The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Joel Klatt Joins Matt To Talk College Football and Officiating

Episode Date: October 16, 2019

Joel Klatt of FOX Sports joins Matt to talk some NCAA Football

And now we're talking college football with Joel Clatt. Brought to you by Dos Ekes. Official beer sponsor of the college football playoff. And there we go. There we go. Now, this is some college football music. OU in Texas, brilliantly called by Gus Johnson and Joel Clack. We got to bring that up.

This week's game not nearly as sexy. I think West Virginia is a 33 and a half point dog at Oklahoma. I see 34. So, Joel, you're going to have your filler material ready for that bad boy? How are you, Joel? I am working hard on some filler material. Come on now, that's not nice for West Virginia. West Virginia's got a shot, right?

No. No. So you've seen Hertz, what, twice so far this year? What do you think? Three times. Yeah, I have. And I thought that last week he actually reverted to some bad habits, and it wasn't just the

turnovers. Obviously, the turnovers are not great. And fumbles are fumbles, and you just got to secure the ball better. The decision to throw the ball back across the middle of the field late into the end zone was obviously a, I mean, just a ridiculously poor decision. Having said that, though, the offense did move up and down the field. Now, I thought that the score was not indicative of the game that I was watching. I thought Oklahoma was much more dominant, even on the game. the offensive side. And what they did is they turned the ball over twice in the scoring area,

and then they had to kick a field goal on another red zone possession. So now you're sitting there with three points out of potentially 21. And that was why the game was the way that it was. But Hurt specifically, he has a tendency early in the season against Houston specifically. He would see a read, not like it, and take off. And then versus UCLA, you'd see a read, maybe get the two and take off. And then what he started to do, is develop his progression a little bit, and he was hanging in the pocket, and he was allowing the offense to work for him schematically, and then he was using his legs as a last resort. Quarterbacks that use their legs as a threat one and as a last resort, too, I think, are

more effective and can create more damaging plays for the defense because it's more demoralizing. What happens is that the defense has to do everything right, everything right. They take away the first option, the second option, the third. option. And then all of a sudden, you make them wrong after they've been right with your legs. And that's when I think running and scrambling is most effective outside of the quarterback design run. But what I saw last week is I saw him take off a little early a few times. And it's to be expected. You're going to revert back to kind of what you are naturally in those big moments. And I thought that he did. So we'll see how he moves from here. I still, like I said,

begin, though. They still played really well. On the flip side, Joel, what do you think was the issue with the Texas offense? It just felt like the offensive line was getting whipped, and Sam Ellinger didn't throw a touchdown, and even the passes he did complete were short ones and didn't connect on a couple of long tries. Just overall your thoughts on what happened there? Nothing went well for Texas. I thought that their wide receivers played really poorly, really poorly. They were not creating any separation, and then when they did, did, there were far too many drops. And in a big game, when you're playing a team that you need to

upset, you can't miss opportunities, even if it's, you know, for a first down on a second down play or so on and so forth. And so they didn't play well. I thought that Sam, for the most part, actually played pretty well. His offensive line was atrocious. And the thing that bothered me for Texas is that it was the exact same stuff that they were struggling with protecting Sam, in the LSU game. And I pointed it out a couple of times on the broadcast, but it was a very simple stunt where they bring the defensive in, and they loop him around and bring him kind of right up the middle or in the A gap.

And then they crossed the face of everybody else, and they could not pick it up. And it just got home countless times regardless of who was in it. And I thought Neville Gallimore, the nose tackle for Oklahoma, just totally owned that offensive line for Texas. And I thought they played really poorly outside of a couple of drives. where Rochon Johnson kind of bounces out and makes a play. And then in another series where they got some tempo going. But outside of a couple of series, they just really didn't play well.

With very few sexy games on the schedule, I want to bring up a big picture topic. And it's something we talked about on my show the last couple of days. Joel, you and I are about the same age. We watch football about the same time. Ficiating has been something you kind of just roll your eyes with, and you hope the advent of instant replay would help. We've seen the NFL this year, completely butcher what exactly is a reversible pass interference call.

Then work comes out today. The athletic director at Texas Tech, Kirby Hookett's fine $25,000 for his comments about officiating, which means my son's tuition at Texas Tech's not going to go up because they have to pay the fine. And I don't want to put you in an uber difficult spot, but you've never been afraid to talk about the big issues. Yeah, no one can find me. Listen, I'll say whatever I want. Yeah, I don't care. If you full-time these people in college and pro,

I don't care if you go find a new batch of younger, more athletic guys. We have a, and I don't want to know if the word epidemic is a problem, but we've got a real problem in this country, finding good men who are really smart and want to do their jobs the best they can, being able to live up to the moments of these big-time college and pro football games.

Yeah, part of it, let's, I mean, there's a lot to unpack in that answer. I mean, are there really poorly officiated games going on? Yes. Did we see one Monday night? Yeah, that was atrocious, candidly. There's been far too many missed calls, situations, and college football. All of that is true. It's also true what you said right in that we have not been able to develop or find better or more officials. Part of that is our own fault. Hear me out. When you go to, to any, and I'm Adam now, when you go to any youth, you know, contest, whatever sport it is, at the very lowest levels, parents are, they're the worst. They shout at these kids trying to officiate. They scream and yell because they think their kid is more important than God. and candidly it drives people out of the entry-level point in officiating. People are terrible to high school officials.

Coaches are terrible to these high school officials. They expect perfection when perfection is not anywhere attainable because these people are still trying to develop. So those are the people that eventually become, you know, NCAA officials. I don't walk in and say, hey, I want to be a college official. It's like you've got to have some level of experience, right? Here's a, for instance, one of my longtime childhood friends is Corey Blazer. Do you know that name? Oh, my God.

He's the one that screwed up in the baseball game the other day. He did. He's an umpire in the big leagues. Corey and I started umpiring with a few other of my friends when we were, you know, 13 years old. And we would umpire the eight-year-old games and things like that to earn a few bucks on the side. And he turned that into a career. He started doing it and continued to do it into his high school days. And then even in college, he would go. And when he was at Colorado State University, he would go and umpire in the summer. And then all of a sudden he became a minor

league umpire. So I tell you that example to tell you, like, he's officiated his entire life, right? So is he going to make mistakes at times? Sure. And that's to be expected. But why would anyone do that nowadays? I wouldn't. I mean, look, I tell people, I tell people don't get, people terrible. Don't get in the radio business because half people hate you. I mean, they just do. They think you're the worst sports host in America. I was like, my son's

in tech, like, should I get into sports? I said, no, don't do it. It's funny because Corey got the assignment to work game three of the American League Championship series, or game two, excuse me. And he calls out Gary Sanchez and Sanchez is all mad at him. The previous pitch, Corey calls a foul ball when there was

no way in the world that ball hit his bat. So for a guy that is as good as he is, and has been grated out as good as he is, he still made a mistake in a very, very impactful baseball game. Right. And you know what? That's to be expected. And I don't understand. And here's the problem with replay. And replay now has been instant replay, has been, you know, in most of these sports now for going on over a decade. I remember I was playing when it was brought back into college football. And so that's early 2000s. And so now, what we've done is we've taken away the element of sports that, like, hey, things like that are going to happen, right?

And now the expectation is that it's absolutely perfect all the time. Well, that's unattainable, folks, even with replay, because the parameters in replay don't allow you to replay every single call. And we tried to expand it into, you know, pass interference. and I'm sure this is not all you wanted to talk about. But yes, isn't an epidemic? Absolutely. Can we just blame officials? No.

It's partly our own fault. One, our expectations are way out of whack. And two, when people are trying to get a start in that career, we treat them like dirt at the lowest levels of sports. All right now, back to the football field. How do you like the rankings right now in the Associated Press top 25? It's not the end all, but how do you like how things have sized up? And if you're Georgia, are you just sick to your stuff? on how things turned out last week, especially when it comes to a battle of field goals.

So, yeah, I mean, lots to get into there as well. The A people is really bad. It's garbage. The fact that 11 people, it is. I mean, the fact that 11 people voted for Clemson as the number one team in the country, there's not one reason you can give me of why they're number one without bringing up the national championship a year ago. It's supposed to be that way. It's not supposed to be that right.

That's exactly right. Every year should be its own year. That's exactly. And this is my whole problem, is that we've placed the burden of proof on teams like Wisconsin and Penn State who have been dominant teams to this point, dominant teams. And by the way, played a more difficult schedule than Clemson. And yet the burden of proof is on them in order to what, you've got to prove that you're going to pass Clemson based on what we thought Clemson was going to be. Let me just give you this as an example, okay? kind of a close your eyes type of example. Imagine if, imagine if we had Ohio State ranked number one in the preseason.

And Ohio State, with all these returning players and great players, in particular on defense, four of the top 20 recruits in the country in 2017 are now starting on the Ohio State defense. Imagine if they had played below expectation to this point. And one of those wins that they had while being undefeated was a one-point win over Indiana. Imagine that for a moment. Would we be criticizing them? Absolutely. Would they still be getting first place votes?

They better not be because other teams have been more dominant. It's absolutely atrocious that 11 – those 11 people should have their votes stripped from them. And everyone says to me, well, that poll doesn't matter. You really think that the 13 committee members don't watch for them. football in the first half of the season with at least some framework in their mind of what they're watching. They are not aliens. They don't drop down in week six or seven of the season and then all of a sudden say, hey, what's been happening? Everything that they've been watching has had some form of subconscious bias attached to it. And that framework or bias is established by this

horrendous poll that we trod out there like it's any good. 11 people voting Clemson, number one. Give me a break. Well, that must be the Columbia Sports Media right there. Joel, you always bring it, my friend. Safe travels this week. And like I said, continued success with the filler material. And I hope that you've been studying your XFL draft.