The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Joel Klatt: You Basically Have 4 Teams Who Can Win A Championship This Year

Episode Date: October 21, 2020

Joel Klatt: You Basically Have 4 Teams Who Can Win A Championship This Year

And that ball's hit. Talk 790. Product with the Grand Slash! Home of your Astros. 134 on Sports Talk 790. My buddy Bert, listen to the show, says The Showtime show Billions is based on the new Mets owner Steve Cohen. The dude is a genius.

I don't ever watch Showtime. You watch Showtime? I don't have it, no. I don't either. I do have Cinemax, but that's not here nor there. That's to be, yeah, you're DVRing Busty cops 14, I'm sure. That's not true. I watch it live. No, 134

on Sports Talk 790. Let's say how to our good friend, Joel Clatt Fox Sports, who will be on the call. Oh my God, Joel, a big 10 game this weekend. How excited are you about traveling to the Eastern time zone? Yeah, and it's going to be cold. So, you know, we got some Big Ten football

and Big Ten weather from what I'm hearing. So I'm excited, man. I have, you, I've been very consistent. on this from day one. I've been a proponent of playing. I feel like the data suggests that we should. I think it continues

to suggest that we should, even with postponements and cancellations. And in large respect, Matt, I feel that way because the alternative is, I think, even more harmful to these athletes and their mental health and their overall

quality of life. So, I'm really happy for these players that they're going to get an opportunity to go out and play And as we've seen in other conferences, it's been a wild success so far in college football. People are like, really wild success? Yes, absolutely. Think of where we were this summer. Think of where we were in July or even early August.

And to be playing 80, 90 percent of these games to have zero severe symptoms even or not even a hospitalization of a coach or a player or anything to that extent. I think the protocols are working. And this is going really well in college football. and people should be commended as such. With all that being said, you've got a pandemic going, you've got all these schedules of moving from conferences playing and starting in different points of the year and cancellations.

When the dust settled, Joel, you've still got Clemson and Alabama and then everybody else. Well, maybe Ohio State. Okay, maybe, but let's get to the first two. What has happened to college football, but during all of this, these two schools continue to kill it? Oh, gosh. Well, okay, it all has to do with recruiting.

I did a video last week. You guys can check it out on some of my social media channels. Arguing that I think that the playoff and its unintended consequences have actually hurt college football, and you're basically asking me directly about that. I believe that the way that we watch, analyze, and enjoy college football has made the gap between have and the have-nots even more pronounced, and it has actually moved that gap towards the top. So now what you have is basically, if you look at the recruiting rankings, legitimately, and I know this is frustrating here, but this is the truth.

You basically have four teams that can win a national championship this year. That's it, because there's only four teams right now, I believe that in terms of composite ranking, overall recruiting rankings, from where all the players were, coming out of high school, there's only four teams that have double-digit five-star recruits on their roster. To give you a sense of the gap between college football, we think that Michigan, Ohio State is a rivalry. It's not. Let me tell you why. Do you know that in the Big Ten overall, there are 25-star recruits on Big Ten rosters, period, that came into, regardless of class, came into college as five-star recruits. Fourteen of them are on Ohio State. And the ACC,

see, it's just as pronounced, by the way. There are 15 total five-star recruits throughout the ACC, 11 of them on Clemson's roster. If you look at the SEC, Georgia and Alabama have 28 of the 54 five-star recruits in the SEC. So the gap is growing, and unfortunately, I feel like if we continue on this path of four best teams, four best teams, four best teams without avenues for other teams. teams to make the playoff or even expand the playoff, I think we're going to see this play out year after year after year. And to be honest with you, I don't think it's good for the sport.

So what you're doing basically is selling us an eight-team playoff in order to fix that. Well, I don't know if it's eight. And listen, I've wrestled with this because I have been a proponent of not growing the playoff in large respect, because I think what makes college football so unique and special is the vast. value of the regular season. So how do you retain the value of the regular season? And in particular non-conference play and yet expand the playoff because as soon as the playoff is expanded, then those conferences which own the playoff, namely the Power 5, are going to require automatic bids. Well, once an automatic bid enters the equation, the no non-league game

actually matters except for in hindsight 10 weeks later when you're trying to say, well, who gets the two at large bids? So I don't know what the answer is, to be honest with. you because like I said, I know that the playoff is hurting college football. I know it. And yet, I don't know what the answer is that solves all of those problems. I think it would be naive to just say we can slap more teams in the playoff and that's going to fix the problem. You've done a lot of opening games because different conferences have opened up at different times. Are you assuming Nebraska, Ohio State could be sloppy because the fact that's been so long since these kids have hit somebody? Yes. Yes, there's no doubt about it. I think that tackling

be an issue. I think that's one of the things that we've seen throughout college football. Defensive play has never been poor. I think that the fundamentals on defense have never been poor, and part of the reason is because we have legislated contact out of practice. You know, that's a, again, this is an unintended consequence of someone that decided that they were going to legislate contact out of the sport in terms of practicing, and what they've done is they've actually hurt the quality of the sport. And, and to, and to, and, to, you know, some degree, they've, at least in my estimation, made it more dangerous. And here's why, because one, defensive players can't practice how to contact and therefore will expose themselves to

more injury. And two, what you have is quarterback that put the ball into much more precarious spots on the field, knowing that good outcomes will likely happen, one being a potential targeting foul from the defense. So I guess I'm talking a lot about the unintended consequences. But yes, the question about, will there be some struggle this week with the Big Ten? Absolutely there will be, but I think it's namely going to be on the defensive side. Before I let you run, a couple of games to get to, Baylor has had a remarkably inconsistent season, not about playing, but just actually literally practicing and getting on the field. Is Texas going to get well off of a team that just hasn't had a lot of work the

last few weeks, speaking of the Baylor Bears? They better. Oh, can you imagine if they lose this game? I mean, I got a, tell you, like, first and foremost, losing to the school where your AD came from, and he's not the AD that hired you, is not a good recipe. That's first and foremost. Crystal County, of course, came from TCU. They lose to TCU. Losing to your rival, making the same mistakes that you've made for the last two and three years, in particular when that rival in Oklahoma is clearly in a rebuilding year, that's not good. You cannot lose to an in-state school that has struggled to even or play, and their roster is depleted by COVID, and they're just trying to get on to the field with a brand new head coach.

I got a – this is a must win for Texas. They cannot lose this game or else there's going to be changes on the horizon. Not just coordinators, correct? I'm assuming? You'd be correct. Okay. Lastly, not that we have a large Tennessee fan base here, but look, Alabama is one of the national recognized teams. Tennessee was supposed to be changed, ready to go. They got Alabama coming in.

If they lose that game, is it same old Tennessee again? Yes, and to some respect, you could claim that they've – this is crazy, and I know Tennessee fans will be – you can claim that they've regressed. Even with the eight-game win streak, right? The eight-game win streak was largely against teams that they would claim that they're better than, in particular in the pantheon of their conference. Now, they win those eight, and then they come out here and they lose badly in the last couple of games, and this one was to one of those teams that they've been.

beat in that eight-game winning streak. You know, Kentucky was one of those teams, and Kentucky handed it to them in Knoxville. So to me, Tennessee is a pretty talented team that is not anywhere close to the top tier of the conference. Now, how much Alabama is still banged up after playing Georgia, after playing A&M earlier in the season remains to be seen. But I can tell you this, Tennessee better buckle up because that offense for Alabama is playing at a historically efficient clip all the way up to the clip of like the 2018

Oklahoma offense as far as the numbers and the analytics would show. So I think that Tennessee is in for a long day. Well, I did watch at least a quarter of Kansas and West Virginia because I'm team clats. I just want to you to know that. I probably will watch quite a bit more of Nebraska Ohio State because I'm kind of curious what Big Ten football is all about right now. Listen, I can't wait for this one to be honest with you. I can't wait to see what Ohio State has for us to this.

year. And in particular on that offensive side, I think Justin Fields could have a big year. So we shall see. Safe travels, my friend. We'll talk to you next week. You got a button. All right, thank you. Joel Clant. That's Fox Sports. He'll be on Nebraska, Ohio State this weekend. Aggies off. And as he mentioned, we've got Baylor, Texas, and of course, my beloved Houston Cougars, taken on the Naval Academy, Saturday in Annapolis, Maryland.