The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Joel Klatt: Don't Bury the Big-12 Yet

Episode Date: September 16, 2020

Joel Klatt: Don't Bury the Big-12 Yet

I Heart Radio, the free app for your music, your stations like Sports Talk 790, and number one for podcasting. This is Eric Gordon. I'm going to pullback. Three hit it. Eric Gordon on fire here. Sports Talk 790 is your home for Houston Rockets of Basketball. Ladies and gentlemen, the four greatest things that Fox has ever done in no particular order. One, the Simpsons.

Two, American Idol. when actually people watch the show. Three, hire Joe Clatt as their lead football analyst. Four, put our Houston Cougars on their main game of the week against the Baylor Bears. Am I right about all four of those things, Joel Clatt? This is it. You got it. You nailed them.

How about that? So word travel through my world, Saturday morning. Houston was going to ditch the Memphis game, play Baylor. And then I thought to myself, hmm, I wonder what to tell you. time would be good for that. So I went to the your Fox schedule immediately, and I did not see an 11 o'clock game, and that's when I texted you, and then the magic began shortly after that. When did

you all hear about all this moving around of parts and having these two teams play this Saturday? Same, really early. So even before we kicked off, you know, we had heard, I had gotten some texts, and I sent them to our bosses and just, you know, said, hey, heads up, this

game looks like it's going to be planned. And we were not on the schedule this week, right? So we were planning this, our crew, to have the week off. And, you know, they thought, well, shoot, we're going to do a big noon kickoff anyways and have the guys out into the studio. Might as well do a big noon Saturday and put this game on the air. So, yeah, it came together quick on our end as well. And I'm happy it did. And it just kind of shows you. And we just talked with the Houston coaches. And Dana was great. And he was talking about how thankfully he was for everyone just being

willing to be open-minded. You know, so much of college football in particular coaches or administration. They're, I don't want to say close-minded, but it just moves so slowly. You know, there's so much red tape and we've got to see this or that. And this came together quickly. And in particular for a couple of schools that haven't played and, you know, shoot, what is it now? 26 years, Matt, since the old Southwest Conference.

Right. So I think everyone's excited. I'm sure people in Houston are really excited to get this game, not only because of how quickly it came together, but maybe more importantly, because of the historical significant to this game. And the fact that the two teams will play together two more times, hopefully by the end of the decade. Now, Dave Iranda, I was on his conference call, had a different viewpoint than Dana on this, and I want to get yours. Do you think that these schools are doing too much advanced planning, or do you like, or I should say, do you like how this came together?

Now, granted, it was because of COVID, but if we could shorten up the time frame and advanced scheduling, or do you think because it is such a difficult business to schedule games that, you know what, you just can't avoid not trying to. to schedule something five, six years in advance? That's a great question. I personally believe that we should take scheduling out of the hands to the athletic directors and the individual schools altogether, to be quite honest with you. If it was up to me, I think that we would reshape the way that schedules are thought of and made. I would create the non-league games for you, for every school out there.

And I know that Houston fans wouldn't necessarily like this, but I would play more powerful, five games, Power 5 against Power 5. And the way that I would do it, Matt is similar to how the NFL does it, which is I would have a conference scheduling partner. And then you would play the opposing team from that conference based on where you both finished in your league the previous year. So, for instance, let's just say for the sake of argument that we have a nine-game conference schedule and everybody plays a nine-conference game league schedule.

Then you basically have three games to play with or four games. to play with, however you want to do it in a normal year. What I would do is you would have two scheduled games based on where you finished against Power 5 teams, one on the road, one at home, and then you would play two regional schools from, I would say, lower level. And again, don't get upset, but to help with their budget because I think it's important that the big schools understand the importance of their role in creating opportunity for those schools to maintain scholarships and play the sport of football.

So that's how I would do it. So to answer your original question, I think that we plan way too far ahead, and I think that we give way too much power to the individual schools and the athletic directors to make these schedules, Matt, which oftentimes don't help college football more generally. And so that would be my idea. Not bad thought at all. Joe Clatt, Fox Sports will be on the Houston Bader call on TV. We'll have it for you on radio, a 950 KPRC beginning at 10 o'clock.

with our pregame show, 11 o'clock kick. What happened to the Big 12 last weekend? Well, I think that what happened is what happens a lot of times when you play good football teams for many conference. And I think in particular, Louisiana with Bill Napier and Arkansas State are good football teams. I do think it should be noted that I think we should all pump our breaks on the whole, like, oh, the Big 12 died last weekend. Oh, it was the worst week of all time. just don't think that that's the case. And I'll give you three reasons why I believe that.

So, Matt, the first reason being exactly what I mentioned just a short time ago, Louisiana and Arkansas State are good teams. And they would have had a chance to beat any number of Power 5 teams during the course of this season, in particular when you're talking about teams that are coming off of this type of an off season. And Kansas State specifically, it was replacing all five offensive linemen as well as their defensive tackles. Louisiana was 11 and 3 last year. And then Kansas, it's Kansas, so I don't really care. Third, or excuse me, the second thing I would say is like, this happens, right? Look at last year alone.

Matt, just in the ACC last year, you had North Carolina lose to App State. You had Boise State lose to Florida State, right? Like this thing, these things happen. And the SEC, this happens. Georgia State beat Tennessee. That's the team all of us are fawning over here in the preseason this year. Wyoming beat Missouri, San Jose State. won over Arkansas.

All of those games happened last year, but the SEC wasn't dead. It happened to the PAC 12 as well. Think about Air Force over Colorado. San Diego State beat UCLA. Hawaii beat Arizona and Oregon State. Like, I guess the point being is like results like this have happened forever, and we don't necessarily bury the conference because of it, and it brings me and leads me to my third point.

Why does it not bury the conference? because we rate conferences based on what happens at the top, not in the middle. And this is evidenced by what we see in the ACC. That conference is not very good right now. And yet none of us talk about it because Clemson is so good at the top of their conference. So for the Big 12, the important school is really Oklahoma, Texas, maybe Oklahoma stayed in there, maybe TCU thrown in there. And those are the schools that we're going to rate the conference on. And quite simply, oh, you and Texas looked great.

I don't care what their competition level was. Matt, they were really good, led by their quarterback, Spencer Rattler and Sam Mellinger. I think that the whole Big 12 is dead or sky is falling. I think that that's a bit premature, and we should all just relax a little bit. Dave Miranda gets his first head coaching opportunity at Baylor. What was his, was he just picking, waiting for the right job? Because, again, you could be a coordinator at LSU for a long time, make a lot of money and have a lot of prestige working there. What was so enticing to him besides the fact that he could be a head coach for the first time?

I'm not sure, to be honest with you. I really am not sure. I think that seeing Matt Rule go all the way to the NFL, that it's not going to be a stumbling block in terms of your ascension throughout coaching if this is going to be used as a stepping stone. But I've talked to other coaches, and in particular some retired coaches who are scratching their head and thinking to themselves, what is Dave Randah doing

when you've got that amount of leverage where you're going to be in the conversation for the biggest jobs in college football, you don't go to a place where at least it seems to be so hard not only just win your league, but also go to the playoff. Even Art Briles' great teams were not able to go to the playoff,

even the year that they only lost one game in the regular season. So I think it is fascinating, and I think maybe to a lesser degree, we should start talking about the difficulties that defensive coaches have in getting the biggest tier job. You know, we don't see it quite often like we have in the past. Remember, in the past we saw Bob Stubes go from coordinator at Florida

to the head coach of the University of Oklahoma. We don't see that often now because everybody is chasing offense. It's Ryan Dave, and the Lincoln Riley's and Cliff Kingsbury and all these guys, they're the ones that get the job. So maybe for a defensive guy like Dave Miranda, he thought, This is my chance to go to a really solid program where you can still move up from there, and he jumped at it. Last question, you better get your Parker ready for the months of November, maybe early December,

because it looks like the Big Ten is going to play. Let me ask you this. And again, I don't know how much the audience cares, but from a grandiose viewpoint, I want to get your perspective. The Big Ten, in my mind, wanted to be out in front and say, we're going to make sure we don't play to protect our kids. Half of college football said, we've got the proper testing. we're going to go forward.

And as soon as the first snap was taken, the Big Ten's like, uh-oh, what do we do wrong? How do you see it? Not only how they handled the last 30 days and how they're going to handle the rest of the season. Well, a great question, right? And yes, I think that there was some egg on their face because I truly believe that those presidents in particular who tend to operate a bit in a bubble. And I'm not talking about a COVID bubble either, right? I think that they are detached from reality at certain points,

in particular when it comes to the athletic realms and sporting realms, I will tell you, I feel like, from what I've been told, they were confident in early August that if they made that decision that everybody else would follow, and they were not expecting what then transpired when the SEC and the Big 12 and the ACC basically said, you can go do that, but we're going to stand pat because our medical team is telling us something a little bit different. or we are trusting that the advances in particular in the testing advances that we are hearing about is going to allow us to get onto the field in a safe manner. And I think that that was a bit of a surprise for the Big Ten at the time, which then sunk it into this, I don't even know, I mean, how long has it been, six weeks of just PR nightmare, where you've got coaches fighting against them and players fighting against them. The president is getting involved, and this is certainly not. how Kevin Warren wanted to start his commissionership at the Big Ten.

I will tell you, though, I think that they've done a good job with the hand that they've been dealt of coming up with this philosophy or criteria or season as they have. And now the bigger question, at least for me from a football perspective, what did the other conferences and Notre Dame do with the Big Ten as it relates to the CFP? because like I said a little bit earlier, the Big Ten put those conferences in a really tough position when the Big Ten decided to postpone. And I don't think that these other conferences are going to want to bend over backwards to share in the revenue pot for the Big Ten when the Big Ten put so much pressure on them in early August. Just something to watch out for. I don't have anything concrete, but I think it could get very partisan and very nasty behind closed doors. I think it's going to get very nasty and very ugly, but they're going to let them in. I just have a gut food.

Probably. I just do. But it's going to be contentious. That's for sure. Hey, have us safe travels awake. We'll see you Saturday morning, in fact. We'll have breakfast. You got it.

I love it. All right, Matt. Have a great day. Talk to you. Joe Klett. Fox Sports with us here on the Matt Thomas show.