The Joel Klatt Show: A College Football Podcast - Could Michigan win it all? Caleb Williams’ Heisman odds, Wisconsin & Nebraska HC Hires

Episode Date: November 28, 2022

Fox Sports’ lead college football analyst Joel Klatt discusses the biggest games and storylines from Week 13 of the College Football season. Joel opens with his main takeaways from calling the Big Noon matchup between the Ohio State Buckeyes and the Michigan Wolverines. Joel believes Jim Harbaugh has been building up to this point since 2018, and Saturday’s game was an example that proves the gap between the two programs has closed. Then, Joel shares his thoughts on the fallout from Ohio State’s loss. Next, Joel discusses USC’s win over Notre Dame and another really impressive performance by USC QB Caleb Williams. Finally, Joel shares his thoughts on Nebraska’s hire of Matt Rhule to become their next Head Coach as well as Wisconsin’s hire of Luke Fickell. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Irvin Meyer talked about this man coverage all day long and how Ohio State was going to have to sell out to stop the run and it's bit them. Another explosive play. This time it's Edwards. Anytime you get that one seal, Gus, if you don't have a support player there, the running back is gone. The most important block was the center, Oluatimmy, and Ryan Day is seeing the exact same theme play out for a second straight year. Wow. What a game that was. The game turned out to be a phenomenal contest between Michigan and Ohio State. As Michigan rolls into Columbus and gets their first win in Columbus since 2000. What a day. What a day that was really throughout college football. Hey, I'm Joel Clatt. This is the Joel Clatt show. Thank you for joining me.

And this one is going to be a great show. So stick around, obviously. I've got a lot of thoughts on. Michigan. How did they get here? What did Jim Harbaugh do to get his team and his program to this point? Where does Ohio State go from here? Ryan Day, what does this mean for Ryan Day? I've got some thoughts on USC, by the way, what they did to Notre Dame on Saturday night. And then we'll talk a little bit about the playoff where that could go with potential losses. Like, what does an Alabama, Ohio State argument actually look like? And then new coaches. at Nebraska and Wisconsin with Matt Rule and Luke Fickle. So let's get into it.

Let's jump in right now. We've got Michigan winning the game for the second straight year. I mean, that last seven minutes and 23 seconds was wild. Just to give you a sense, that was like a tight game. And it was going either direction. I know that Michigan had opened up a double-digit lead there for a moment. But Ohio State kicks a field goal with seven minutes. and 23 seconds left. Michigan ran four offensive plays after that that weren't kneel downs.

Okay, so four legitimate snaps of the football. They went 168 yards in those four snaps on four rushes for four, excuse me, two touchdowns. So like, that's where the game is one of the loss. So how did we get here? How did Jim Harbaugh do this? Last two years dominating a really good Ohio State team. Well, I actually think the culmination of what we saw yesterday in the shoe, oh, look at that. My mic just ran away from me. There we go. I got it.

The culmination of what we saw yesterday in the shoe actually started, and the genesis of that was years prior in the last Michigan, Ohio State contest in the shoe, 2018. If those of you remember 2018, Michigan was rolling in on 10 straight wins, and they were actually favored over an Ohio State team that had just struggled with Maryland the week before. And Michigan rolled in there and got absolutely smoked. 6239. Okay. And it really wasn't even that close.

Ohio State was, it was like a pinball machine, that offense. Boom, boom, boom, boom. I mean, man-beater after man-beater, the speed on the field for Ohio State. and I remember walking out of that stadium, Ohio Stadium that day, thinking those programs are miles apart, miles apart. And Jim Harbaugh has closed the gap. So what happened over those basically five years since 2018? Michigan finished 10 and 3 in that year. And in fact, the next year they actually finished 9 and 4.

And there was some turmoil, if you could call it that. amongst the staff. Like, did you know in 2018, they actually didn't have an offensive coordinator, per se? You know, they kind of called it by committee. So, you know, there was a lot of figuring it out on the Michigan side. And Michigan, I think, felt like they needed to change or modernize their offense. They wanted to get into more of the spread RPO style system that a lot of people were having a ton of success with at the time. Remember, Clemsons won in a national championship that year. The next season, it's going to be Joe Brady and LSU. You know, I mean, that's the invogue offense of the moment at that time was the spread RPO kind of attack.

And a quarterback that could do that and an offense that could do that. The defense, by the way, was a Don Brown defense that statistically would dominate lesser opponents because they had better players. But as soon as, that defense, which relied on man coverage, would get against – level footing, you know, like talent, similar talent, I guess I should say, they would immediately get beat and get beaten in a bad way. So that defense was high risk, high reward. Okay. And so that all kind of collapsed. Okay. So this Michigan program went from 10 and 3 in 2018 to 9 and 4 in 2019 to 2 and 4 in the COVID year. Right. So it just bottomed out. Didn't work. not even close.

And Jim Harbaugh decided, you know what? I'm rebuilding this thing in my family's image and what I want to run. Not what other people think I should run. Not what I think is best in college football, what I know. I'm going back to what I run on offense. I'm going back to what my brother runs on defense. And he built basically the Harbaugh family football team. and that's what he's done ever since.

And ever since that COVID year, this team is 24 and 2. That's pretty damn special. I mean, think about it. They are 24 and 2 in their last 26 games and the only team in the entire country that is better than Michigan over those same 26 games is Georgia. Right?

That gives you some level of like, They are now putting themselves on that elite pedestal in college football. And they did that obviously with that win yesterday. So what is the Harbaugh family football team? Well, offensively, I think it kind of goes without saying it's a dominant run game. It's a dominant run game that uses extra tight ends and extra linemen. They want to increase the number of gaps that you have to defend. A lot of man-style blocking, powerful linemen that go straight ahead, fast backs that can jump cut.

and they're going to wear you out. They want to steal your will, right? Break your will, however you want to say it. That's what they want to do. They want to impress their will upon you offensively. That is a Harbaugh thing. He did it at Stanford, and obviously he's done that now at Michigan. On the defensive side, he wanted to build an NFL-style hybrid defense.

I've talked about it before on this podcast, but I'll say it again quickly. this defense and its architecture is right out of the NFL. It's right from the Baltimore Ravens. It's John Harbaugh's defense. It is started with you've got to be really good at every level. You've got to be built front to back and inside out. Okay? So the first thing that you do is you build a run wall.

You do that with defensive tackles. And they've got really big, powerful defensive tackles at Michigan. Mason Graham, the freshman, over 300 pounds. he's a wrestling champion. Obviously, Mazi Smith. They don't get their name called a lot, but these guys are vital to what they do on the interior. Sometimes they'll play three defensive linemen in there and play a three, four.

Sometimes it's two based on the offensive personnel group. But they build a run wall and it starts with those defensive tackles. We've known that that's been the case with Baltimore for a long time, John's defense, but now it's also the case with Jim's defense at Michigan. Then you provide some hard edges, stand-up players that you can point inwards and really make it difficult on the defense because you're trying to suffocate them all the time. Make it tough for them to get outside. So it's hard to run right at the defensive tackles. It's hard to run outside of those edge setters, those hard edges that they have with the stand-up

style defensive ends or outside linebackers. And then what you have is hybrid-style players in the middle of the field in the second and third level. You do that and you can cover, you can tackle, and you can play in space. You can play the modern-day football while also being good. big and stopping the run with your defensive tackles. And then you've got to have guys that can cover on the outside. And it just so happens that these Michigan corners this year are some of the most unheralded corners in the entire country. When you actually look at what the completion percentage, these guys give up on the

outside, all of them under 50%. So they can cover out there. And I think a huge tip of the cap goes to, while not an outside corner, but their nickelback, Mike Sainer still, with the greatest PBU of the year in college. football against Cade Stover in the end zone. That was a sensational play that he makes knocking that ball away. So that's how their defense is built. Okay. So this is what Jim Harbaugh did. That's the Harbaugh family football team. And he had to do that because that's the exact style of team that he had to build to beat Ohio State. See, that's why I go back to that 2018 game in the shoe, last time it was in the

issue because it was so obvious that those programs were miles apart regardless of what their record said or even what the Vegas odds makers said. They had to change the entire schematics and architecture of the team and they did that and now they are on equal footing to the point where they just ran this team out of the building in two straight years. You see, I think that there was a truth to the way that Jim Harbaugh evaluated what his team could be and how they were going to compete with Ohio State. And that truth started with this, I don't think he even thought that they were ever going to out five-star the Buckeyes. Okay? Let me repeat that. Jim never thought or seemed to think that he was going to out five-star the Buckeyes.

So he had to build a team that was better than Ohio State at the line of scrimmage. And he did it. you see, Michigan is better on the offensive line and defensive line for the first time in a long time. That's why they're winning these games. They're tougher at the line of scrimmage, period. And I think it was such an astute observation for Jim to make as like, how do we beat this team? Well, we can go out there, can we outscore them? I don't know.

Can we just shut them down? Well, I don't know. What can we do? We can be tougher than them at the line of scrimmage. Well, then let's do. do it. And they've done it. And they've done it. And that has paid off now in two straight wins. I think that that's a very astute observation and something that is very clear when I see these two teams play. Those defensive linemen make it easier for the skill position players

on defense to do their job. The offensive linemen make it easier for the skill position players to do their job. You see, as we, the lay people and the fans and the fans and broadcasters, as we're just watching the skill people and we're just watching the ball, what we don't realize is that when you're actually on the field, if you're one of those skill position players, it's incredibly hard to do your job if you're playing with an inferior line in front of you. That's just the nature of the sport. And so the way that Harbaugh equated the talent at the skill position players is that he said, we're going to be better at the line of scrimmage and he's done it and he's done a heck of a job of doing that.

It comes down to the line of scrimmage and there is a bottom line proposition here. Michigan's better there than Ohio State. Now, that doesn't mean that they haven't gotten better at the skilled positions. And let me just go to the one that I felt like was the most important yesterday or should I say, I keep saying yesterday on Saturday. J.J. McCarthy for Michigan. Now, Michigan fans, this is exactly what you have been praying for, dreaming of. out of J.J. McCarthy. He's your five-star quarterback. As soon as he signed his letter of intent,

you had visions of beating Ohio State in your head. Oh, this is the guy that's going to do it. Now, again, I'm going to go back to, I don't think it's just JJ because, again, the offensive and defensive line are the main reason why Michigan is better than Ohio State currently. But JJ did something yesterday, I keep saying yes, Saturday that was invaluable to the way that they won that game. And that was when they weren't dominating up front for portions of that game, and when Ohio State was playing the style of game that they would want to play, more of a track meet, in particular in the first half,

JJ made huge plays to keep Michigan in the game. Huge plays. And to be fair, we hadn't seen that a lot out of him this season. And I know that his completion percentage on Saturday wasn't blowing anybody out of the water, but he made monster throws and made some great plays with his feet. And they were vital to the success of the team. Again, the score was not indicative necessarily of what the game, the game that I at least called.

You know, that was a much tighter game, and that was a game for large portions that was being played on Ohio State's terms. And if it wasn't for JJ McCarthy making some monster plays, Ohio State might have had a pretty big advantage at one point in that game. they could have built one of those two, three possession leads, which then normally leads to just more Ohio state points as the opposition gets desperate. But what the Buckeyes don't generally see

is another quarterback on the other sideline that can go match them. And J.J. did that. And that's exactly what Michigan has been dreaming of ever since he signed his letter of intent. Now, I've got to give him a lot of credit, a lot of credit. JJ, I thought you played incredibly well. Okay? He did a great job of manipulating the pocket with his feet.

There were moments when the Ohio State was coming fast and furious around the outside, and he would step up, in particular off of play action. He read things out really well. He gave his wide receivers chances, and he didn't just throw it over their head like we have seen previously in the season. He was decisive with some decisions. He was giving guys chance to run after the catch, and he was making plays with his feet.

when he did run, he was advancing the chains, getting the line to gain. He got in the end zone once. Like, this guy played a phenomenal game, a phenomenal game. So good on J.J. McCarthy, because I thought his play in particular kept the game in a point to a point where the offensive and defensive lines could eventually dominate. That's, I think, what was so great. Now, this all goes towards what's the ceiling for Michigan. Okay?

So we see this game on Saturday. What is the ceiling for Michigan? I don't want to go too far on this, but I will just say, and I've been saying this for, shoot, a few weeks now, I don't think we have a great, great team this year in college football. Now, Georgia might win the national championship, and they might do it comfortably. I don't think that this is even a better Georgia team as we've seen them during the course of the season than the one a year ago. They were just more talented a year ago. I don't think that we have a Bama team from the COVID year, right?

So I don't think we have an LSU team from 2019 under Joe Burrow. I don't think we have a Trevor Lawrence Clemson team. I don't think we have a historically great team this year. So, I know this sounds crazy, but for the first time in the Jim Harbaugh era, for the first time since maybe early 2000s, maybe late 90s, Saturday night, I left the stadium, and I thought to myself, could Michigan win the national championship? And for the first time since the 90s, I think, yeah. They might be able to.

I thought it was really pointed. Tom Rinaldi had a great report during the game on the sidelines. And he talked about Mike Sainer still on the sidelines and that he was not just yelling at his team about like, hey, oh, we can do it. We can beat him. Yes, he said that. But then he went a step further.

And he says, this is where winning the Natty starts. Okay. So that's what they're thinking about. You see, last year was so clearly about this game and the overwhelming emotions of this game to try to get over the hump of Ohio State. And now all of a sudden, players are like, no, no, no, like, we want more. We tasted that playoff. We saw what Georgia looked like and we want more. And in a year in which I just don't think that there's like an elite, elite, elite. historically great team, can Michigan win the national championship? Maybe. Maybe. I'll tell you, if J.J. McCarthy can keep his team afloat through periods where they maybe don't dominate at the line of scrimmage, maybe. He's certainly not going to have to play in weather as poor as what he did against Illinois. You know, so, I mean, we'll see. I don't. I don't. I I think, listen, Michigan fans, I don't want to, like, get your hopes too high. I'm not saying that you are going to win the national championship.

I'm not even saying that you're definitely going to get to the national championship. All I'm saying is, like, this year, Michigan might be the best team in the country. Certainly after what we saw on Saturday in the shoe. All right, let's move over to Ohio State. This is not the outcome that we all envisioned. I thought we had a really good preparation. I thought we were building towards playing really well in this game. And we were fighting there in the first half.

And I felt really good going into the second half. And we just didn't execute well enough in the second half. So I don't know how to answer that other than I thought we played hard. I thought we were fighting out there. But in the end, we came up short. You can just hear the pain in Ryan Day's voice. And I'll get to Ryan Day in a moment. But I want to talk more broadly about Ohio State,

the fallout from this loss. in a lot of ways for Buckeye fans, the sky is falling. Two straight losses to Michigan after the two decades of success that they had just enjoyed. This is a bitter pill for Ohio State fans to swallow. They have not had to see Michigan celebrate in Ohio Stadium since 2000. And I've got a couple of takeaways. I know two things for a fact about Ohio State after this game and last year's game. Number one. Ohio State has to get better at defensive line. They are not good enough on the defensive line.

Now they've got some good rushers, but their interior or their defensive line is not up to par to face Michigan. And there's no other way to put that, okay? I think that there's some guys that have had decent careers and maybe even some good seasons, but they are not built to stop. Michigan. In the last two years, Michigan has ran for 549 yards, nine touchdowns, and 7.2 yards

per carry against Ohio State. That's a problem. And it starts up front. Okay? I will just tell you that Michigan, and I told you this earlier in the show, Michigan changed based on Ohio State. And now it's Ohio State's turn to change based on Michigan. They have to adjust. Because Michigan ain't going anywhere anytime soon. This is the blueprint that they have. You're going to face the Harbaugh family football team from now on until he leaves. It's clearly working. They're 24 and 2 in their last 26. They're 12 and 0. They're ranked number two in the country. They're probably going to the playoffs, whether they beat Purdue or not on Saturday. They're not going anywhere. So Ohio State better adjust, and they've got to adjust in the interior of their defensive line. It has to get better.

Whether it's transfers or recruit, they've got to have better players than they're in the defensive line. Okay? That's number one. And just a quick add-on to that. The reason they've got to get better there, you could say like, well, the linebacker mis-tackles and the safety's blue coverages and everything like that. Yes, that's all true. And I'm not going to let anybody necessarily off the hook, although I'm not going to just list out all the problems. But when you build a game plan and you know that last year, you gave up 297 yards rushing,

and so your entire game plan is, hell or high water, we're going to stop the run. Guess what you have to do. Steal from other parts of your defense. And that's what Jim Knowles did. Now, I thought he should have adjusted in the second half. All right? If I'm Jim Knowles, I probably don't run as much man coverage in the second half. Based on the number of big plays that they gave up in the first half, I have to back up and just like maintain your levels of defense. They played with fire.

They played the man coverage. And then the big runs ensued because they didn't have levels of defense. Okay. Why didn't they have levels of defense? Why did they have to play such, you know, heavy man coverage? because they had to commit all their resources to stopping the run. And when you do that, it can be one miss tackle. It can be one seal from the center where all of a sudden a lane opens up

and then as soon as a fast and explosive back like Donovan Edwards has a little bit of daylight, when you're running a high risk, high reward defense, he's gone. Okay? So that's why you have to get better at defensive line and defensive tackle. guess what Michigan didn't have to do on defense. Steal from the secondary to stop the run. Now, they weren't dominant, but guess what? They were confident enough to just say,

we're going to let you snap it, we're going to let you drive the ball a little bit, and then we're going to make a play in the red zone. I kept calling them the four-point play, and that's part of it, is that they understood that it was going to be tougher and tougher, increasingly difficult to run the ball as soon as they started getting closer to the goal line

because the safeties would naturally get close to the line of scrimmage. Then once you can't run the ball as well in the red zone, guess what you have to do? Throw it, but you don't have to borrow from your past defense in order to stop the run. So what are you doing? Your bracket coveraging,

you're changing up coverages, you're rotating coverages, and that's just more difficult to throw against. So Michigan didn't have to steal from their past defense to stop the run. Ohio State did, and they got burned because of it. So you've got to get better on the defensive line. Number two, they've got to get better running the football.

The terms of the game eventually landed with Michigan. Okay? And it's not just getting better because you could point to statistics and say, well, Ohio State's one of the best rushing teams in the country. I'll just tell you, like, and they would disagree with me, and I'm sure that they will at some point. I don't think that Ohio State has a clear identity in their run game. That doesn't mean that they don't run.

successfully. I'm just talking about a clear identity in their run game, something that they can schematically totally hang their hat on. This is what we can go to. It's our bread and butter, and we can dominate using just this. Michigan has that. You know, Air Force has that. Lincoln Riley has that. They've got that GT counter-gap scheme run game at USC and formerly at Oklahoma. They can dominate using that run game. That is a bread and butter style run game. Michigan, when push comes to shove, here comes those pulling guards and tight ends and we can run the football physically downhill at you. I don't have that clear of an identity from Ohio State, really ever since J.K. Dobbins walked out of there. They've been trying to piecemeal it and it's been successful at times. Yes, you could say

Trey Sermon was very successful. Yes, he was. But was it consistent? Not really. they found that run game late in the COVID year. They had to change up formationally what they were doing, back them up into the pistol, do some different things. Again, the foundation of what you are hanging your hat on in the run game, it needs to be established at Ohio State. If they can do that, then they're going to start having more success against Michigan. Because again, Michigan has clearly outlined a philosophy in which they don't have to out five-star Ohio State. They can out physical Ohio State at the line of scrimmage, and they've done it to the tune of two very, very impressive victories over the last couple of years. Let's move to fallout for Ryan Day because I've seen and heard a lot from Ohio State fans and, you know, there's a pressure on Ryan Day, and he knows it. He knows it. He puts it very clearly to us when we meet with him and he says, listen, when you're the head coach of the Ohio State Buckeyes, you're expected to win every single game. And when you don't, that's a problem. So he understands that. That's a problem. And I'm not going to be sitting here saying like, hey, everything's fine. See, the bottom line for Ryan Day, and he would tell you this, is that he made some mistakes during the course of that game. I think his staff made some mistakes during the course of that game. And as a head coach, your team is a reflection of you. And he did the right thing like any great leader would do. And he stood in front of the media and he took those bullets.

And he's always going to do that. And he's going to do that. Why? Because he is an elite coach and he's a great human being. I just want to say publicly, there's only a few guys that I would unequivocally send my sons to play for. Ryan Day is one of them. I've also said that about Kyle Whittingham. I would say that about Pat Fitzger.

Gerald. These guys are amazing human beings, okay? And they run their programs with integrity and class. And Ryan's one of those guys. And I think he's going to be just fine. And I'll tell you why in a moment. But first, let's also put this into perspective. If you're an Ohio State fan, and all you've known, right, for a couple of decades is that like, we beat Michigan. Well, that's fine. But you have to understand that. Your memory of beating Michigan is probably tainted. You think that it was just always Michigan, but it wasn't. You see, Ohio State is still an elite program.

They're not slipping, falling. They just have been joined. And that wasn't the case for the last two decades. Michigan has not been very good for a couple of decades. All right, in the grand scheme of things here. Now, I know that Jim has had some good teams here and there. There was a good Brady Hoke team in there, but I'm just talking about historically.

Numbers back me up on this now. From 2006, the one-two game in the shoe to last year's Michigan win, 2021. There were 14 seasons of football. Do you know how many times? Michigan in those 14 seasons finished inside the top 10, zero. Do you know how many times they finished unranked? Seven.

Half the time. We're talking some really rough years for Michigan during that period. And that's the period in which Ohio State was just beaten up on the Wolverines. And now all of a sudden, Buckeye fans think it's a birthright. Well, we just beat Michigan. Well, yeah, you were beating up on an average program for, a number of years. Now, Michigan has built itself back to the point where it has joined you in an elite place. So guess what? Now it's not a birthright, it's a rivalry. It's actually a rivalry now.

And it wasn't for a number of years. It wasn't for a number of years. Urban Meyer went 7 and he's a great coach and he's got national championships to prove it. But he was beating a far worse program in Michigan than what now Ryan Day has to compete with now that Jim Harbaugh has rebuilt them. into the Harbaugh Family Football Program. This is an elite program. I just told you. The only program with a better record of the last 26 games in college football is Georgia. Michigan's 24 and 2.

Okay? So like Ohio State's not going anywhere. They're still elite. They're still going to recruit elite players. Now they just have to adjust. Just as Michigan adjust to face Ohio State, now Ohio State has to adjust just to face Michigan. It's going to be tough. And now it's a rivalry.

Ryan Day is 45 and 5 in 50 games as the Buckeye head coach. 45 and 5. Like, these Yahoo's that want to sit there and like, he's no good. No good? He's 45 and 5. Four of his five losses are to top five teams. I mean, I just, I got to be honest. Like, I don't get it.

They've been a top 11 program in every one of his first. 50 games as the head coach. You know how many times that's happened in the history of the sport? Zero. Zero. It's never happened before. No one's enjoyed that much success. Top 11, every one of his first 50 games as a head coach of the Buckeyes.

The bottom line is this. Over the last 23 games, they are 21 and 2, with two losses to Michigan. So they don't have a giant program problem. they have a Michigan problem. And I know that you guys conflate the two because you think they're one and the same, but they're not. They're not.

In fact, Ohio State might end up in the playoffs. Ohio State might end up playing Michigan for the national championship. This is a Michigan issue. You see, like I said, you're top shelf, Ohio State. You are top shelf. You're not slipping. You're not falling.

You're not broken on the ground. You've just been joined. You've just been joined. This is a program that's very proud. There's no doubt. And I believe that Ryan Day understands where he needs to get better. And then now he's going to have to figure out how to go and do that. All right.

Let's move on to USC. Long count for Caleb takes the snap, fakes the handoff, in trouble, rolls left. Nobody in front of him. He'll walk into the end zone again. Touchdown. Caleb Williams. Touchdown. USC keeps getting better and better folks, and this is a really, really, really good offense.

Now, their defense got enough stops, they got enough turnovers, and clearly that helps. But Caleb Williams has taken his game to a level that I haven't seen in many years. I know it's wild, and he still has a lot of football to play even just in college, but he's taking himself. into kind of this like Patrick Mahomes style game that is just off the charts. He's so good outside of the pocket. He's so good inside of the pocket. And right now he's playing with a supreme level of confidence that I haven't seen really since Kyler. Kyler was supremely confident in himself.

Now Caleb is playing like that. Just toying with guys shoulder shimmying, juking them, spinning out, throwing it down the field. he's going to win the Heisman trophy. And the reason I can say that so confidently is like, there's no one else to vote for. You know, partly it's his great play. And then it's also partly nobody else has done anything. The only other player that really had a shot and would have had a great shot if he

would have won on Saturday was C.J. Stroud. His numbers are there. They're a great team. They could have been 12 and 0. Like all of those things. But he got beat through a couple of picks. They got beat at home. Caleb's the last man standing.

I think Caleb probably wins the trophy with the way that he's played over the last couple of weeks if they win or lose on Friday night in the Pack 12 championship game against Utah. So like I just, you know, I'm a Heisman voter and I'm scratching my head as I'm going to do for two and three. I'm, you know, let's just say like I'm pretty confident in number one. USC now, with everything that transpired, LSU loses at Texas A&M, which like, really? Like, what's happening there?

But rather than get into that, because that can open up just an absolute trapdoor rabbit hole that we could go down to some other point. But rather than that, let's just say, after everything that occurred on Saturday, and in particular with the way that Michigan played, in particular with the way that U.S. USC played, it's pretty clear now who the top four teams are. And I think it's going to be pretty clear who the top four teams are for the committee. If USC's not in the top four, I'm going to, like, if they don't pass Alabama, last week I told you, like, even if Ohio State loses, they've got a floor, they're not going to go by it. It'll be hard for USC. Not now. Like, come on, you can't, committee, committee, you have to have watched that game. You have to see how dominant that

player is. We haven't seen a guy play quarterback to this level with this amount of confidence in a long time. USC is going to be clearly, I think, the number four team in the country, which means win and in. Not only win and in, but remember, they would be avenging their only loss of the season, which was that one point loss on the road in Salt Lake against an emotionally revved up Utah team on Friday night in Vegas. And if they win, I think that they're in. So now the question becomes, Well, what happens if TCU or USC lose? Because I'm going to establish right here, even before Tuesday night, Michigan and Georgia, I think, are going to the playoff even if they lose.

And I understand, like, Purdue would be a terrible loss. I'm sorry, like, they went into Ohio State and won. They're 12 and 0. Michigan is going to the playoff. Okay, so if that's established, then we have to question, if TCU loses to Kansas State, if USC loses to Utah, they are not conference champions. What then happens in that fourth spot? Well, then you're going to have some sort of discussion, as most people anticipate between that team, the loser, and Ohio State and Alabama.

And here we get back to Alabama. And I'm sorry, I just, I don't understand how somebody can, with a clear conscience, now granted, it's on the internet so you can type anything. Alabama does not have an argument against Ohio State. They don't. It's so clear to me it's not even funny. And everyone calls me just like a Big Ten homer. First of all, I've got Georgia ranked number one.

They don't even have the best win overall of the season by any team. That win is now clearly Michigan's on the road against Ohio State. And I still have Georgia rank number one. Okay? I think the SEC has been the best conference for a long time, a long time. And yet, you can't look at any metric other than maybe like, well, strength of schedule. Okay. Okay.

Strength of schedule. First of all, Bama's got two losses. Ohio State has one. If that doesn't just like moot point after that, fine. Then we can actually get into the nitty gritty. Let's get to the nitty gritty. What's the best win that either team has? Well, for Alabama, it would be, at least based on the AP poll, number 21, Texas?

Okay, good for you. It's a game that, by the way, you should have lost. If the officials are worth their salt, or if Ryan Watts tackles Bryce Young just one time, then Alabama loses that game to Texas. Remember, Quinn Ewers goes down in that game as well in the first quarter. Best win for Ohio State on the road in Happy Valley, a terribly tough place to play against a top 10 Penn State team. So like check for the Buckeyes.

And by the way, not even really close. Okay, okay. Well, what else? Well, before yesterday, before Saturday, Ohio State had beaten every team that they'd played by double digits. They were the only team in the country

that could say that. Meanwhile, Alabama had been in five-one possession games. They were three and two in those games and probably should have lost one or two others. So it's not even like they had played that terribly tougher schedule and been all that much more dominant. Okay. Like, in fact, they hadn't been dominant at all. So now all of a sudden, you're looking at this.

And based on those metrics, it's not even close. Okay, their losses, by the way. Alabama now lost to an LSU team that lost at A&M. And Ohio State lost to a Michigan team that is undefeated and has the second best record in all of college football in the last 26 games. Again, this is a moot point. It's totally ridiculous. The only ones out there that are going to be shouting about Alabama are absolute SEC colored glasses honks. Period. Period. Period. There's no metric that you can point to and be like, Alabama, you can't. You just can't. So in the case that TCU or USC loses, I do think

Alabama is going to lose the argument to Ohio State and Ohio State will go to the playoff. in that position, probably the four position. So they would match up against Georgia, and then either the winner, USC or TCU, the other one would line up against Michigan. That's how I see it. Okay, let's finalize this show, and there's been a lot to get to, and I understand,

but quickly, a few more thoughts on Nebraska and Wisconsin with new coaches. Hey, big news in the West. Nebraska has a head coach, as had been rumored here over the last couple of days, Matt Rule has accepted the job in Lincoln. Fantastic turnaround jobs at Temple and Baylor. Okay, so Matt Rule is taking the job at Nebraska and Luke Fickles moving from Cincinnati and going to Wisconsin. And now all of a sudden, those two programs have got to feel really good about their new trajectory.

Matt Rule is one hell of a college football coach. I know I threw in college there. Granted, listen, in the NFL, if you don't have a quarterback, you're just not going to win. So it's a bit more of a crapshoot. Whereas in college football, you can control it because you can recruit those people and get them there. And Matt Ruhl did a great job at Temple and he did a great job at Baylor. Remember the absolute dumpster fire that he walked into at Baylor right after the Art Bryles era and he got him back to the point where they're an 11 win team. So this guy can coach at this level and I think Nebraska should be really happy about what he potentially brings to them.

Luke Fickle, there's not a coach that was having much more. success than Luke Fickle over the last three or four, five years really in college football, other than the real top dogs, right? And so Luke Fickle now goes to Wisconsin. That feels like a good fit for me. I am interested that they didn't give that job to Jim Leonard. I don't see him staying on that staff. So that'll be interesting. Does Jim Leonard go to the NFL? I know a lot of people in NFL circles have been dying to try to get him into the NFL for a number of years as a defensive coordinator, well thought of, obviously, in those circles. So I'm interested to see where he actually lands. Last thought on this now is, well, really two, two more thoughts. The Big Ten now,

their bench of coaches is starting to get deeper and deeper and deeper. And here's what you saw, and it relates to these top two programs in the conference that we've been talking about all day, because look what's happened in the SEC to Alabama. Nick Saban was the Creamer. of the crop and then everybody just started upgrading and upgrading and upgrading in terms of level of coach. Kirby Smart at Georgia, Brian Kelly at LSU. There's a lot of really good coaches in the SEC and what has happened is now there's a lot more great teams. So now in the Big Ten, you're starting to see that. You've got really good coaches all over and I think that the bench is starting to get really deep in the Big Ten. And I'm interested to see how that will affect the level

of dominance that Michigan and Ohio State have over the conference because that's clearly been a dominant run that those two programs have had over the last few years. And right now, Michigan vying for their second straight Big Ten title on Saturday against Purdue. Last thing I would say is that I do think that Luke Fickle jumps from Cincinnati to Wisconsin. And I think that he probably could have gotten any job last year. And he was kind of turning them down. And he was kind of turning them down and now all of a sudden, I feel like coaches around the country are viewing jobs differently with the proposed expansion of the playoff looming. And that is a big deal, and I think it's a really good development in college football, because now, rather than waiting for like that

specific job where you think you can win at the very highest level in this four-team playoff, I think the number of programs that people think that they can succeed at, get into the playoff and maybe compete with is expanding. So as the playoff expands, I do think that the number of jobs that coaches will go and take is going to expand. And I think that that's a good thing for the sport. And I think this is evidence of that. Matt ruled to Nebraska, Luke Fickle to Wisconsin. Those two programs should feel really good about those two hires because I think both of them are really good football coaches. That's going to do it for today.

I know that was a long show. was a lot to get into. Come back with us on Wednesday. All my full thoughts on the new CFP rankings after they get released on Tuesday night. Then on Thursday, I will be breaking down some of these championship games. And by the way, without an expanded playoff and with some of these conferences still playing division format, these conference championship games, I mean, how many of them actually have playoff implications. Two? Two? I mean, the ACC winner can't even say that they're going.

So that one's just for pride down there. But I'll break down all those conference championship games on Thursday as we roll on here with the Joel Klatt show. Big thank you for making this podcast, the number one podcast in college football. Thank you so much for all of your support. You can follow me on social media at Joel Klatt on Twitter, at Joel underscore Klat on Instagram. you can follow the show any of the social media is at and make sure to subscribe download and then please if you would please go leave us a review rate our podcast that that helps us attract more listeners and then also if you like it just share it with a friend and we obviously appreciate that as well that'll do it for me on this monday take care have a great couple of days we'll be back with you on

Wednesday. Have a great day.