenue. That is a different thing. And that comes to kind of point number two. We have to have a real delineation between NIL, name image and likeness, and revenue share.

Because those are two different forms of payment that the players will now have the ability to go and earn. Revenue sharing is coming. We're going to see that, and that's going to be way larger than NIL. I can just guarantee you that right now. The revenue share is a significant amount. Players are going to be making more money in the future than they are right now, even with the numbers that some of you see thrown out there. What I do believe, though, is that the NIL section of this needs to be actually NIL.

So part of this collective bargaining agreement with the players, is making sure that they understand that there's NIL and that there's revenue share and that the school cannot guarantee you NIL. Collectives, you're out. Get out. Beat it. I don't want any more collectives. I don't want the bag man. If you're good enough and you have enough value and equity in your name, image, or likeness to earn all the money in the world, have at it. It's not about the amount. It's about the fraud. It's about the fraud. fraudulent NIL deals for players that do not have a big name, do not have a big image, and do not have a big likeness. If there's no equity in those things, we're not just going to be

paying players in order to come to our schools. So collectives are out. True NIL deals will be registered with the commissioner's office or the marketing department or something along those lines. And we're going to have to see, like, what did you do for that marketing deal? Why is that your value. That's a big point in this now, folks. You've got revenue share. We're giving you a ton of money, a ton of money. Some of these players are going to be making two, three million dollars just in revenue share based on their position, their importance, and what that coach and GM wants to do with them. Now, the NIL piece, fine. Go make $8 million in NIL. That's fine, as long as it's legitimate. If GMC and Dr. Pepper wants to come and pay you money or Hampton by Hilton because they're

incredible, then good for you. But I am not going to sit there as commissioner and watch some school say, hey, come here and we'll give you X amount of money in NIL. That's not a thing. Collectives, bang, you are out. That's better for the fans, by the way. That is much better for the fan. The part of this that I think gets really interesting is that if you collectively bargain, you can delineate between NIL and revenue sharing, and you can force the representatives of the players to register. I believe we've got to have registered agents in college football because right now it is a it is a crapshoot, man. You've got you've got so many different people and level of qualifications representing quote unquote these players throughout college football.

And we need all of these representatives, if you will, registered. Okay. One, it protects players. I have heard far too many stories of some shady, agent or representative, getting a hold of a sophomore or junior in high school and promising that player's parents that they're going to get them, you know, so much money in NIL and I'm going to get you so much money. I can just front you money right now. And then they sign these contracts that have huge percentages of payback to these representatives in perpetuity forever, which is crazy. So there are players in the NFL right now trying to get out of paying some shady agent from a deal that they did as a senior in high school or a freshman in college because of this perpetuity. So if we're registering agents, we can get out of that.

We can structure the agreements to protect players. We need to do that. Another thing the registering agents would do is it would prevent tampering because we could just say like, hey, phones on the table. Here we go. Phones on the table. Bang. Put them on the table. texting and win. And no, we're not going to be sitting here selling players in the black market.

We're not going to be sitting here texting coaches and saying, hey, my player will jump into the portal if the money is right. No, no, no, no, no. We're registering agents so that we can get out of the tampering business and we can protect players from shady agents. That is a no-brainer. I think it's a big piece to all of this. And the last thing in player rights and movement becomes the amount of transfers. All right, Commissioner Clatt, here's where the rubber really meets the road, because what fans want, what programs want is to limit the amount of movement and autonomy that the player has. And what players are going to do is going to fight that autonomy with tooth and nail.

So I think that we're going to have to come to some sort of an agreement here. And the agreement is going to be one. You get one transfer. Now, that's born somewhat from data because I can tell you that the normal student population in our country transfers on average as an undergraduate one and a half times. All right. Well, here's the baseline argument in this negotiation if I'm commissioner. We're sharing revenue with you. The normal student is not enjoying revenue share.

So we will require more of you than we require of the normal student population. Therefore, you do not get as many free transfers as a normal student. You get one. If they get on average one and a half, you get one. And then after that, there's a penalty. You can write a wrong one time. Now, the tangential question about, well, what if a coach is fired? What is there that? Yes, there's clearly going to be some exceptions,

and we're going to have to deal with that as a commissioner office. But for the sake of this episode, for the sake of this week, for the sake of these New Year's college football resolutions, you get one transfer, which means that based on who is transferred and who hasn't transferred, a coach would have an idea of which players on his team are definitely going to be there for the next season and which players aren't. Because what we cannot do in an unsustainable model is have every single, player be a free agent twice a year. That's crazy. Now we need a section of players that are a free agent

one time a year. That can happen with and through collective bargaining. I believe transfer limits are big and subsequent transfers should be penalized. Now, the last part of this, and it's not necessarily a bullet as much as just a point of conversation is enforcement. You've got to have the ability to enforce this. And I'm talking about like heavy financial penalties for coaching. heavy financial penalties for players and programs if they break the rules because all of these rules are well and good. But remember, the NCAA also has rules and nobody cares about them. Why? Because they can't enforce them. If the speed limit is 50 and there's never a police officer on that road, does it matter if you go 50 or not? Well, maybe from an integrity standpoint it does.

But in reality, no, it doesn't. We need a police officer there. We need a police officer there. We need to be able to enforce all of these rules, and that's what the commissioner's office is going to do. Do we need to take away eligibility? Do we need to take away the ability to play? Financial penalties. How big are they? Trust me, they're going to be significant. You're a coach and you tamper with a player on a different roster? I'm talking like minimum million dollars. Just minimum. Phone on the table. Burner two. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The other burner two. All four of your phones on the table. Now. Heavy-handed. Heavy-handed when it comes to enforcement, but maybe that's what we need. Maybe that's what we need. Okay, here we go. On-field rules. This is going to be the last section. How do we make the game better? How do we protect players, protect programs, and protect the fans. Well, we can do that a little bit through on field rules. Targeting, that's right. This might be item one on the agenda. By the way, as commissioner. I might do this like in the car on the way to the office on day one. Targeting, boom, fixed. We're going to have targeting. one and targeting two.

Listen, I understand that there's no way we're going to get away from calling this a penalty. I get that. They have a penalty in the National Football League. It's just called unnecessary roughness. We're not going to get away from targeting. What we can adjust is the enforcement of targeting. I want two different sections of targeting. Targeting one, which is essentially like the NFL rule, any targeting where you just feel like

there's not quite intent. You're not using the crown as a direct weapon, but by rule and by definition, it's targeting. Guess what that is? 15-yard penalty. You may not like it, but we're going to keep that section of it. Then there's targeting two. And targeting two is any form of targeting with malice or intent or using crown as a weapon. Once we do that and we can review it, and I understand enforcing intent and officiating intent is difficult, but you and I both know the difference between a bang, bang football play that happens to be targeting and a guy that's out there head hunting. There's a difference. There's a difference. Okay. So targeting two would remain an ejection. I'm going to keep the ejection. Here's the qualifier. You get two targeting ones in

one game, then you're out for the rest of the game. I'm not going to take it into the first half of the next game or any of that. You get two targeting ones. It's like a technical foul. Then you sit out the rest of the day. If you get one targeting, then you're ejected. But remember now, targeting two would have to raise the level of like malice, intent, and using the crown as a weapon. That's going to be a really hard bar to get to for a singular targeting to initiate an ejection. Now, we don't want guys out there just going haymakers on people's head. We understand that. We understand that. Targeting is fixed. Targeting one, targeting two. For the most part, for the most part, the ejection will be extremely rare and only in very,

extreme cases. So that's number one. And by the way, slow clap for that. So we didn't even get to the office and we fixed that. That was just a text. Don't worry. I try not to text and drive, but for targeting one and two, I might text and drive. Only at stoplights, though. Only on stoplights. Next thing, I would fix the hash marks. I think that we should adopt the narrower hash marks in college football. I think it would be better

for the sport. For for most teams, the hash marks are problematic offensively. Dumming it way down. There's two things that make the wider hash marks in college more difficult than the NFL hash marks, which are narrower. Number one is it's harder to attack the edge of the defense into the short side of the field via the run game. It's just more difficult than it is in the national football league because you don't have

enough space. So you're just reduced to this space next to the boundary that makes it difficult to really utilize with any significance the outside run game to the short side of the field. The other thing that makes it difficult is pending your quarterback, and let's face it, the average college quarterback is going to have a hard time really attacking the field or the wide side of the field outside of the numbers. Okay, so as you narrow the hash marks, you open up the short side outside run game and you open up the far side pass game outside of the numbers. All of those things better for excitement, better for the fan, and a lot more like what you would see on a Sunday. Officiating an instant replay, I would dive into that as commissioner.

So number one, officiating, I would nationalize officiating. This idea that we're going to have conference officials and these guys are Big Ten officials and these guys are ACC officials. It just breeds the perception of malfeasance. Is that the right word? I don't know if that's the right word. You know, of I just don't like it. I don't like it. Why don't we have nationalized officiating?

We should. And as commissioner, I would nationalize officiating. And I would get away from that. So we wouldn't care like, well, what crew is this crew affiliated with? And by the way, the way it is now, and these guys don't like to hear this, but it's true, each conference emphasizes different things in different ways, which is why there's such an inconsistency with which games are called in the SEC to the Big 10 to the ACC to the Big 12. That's just the truth. And that's just human nature.

So why not nationalize that so that we understand how the game. game, our game, our special game is officiated. I would also fix instant replay. I don't think instant replay should, I don't think we should review every play in the booth and then stop it from the booth. I think that replays should be held. Reviews should be held as a challenge in the coach's hand. They're all getting paid $8, 9, 10, $11 million. They can challenge plays. Okay. And I would incorporate, wait for it, the super challenge. I think the super challenge, which the UFO used last year is brilliant. Here's the premise.

A coach can challenge anything, anything, one time. Anything. He thinks there was a holding on the left tackle, throw the super challenge. The strategic nature of the super challenge in the NFL last year, and I called a lot of those games, was exceptional. It also, it also allowed for a more fair game, because there were times when it call was blown. And it was a big moment. And guess what you get the opportunity to do as a coach,

fix that call? The super challenge I think would, I think it would make the sport better. I really do. There have been moments that a super challenge should have been used or could have been used this year. And it probably would have been really great. So I'm a fan of the super challenges. I'm a fan of the coaches holding the replays in their pockets and not the stoppage being held by the review booth. And that brings us to our last thing. And I know I'm sorry, it's finally coming to an end. So the last thing that Commissioner Clatt would do is the biggest no-brainer of them all. And I saved it for the end for a reason because we're all just going to be like, yes, we are changing the rule that if a player fumbles through the end zone before getting to the goal line and the ball

goes out of the end zone, that that is a touchback for the other team. That is the worst rule in football. It should be changed immediately, and now it is. It's coming back to the point of the fumble. Fumbling team retains possession. This idea that you're reaching for the end zone and you just barely lose possession of the football and then kind of lose control, and now it goes out of bounds as you're going for the pylon,

and then it's a fumble that the other team miraculously recovered and they get it as a touchback? What? No, no. Fumbles into the end zone, not a thing. goes back to the fumbling team at the point of the fumble. Listen, that's the biggest no-brainer of them all. That is the biggest no-brainer of them all. I can't tell you how much I enjoyed doing this exercise.

I love this sport. I love it dearly. I think about all of this structure stuff a lot, have a lot of conversations. And I can tell you this. Some of this stuff is just pie in the sky. some of this stuff is absolutely going to take place in our sport, maybe even in the near future. But what I do know, what I do know is that it's important because college football is important.

And more than anything, I just know that if we don't look after it and if we don't try to protect it, it could go the wrong way. And the wrong way is not good for anybody. So let's make it great. let's sustain its greatness and let's also make it even better. And I think that we can do that. And that's what we just did here on Commissioner Clatz, New Year's College Football Resolutions. Thank you for listening.

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