The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Joel Klatt Doesn't Trust Auburn To Win A Shootout With LSU

Episode Date: October 25, 2019

Joel Klatt of FOX Sports joins Matt and Ross to talk NCAA Football week 9

And now we're talking college football with Joel Clatt. Brought to you by Dosekies. Official beer sponsor of the college football playoff. 134 at the PM here on Sports Talk 790. Matt Thomas Show rolls along, broadcasting live from the Twin Peaks 290 and a Pynmont location. Pleased to be joined by Joel Clatt as he joins us every week. Joel, Matt got up and disappeared here. so I guess it's just going to be me and you here.

I hope you don't mind. You're going to have to punch it up, Nick. So disappointed in the first two games. You got me now? Yeah, I got you now. Sorry about that. Okay, there we go. Okay.

What's that? Matt might have fallen into the bathroom. Hopefully he's okay. Go ahead, Joel. I'm just going to say, I know you guys are probably disappointed with the first two games of the World Series, but let's all hope that the old Shros come back and give us some fight here in the next couple of games, huh?

Why are you got to bring that up, Joel? Why don't you just talk about the Rockets losing last night while we're at it? Let's just go ahead. Rockets lost to the bucks. The Astros are 0 and 2 in the World Series. Well, the Rockets, that's not going to work. Listen, yeah, the rockets are not going to work. We all know that.

You can't have two guys at hockey ball like that. I mean, but... All right, what's going on here? What did I just interrupt? I'm at a big executive meeting with Twin Peaks of employees. Is that what you're calling it? Oh, my God. Joel, you need to come to hang out with...

Hey, when you come to XFL games here, I'll bring you to Twin Peaks. You'll never be the same again, I promise. I'm almost certain my first game is in Houston. Good. Good. The rough next year. Yeah, there we go.

There we go. All right. How are we doing? Well, not great. I mean, honestly, it's not great. I don't care. Look, the Rockets is one game. The Astros down being down two nothing is not great.

And for you, for Fox, for us as Houstonians. But at least you've got a nice big 10-game matchup to tomorrow. And you are currently calling us from, Columbus. What's going on up there today? I got to tell you, well, I mean, it's exciting. What I love about it is like when you get a matchup that this is this size, it's palpable. You get off the plane on Thursday and you feel it. People are asking you about it the entire time.

So I could not be more excited about this match. I actually think Wisconsin is going to play a lot better than what they showed clearly against Illinois. And they still have the ability to come out here and beat this team. So I really think it's going to be a great game. And the reason I can't wait for that is because we haven't seen Ohio State have to have any meaningful snaps in the second half of any game that they've had. So, you know, for me, this is a chance to really see and measure what Ohio State is. And what they are is a team that's going to comfortably make into the final four or not? I actually anticipate that that is the case.

They are, in my estimation, the best team in the country by most metrics. anybody that's doing, you know, whether it's analytics, the film, whatever you want to say, I think Ohio State has been the most dominant team in the country. And they've got a great defense. Think about it from this perspective. We all know how important recruiting is. If you take a look at what is the most influential recruiting class for this season, you would say it's the 2017 recruiting class, three years.

Okay, so all those kids are right now true juniors, the twas of the world, the Chase Youngs of the world. Well, did you know of the top of the top eight defensive players in the entire country that year in that recruiting class, Ohio State has four of them on their own defense? That's insane, guys. That's a big reason why they've played so dominantly on that side of the football. And I think they are going to go to the playoff. And if you ask me right now who's going to win the national championship, I would say it's the Buckeyes. And it's interesting to me, Joel.

over for Urban Meyer, and then you have Lincoln Riley having a ton of success in Oklahoma taking over for Bob Stoops. Are these just one-offs, or what is happening with these handoffs? How are these guys going from head coach to head coach and being so successful? When we've seen other programs go from a great coach to not great coaches or inability to find a great coach, what is happening in these situations that are making them so successful? Well, I think that it's the blueprint that Oklahoma found, and really that's what Ohio State was following here, was exactly what Oklahoma. was doing. And that's when a coach, when you're trying to go from a great coach and then you just

hire some other great coach who's not associated, and he's trying to implement a new system and bring a new culture and maybe all the infrastructure has to change, that's when I think it's really precarious and very difficult. But in both cases at Oklahoma and now at Ohio State, the infrastructure stayed the same. And that's really important. Now, Ryan Day hired a couple of new defensive coaches here at Ohio State, but the strength coach, the recruiting, staff. Everything was in place already. And so that machine could continue to roll because remember getting a program going and rolling at the top of college football, it's a lot like a flywheel. If you're familiar with Jim Collins' book, Good to Great. It's a leadership book based in the

business world. But he talks about the flywheel and the flywheel being very hard to start. It's hard to start turning that flywheel. But once you get it going, it's incredibly tough to stop it. It's a really momentum-based thing. And so at that point, you've got these programs and they that wheel going, why change the wheel? Don't reinvent it. Use that same infrastructure, hire a great coach that's been within that infrastructure and then it can continue along.

I think that's what the Sooners and Buckeyes have done. All right, a lot of folks in our neck of the woods are very excited about Auburn versus LSU. What kind of chance do you give Auburn to pull off the upset this week? You know, I just don't think it's a great matchup for Auburn. I think Auburn is probably

more suited to beat Alabama than they are LSU. And the reason is, is because I think Auburn is not a team that's likely to get into a shootout and succeed. Remember now, Bo Nix has played well for a true freshman, but when you look at his completion percentage, it's somewhere like the 111 in the country. I don't think he's the guy to go out there and lead you in a 48-45 game, which is what it might take against LSU.

LSU is right now, I believe, the second-ranked scoring offense in the country. Joe Burroughs completing 79% of his passes. He's got 29 touchdowns, which is not only an LSU record, only in seven games for a single season, but it's also right now the side for the best mark in the entire country. He's got 31 touchdowns responsible for at the top mark in the country. I just don't trust Auburn to get into a shootout and win in that environment. So for my money, I'm taking LSU, and I think that LSU is going to continue to roll. And here's the thing, guys, if Tua is not back and he's not 100%, I would say the exact same thing

about Alabama and LSU. I don't think Alabama will be suited to get into a shootout with LSU either. So in that standpoint, unless two is healthy, I think LSU is going to be an undefeated team going to the FCC championship game. What do you think, Joel, as opposed to LSU, of course, and their murderous schedule that they're having to go through,

and then you look at Clemson, who, as you were, I'm sure, happy to hear getting nine first-place votes to the AP poll this week. Well, the fact that they're only nine is atrocious. I mean, I know it's going down, so we're whittling away. But again, those people should be stripped of their votes. Absolutely.

There is no case to be made for Clemson. There's not one. There is not one. Unless you immediately invoke last season into the argument. And you can't do that. This is this season. We're rating this team. And they might be bored.

They might be much better than what they've shown. That all might be true. But you cannot give me an argument that states that Clemson is the number of one team in the country. Those nine people and the eight people should be stripped of their votes immediately because they're ruining the sport. Well, here's the thing. We don't believe in stereotypes on the show.

But Joel, those nine people are wearing jeans, plaid shirt. They're probably 30 to 40 pounds overweight. They have high blood pressure. Wow. I mean, the jeans and plaid shirt community is getting just roasted right now. I tell you what. They probably have a toothpick in their mouth at this

point. I mean, this isn't a highly sophisticated group, right? Or am I, are my, are my misinterpreting what the AP voter is these days? I don't think that you're misinterpreting it all that much. And I think that the problem from my seat is that you have people in my own industry, and I think that they're, they're naive by saying this, but they say, like, well, what do you care? It doesn't matter anyways. And my argument to that is it absolutely matter. because if you're naive to think, naive enough to think, that the 13 committee members are not watching football during this first half to three quarters of the season

without at least a framework of what's happening. That framework is provided by rankings. We talk about which wins are good and which wins are not good during the course of this first three quarters of the season. So that framework is going to, even if it's subconsciously, affect the way that you think about the sports. So to suggest that the AP poll just doesn't matter, I think is naive, and I think it's throwing human nature away.

And we all know that human nature has a great deal to do with not only this sport, but how we crown our champion in this sport with the subjective nature of the committee. All right, I got 60 seconds. How nervous should Tom Herman's defense be with the amount of yards and touchdowns given up by Kansas last week as they go to Fort Worth this Saturday to battle T-C? Yeah, I mean, they should be nervous. They've got to play better defense. He knows that.

I mean, this was always going to be a young group and maybe a little bit of a step back. But Todd Orlando's got to figure this out. He's got to try to find a way to play some semblance of defense. Oh, you dealt with this last year when they had the worst past defense in the country. And certainly Texas is going through that right now. And they've dealt with a lot of injuries in the secondary, but they've got to find a way to create some pressure on the quarterback. I think that's been the Achilles heel for the Longhorn, and until they figure that out, they're going to continue to struggle.