The Joel Klatt Show: A College Football Podcast - Why winning CFB games is hard, Why isn't Kansas Ranked & Fanbase Check In

Episode Date: September 28, 2022

FOX Sports’ lead college football analyst Joel Klatt does a deep dive into why winning in college football each week is so hard unless you are Georgia, Alabama or Ohio State. Then Joel sounds off on why the Kansas Jayhawks aren't ranked in the AP Poll, and asks if the Big 12 and Pac-12 are set for a year of chaos. Lastly, Joel does a fanbase check in on Miami, Michigan State, and Texas and tells fans whether it's time to panic or not. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

the end zone. He's wide open because of that little shift. Great formation from Michigan with execution and an easy score. I told you. Gus what you said. What do you expect? Fireworks. Well, bang, bang. Here we go. Oh, man. Told you on Monday. I think I scared Gus when I said bang bang in the booth. What's up, everybody, Joel Clatt here. This is the Joel Clatt show. Good to be back with you on this Wednesday as the college football season. and continues to roll along. Hey, if you haven't listened to Monday's show from this week, go back and do it. Great thoughts on Michigan, what they need to do to improve in particular their play calling

on the offensive side. Why Ohio State, in my estimation, is a legit national championship contender. Clemson and USC winning games in the exact style that they desperately needed to win games in. And Minnesota, why are they rowing their boat right into the college football playoff race? that's Monday's episode. Go back and download it. And listen, because it's really good. This one, though, we've got a lot of great stuff to get into.

And I just was doing a lot of thinking ever since Saturday night, really ever since last Thursday's episode, I was going through all those games in the top 10. And I was like, man, these games are going to be pretty close. And we talked about them. And then they were close. outside of the top three. And so it just got me thinking about that. It got me thinking about like there's Kansas. I can't get Kansas out of my mind right now.

I can't get these conferences that are no shot to make the playoff, really, but going to be great race. I just have all these questions. And so I want to answer my questions today. Normally we answer your questions. I want to answer my questions today. So these are the questions that I've been thinking about over the last few days, and I just want to walk through them today with you. Let's start with my first question of the week.

Why are so many teams susceptible to random losses? Exactly. Exactly. I'm thinking to myself, like, what, how's Kansas State lose to Tulane and then go in and beat Oklahoma? What? Like, I don't understand it. why is is Wake and Clemson in an absolute thriller in overtime? Why does Oak OU throttle Nebraska then lose to Kansas State the next weekend?

Why is A&M getting beat by App State? And then they immediately turn around and get a couple of ranked wins against Miami and then Arkansas who's ranked in the top 10. Like it doesn't make any sense. And yet, and yet, what do I know about college football? The top three really are not in that. conversation. Now, that doesn't mean that they can't be threatened, but for the most part, the top three are left out of this conversation of anybody can beat anybody on a given Saturday.

And I'm like, well, why is that? What are we, what's going on? And what's the deeper meaning? It's so easy to just say talent. And yes, that is the answer and it's the obvious answer. And I've got numbers to back that up here and I'll give them to you. But it's more than that. there's really two reasons. So why are most teams susceptible to a random loss while the top three really aren't? Well, two reasons. Number one, football is really difficult. And I think people fail to realize that because we watch so many individual style sports.

Even the NFL is a bit different because it's just made and structured so much differently. we expect one score games regardless of who's playing. And college football is just different. And to some degree, I think we put unrealistic expectations on too many programs. And we just think that every program that's, let's say, in the top 10, should be beating people just like Alabama, Georgia, and Ohio State do. And to be honest, that's just not the case in college football. because those three have clearly separated themselves out, and the rest of college football,

you don't play well, you're going to get beat. Well, why is that? Well, one, college football is not a game of memory. It doesn't reward what you did last week. It doesn't reward what you did last year. It rewards what you do in the moment. It's a game of effort, discipline, and execution. So that's first and foremost.

It's the greatest of all team sports. So much better than, let's say, like a sport like baseball or basketball. On baseball, you can have a pitcher just dominate a game singularly. You can have one great player transform your entire program or organization in basketball, and you can turn yourself around. But football, it's really not that way, and it's certainly not that way in college football. It takes a series of great players in order to become a great team. And we're seeing that at the top end and more on that in a moment. But when it comes to the game, even if you have better players, you better execute, you better execute the details,

and you better play with great effort or else you can get beat. Let me give you a quick example, okay? And by the way, this is going to be meant to be confusing. So if you're confused over the next two or three or four minutes, that's fine. That's the point of this exercise. I want to just go through a play from the offense's perspective and more importantly from the quarterback's perspective and just walk through all the details that are going on and all the decisions that are being made.

And this is, by the way, one single play. And I'm not even going to talk about the defense that's being played on the other side. All right. So let's get into a personnel group first. So you're going to have a personnel group. That personnel group gets into a formation. And then out of that formation, we're going to run a concept. So you don't run plays.

There's not hundreds of plays in a playbook. There might be hundreds of concepts, but you marry those concepts with formations, and you marry those formations with personnel groups. Okay, and so there's three different things going on in any given play. Personnel formation concepts. This is not like Little League in high school that most people played where it's like, hey, you're just going to run the right side. Hey, it's 26 ISO.

That doesn't happen. There are checks. We could run that concept with a check to a different concept. We can tag a run play out of that same formation and motion. We can call the run, tag it with this one, and we can kill, kill, and we can run the past concept. There are constantly decisions being made in every, Everybody's got to be on the right page.

But it's more than that. Then you've got to execute the details of the route, the protection, and the drop. All of those. Then you've got to throw it on time. Football is really hard. Football is really hard. So why do teams get beat? Why are teams susceptible?

Because if you don't play well, you're going to get beat. Now we get into the talent portion of it. So that's just about the game, the sport. Let's get into the talent portion of it. Why are so many teams susceptible to get beat outside of the top three? Well, it's because the talent of the top three so far surpasses everybody else, it leaves everybody else in the dust. Talent is like a bell curve. There's a lot going on in the middle and very little on the edges.

There's only a few five-star players every single year, somewhere between like 34 to 38, sometimes 40 at the very top end. And they're going to the same spots. If you look at over the playoff era, okay, over eight years, this year's top three teams in the poll, Alabama, Georgia, and Ohio State have gotten 35% of the total number of five-star athletes. That's an astronomical number when you're talking about trying to spread them over 130 different schools. Astronomical number. When you look at what they've done in the last three years, that percentage has increased to 39. Just last year, or excuse me, 2021 in that cycle, they have. had over half of the five-star athletes, just those three schools, Alabama, Ohio State, and Georgia. So what you're seeing right now is a clear separation of talent into those top three. Why is it that those teams aren't in close games? You look at last week, those three crews in their wins. Every other top 10 team last week had a one-score game in the fourth quarter.

Why is it? Because their talent is not that far from the rest of college football. talking about the rest of the top 10. Here's the numbers to bear that out. If you actually go and you look at the 24-7 team composite rankings, that tells you basically what is your roster overall, what's its talent composition? And you'll see that Alabama and Georgia and Ohio State are the most talented teams in the country. And judging by those numbers I just gave you about percentage of five-star athletes, you're like, well, that makes sense.

But did you know that they are way ahead of? of the rest of college football when you're looking at the talent. Think of this again in that bell curve, folks, because when you look at the difference, when you're rating these players and you're rating these rosters, the difference between Alabama at number one and USC, a top 10 team and number 11 on the team composite this year, one and 11,

that's the exact same difference as when you go from the 11th best team USC in the talent composite, it all the way down to 69th. That team is FAU, Florida Atlantic. So what I'm trying to tell you is when it comes to talent disparity, FAU has the same gap in talent to USC as USC does to Alabama. It's very similar to early 2000s if you're a golfer, Tiger Woods, when he was so much better than everybody else. So much better. That it was like Tiger was in his own realm

and then everybody else was competing and anybody could win on any given weekend on the PGA tour. And if you're not a golfer, that's what was going on back then. And now what do we have? We have three teams. We have three Tiger Woods

separating themselves away from college football. The two closest to them, by the way, are Clemson and Texas A&M. And they're closer to the rest of college football than they are to those top three. when it comes to talent. Again, just think about this. FAU is the same in talent disparity to USC as USC is to Alabama. So we've got talent that is firmly entrenched in that top three in college football at this point. So how do you get a weekend in which Tulane beat Kansas State a week ago and then

Kansas State rolls in and beats Oklahoma? Because all of those teams are way more similar in nature than Oklahoma is even to Alabama or Georgia or Ohio State. So that's how you get it. So why are teams so susceptible to random losses is because the middle of college football is jammed together. When you go from about 7 to 60, everybody can beat everybody on any given Saturday. That doesn't mean it's a high percentage play for FAU to beat USC,

but they can. They absolutely can. And it gets back into that effort, details, and execution. All right, long answer. To answer this question I was pondering, why are teams so susceptible to random losses? And I think I figured it out right there. Why are those three exempt from those random losses? We figured it out.

It's the talent disparity. Let's move on. All right, what's the next question I've been mulling over? Why isn't Kansas ranked? Exactly. Exactly. Why isn't Kansas ranked? AP voters.

you have one job. Well, not really. They have multiple jobs and they actually just vote as an AP voter on the side. But you have one job. When you sign up to that, by the way, I was an AP voter five years ago, six years ago. And when you see how the sausage is made, you don't want any part of it because you realize that it is junk. I think that the AP poll is junk. I really do.

And there's a lot of really well-intentioned people within this. the AP poll and they're trying their best, but it's junk. And it is so biased towards your previous assumptions that it's just moving chess pieces rather than reevaluating what actually takes place on any given Saturday on the field. And this is why I get so fired up about it is because it matters to these programs. It matters to these coaches. It matters to the administrators. It matters to the players, whether they're ranked or not. It can affect their gate. It can affect their ability to recruit. Their ability to recruit then directly affects their ability to win games on the field. Their ability to win games on the field directly impacts

their job status. So this is not just like in the wind. It's like, oh, but it doesn't matter, Joel. Don't worry. The AP poll doesn't matter. Yes, it does. Yes, it does. College football is still a subjective sport. And we've got to get away from this dynamic that we have our predetermined notions of teams affecting how we view teams once those games have been played. Let me give you an example. Team A and Team B, okay? Team A was unranked in the preseason. In fact, didn't receive a vote. Not one. Not one. Team B was ranked. ranked 17th in the preseason. Team A is undefeated. They have the sixth bank best strength of record. They have two road wins. They are the fourth ranked scoring offense in America. And they have

scored 27 touchdowns tied with Ohio State for the number one or the lead, if you will, in college football. They have a Heisman Trophy caliber quarterback. And they just be beat another undefeated team at home. Team B was ranked in the preseason 17th. They beat the same team that team A beat, but they beat them at home, not on the road. This team B has a loss at home. They have the 43rd ranked scoring offense, and they've only scored 18 touchdowns. So which team should be ranked now? That's an easy answer. when you don't see the brands. It's an easy answer when you don't know the team names. It's an easy answer if you forget your predetermined notion about who these teams were and what they were going

to be during the course of the season. But AP voters can't do that. They're too prideful. They care too much about their own opinion about what they thought in the preseason. So Team B is still ranked. That team is Pitt. Team A is not. That team is Kansas. I'm sure you knew I was talking about Kansas as team A, but I bet you didn't know about team B. That's why Kansas should be ranked. They both beat West Virginia.

Kansas did it on the road. Pitt, lost at home to Tennessee, and they're ranked. Their offense isn't anywhere close to what Kansas is. Their strength of record, not close to what Kansas has right now. Again, Kansas 6th. in strength of record. They're undefeated. Two road wins, including at a conference foe in West Virginia, at Houston, which was thought to be the best group of five team coming into the season,

at least the one that was going to win the AAC, and yet they're not ranked. AP voters, be better than this. Be better than this. Stop allowing your predetermined, preseason rankings, predetermined notions about what brands are, what teams are affect the way that you rank them now. And by the way, it does matter. So don't tell me that it doesn't. All right, what's my next question? Are the Big 12 and Pact 12 set for a year of chaos? Ooh, yep. Yep, they sure are.

And I mean like chaos with a capital C. Chaos. I mean, they, these two conferences, folks, they are going to beat themselves to a pulp. In particular, the Big 12. Let me start, though, with the Pact 12. All right. When I'm looking at the PAC 12, it's pretty easy to see like, oh, man, there's four really good teams right now. I think USC is really good. Washington's really good. And Oregon is really good.

All right. Now, Oregon still has that loss, but granted, it was to Georgia. And as I've told you before, like Georgia is so far above everybody else. Like, you kind of get that. You understand. And then Utah. Utah is really good. But could it be five? Friday night, we see UCLA play Washington in the Rosemary. could it be five? Really good teams? Do we really think that we're going to have a Pac-12 champ that doesn't have at least a loss, maybe two? Wouldn't you consider that chaos? I consider that chaos. The Pac-12 is heading for an epic year where they have really good teams and they're deep at the top for the first time in like five or six years, and it's not going to matter. Because if they lose, and certainly if they lose, and certainly if they

lose twice and they have a champion with two losses, they're going to be left out of the college football playoff. It's maddening. It's maddening. Big 12 similar. There's not an easy matchup in the Big 12 this year. One to 10, all difficult. Anybody can beat anybody. Just ask Oklahoma. They just got beat by Kansas State. None of those teams are going to be able to separate themselves out from the rest. I know Oklahoma State right now looks like they're the undefeated. They're the team that went to the Big 12th. championship a year ago. They've got the coach that has been there the longest, so on and so forth. They've got to go and have a Big 12 championship game rematch against Baylor this week.

That's not a very easy game. I still think OU and Texas are the most talented teams. They're going to be in this until the end. Baylor's the defending champ. They're going to be in this. And oh, by the way, Kansas is the fourth best scoring offense in the country and has a strength of record of six. So this is not going to be easy for the Big 12. And what are they going to get for having a great year as a conference and a deep year and maybe having the conference that is the deepest and best conference top to bottom in America, guess what they're going to get? Good for you. Your champ is going to get to go to the Sugar Bowl and play the third place SEC team that doesn't go to the playoff in a meaningless exhibition game, which is a no-win probability or situation for you

because you beat said SEC team and everyone's going to say, well, the SEC team didn't really care because they weren't in the playoff and you should beat them because they were the third-ranked SEC team. they didn't make in the playoffs. So you couldn't beat the top two guys. And then if you lose that game, then they're going to puff their chests out. And they're going to chant SEC. And we're going to just continue to perpetuate this narrative that that's the best conference when really the Big 12 might be top to bottom the best conference in America this year.

They might not be that at the top end. And I certainly am not saying that any of those teams are going to go win the national championship. But wouldn't it be great for both of these conferences if they were able to beat themselves of yes, but still have a clearly defined path to the playoff? Come on. Expand the playoff as quickly as possible. I mean it. I mean it.

It's going to be so much better for college football, and this is evidence of that. The Big 12 is going to be a madhouse this year. I think the Pac-12 probably is as well. I don't know who's coming out of those conferences. I have no idea. That's the best part. That's the best part.

We have a really good idea that Alabama and Georgia are going to be in Atlanta playing for the S. championship game. All due respect to Kentucky and Tennessee, those teams are not beating Georgia. They just aren't. All due respect to Texas A&M, that ain't happening. Should have lost last week to Arkansas. Meanwhile, in the Big Ten, Ohio State seems pretty clearly better than everybody right now, in particular after the way that Michigan struggled at times against Maryland, and after watching Ohio State just throttle the badgers. We need this expansion so badly. I don't know who's coming out of these conferences.

It's going to be complete chaos. And the team that does make it out of that chaos deserves a clearly defined path to the postseason. Period. Period. Okay. I want to move on and we've got to do some fan-based check-in because folks, let's play a little game called

Is it Time to Panic? Miami. Miami. Not yet. Not yet. The answer is no. I know you lost 4531 to Middle Tennessee State, and that doesn't seem great, does it? No, it doesn't seem great.

But here's why you shouldn't panic. It's a first year for your staff. Like, Mario Cristobal has done this. You've got to have a little faith in Mario Cristobal, don't you? You've got to have a little faith that you're short-handed right now. Restrepo hasn't been out there the last couple of weeks. I think that's why your offense has stagnated. Even Nick Saban lost to, who was it, Louisiana Monroe in his first season.

So a loss to Middle Tennessee State in Christobal's first year, I don't think it's going to impact recruiting, and that recruiting is the way out of where you're at. Meanwhile, Mario Cristobal has a great history. Remember, he took over an 0-12 FIU team, and they ended up going to a couple of bowl games before he went up to Oregon. So here's a guy who was 37 and 15 in Power 5 competition. once he got to Oregon,

built a program that recruited at the highest level in the Pacific Northwest and rolled into the shoe and beat Ohio State one of those top three teams I was talking about earlier in the show with his boys last year even without Kavon Thibodeau. This guy can coach. There's also going to be time for Miami to grow,

the bulk of their schedules in November before they see Florida State Clemson Pitt. That's in November. So Miami, not time to panic. Stay the course. Stay the course. Who's next? Michigan State.

Panic. Panic time. Like five alarm fire. Panic time. This is year three. It ain't year one. This is year three. This is the year that it's supposed to be a roster full of the guys that Mel Tucker recruited.

This is supposed to be the roster that doesn't need all. the transfer and fusion. This is supposed to be the roster that flips the culture. 34-7 in Minnesota. 34-7. By the way, Minnesota could have scored at the end. It would have been 38-0. They kick a field goal and the Michigan State scores their only touchdown in like the last minute of the game. It's panic time for Michigan State. Mel Tucker is supposed to be a defensive guy. This is where he cut his teeth. He was a defensive coordinator. He was a defensive backs coach. And yet last year in year two, they're 110th in total defense. Okay, it's year two, Joel. Okay, well, now it's year three. You're supposed to have your guys in here. You're supposed to be

turning over the roster. And they just gave up 500 yards in back-to-back games, Washington and now Minnesota. This ain't good. This ain't good. Mel Tucker's in his fourth year as a head coach. He's 20 and 16 overall and has only had one winning season. So we haven't seen him have a winning season without Kenneth Walker. The Dock Walker Award winner from last year. And then comes the really heavy part for Michigan State. Look at their next four games. Bro.

Trubs. We got some serious trubs rolling in for the Spartans. At Maryland. That's a team that I think is actually pretty good. In particular with the way they played last week. Mike Loxley doing some good things with them. offensively, very good. And Michigan State can't stop anybody.

Ohio State, good luck. Saw what happened last year. And that was with Kenneth Walker at Wisconsin. I know Wisconsin's not great this year, but you have confidence after watching a 34-7 beat down at the hands of Minnesota at home that you're just going to roll into Camp Randall and beat the Badgers? And then Michigan.

I know you got Jim Harbaugh's number, but you're really going to beat them again? Michigan State, it's panic time because you're staring at three and five or two and six dead down the barrel. That next four, it ain't easy. It ain't easy at all. Last one. Texas. I told you a few weeks ago, after the Alabama loss, Quinn Ewers gets hurt, and I said, almost verbatim, Texas fans, relax, you're going to lose it.

a game before Red River, a game that you feel like you should win, and that's exactly what happened. I don't think Texas should panic at all. I think Steve Sarkesian is still doing exactly what he needs to do. He's recruiting at a ridiculously high level. Number two class in the country right now, currently, five top 50 players on the back of last year, the fifth ranked recruiting class in the country, a game in which that game against Alabama, they outplay and should have beaten Alabama. I still think that Texas is going to be fine. I still think that they're going to have a shot to go to the Big 12 title game. I really do. They're getting way better on the offensive line. And next year, that should be a really good football team, a really good football team.

There's one area that I have a little bit of concern with Texas, one. And that is the fact that keep blowing fourth quarter leads. And the same thing started, happened to Nebraska. And I was saying the same things about Nebraska. I kept saying like, hey, Scott Frost, he's going to get, like, they're going to get better. Don't worry, relax Nebraska fans. But then they kept losing those one score games. They kept blowing leads in the fourth quarter.

And that perpetuated itself to the point that, bam, now Scott Frost isn't there anymore. So Texas, you're going to have to start proving me wrong in that regard. You've got to start winning those games as you have a lead late in. all right you got to start making the plays i don't expect be jean robinson to fumble like you did in crunch time i just don't expect that you know darnel jefferson style in the program he's been carrying a ball around the campus in austin right now i just if i was like a normal student if you're a normal student at ut and you see bjean robinson out there listen guys are making a lot of money like go try to hit the ball out don't hit him like do not hit his ribs i'm just saying like

go try to knock the ball out you know like don't try to knock the ball out you know like Darnell Jefferson and the scene in the program. And if you haven't watched the program, that means you're too young and you need to go watch the program. It's a movie. And you'll love it. That's going to do it for the Joel Clatt show today. Thanks for hanging out.

You can follow us at Joel Clatt show on any of the social medias out there. You can follow me at Joel Clatt on Twitter. Tomorrow we're going to be breaking down games. The Thursday edition, I'll be talking about Washington, UCLA, Michigan, Iowa, Kentucky Ole Miss, Bama, Arkansas, NC State Clemson. I've got thoughts on all of those games. If you would for us, please go leave a review, rate our podcast, and join us in the conversation. I have loved doing this.

I love this sport. I really enjoy speaking to you the fans. I can't wait to see you Iowa fans this week. We'll be there in Kinnick, Gus, Jenny, and I in Kinnick Stadium for the way of one of my favorite things in all of college. football that'll do it today thanks everybody enjoy your wednesday