Joel Klatt Raises Another Red Flag for College Football Amid Surprising Verdict for Deion Sanders’ Colorado

Ever heard coaches saying they only care about winning games? When Joel Klatt joined The Herd with Colin Cowherd on May 29, he tossed a flare into the heart of college football’s playoff model. Talking about USC’s decision to exclude their rivalry game with Notre Dame on their schedule, he said, “They are doing what everyone does in this sport, which is they make decisions that are in their own self-interest and I’m not against that.” But here’s where he called out the problem. “I am saying that the model is what’s broken,” he said, dropping a hammer on the committee-driven playoff structure that’s turned schedule-building into risk management. 

Programs like USC, once proud of their Power Five gauntlet, are now pulling punches. Why? “Because what the committee has done during the course of their tenure as in influencing college football through the 14 playoff and even now, last year in the 12-team playoff is that they have reinforced that it’s better to just win than to go play a difficult schedule,” Joel Klatt said. Wins get rewards, not war stories. That’s the way college football has become. 

And that’s not just bad optics. It’s a structural flaw. And Klatt even has a solution to tackle it — “My argument would just be we need to go to an access-based model for the college football playoffs so that we know the avenues of how we can qualify for the playoff spots.” The bottom line is simple. Earn your slot, don’t get picked for it. 

Then came the discussion about Deion Sanders and how 2025 would shape up to be without Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter. Interestingly, Joel Klatt isn’t in panic mode. He lauded the Buffs’ portal grabs like Liberty QB Kaidon Salter and USC flip freshman Julian Lewis. There’s a warning though — “If you look at right now what Vegas says about the team that they think is the worst team in the Big 12, the over-under is set at five and a half. If you look at the team that they think is the best team in the Big 12, the over-under is set at 8 and a half. So you’ve got basically 14,15,16 teams within three games of one another. That’s what I think is the most difficult part of the Big 12.” In Boulder, the ceiling’s nine wins for 2025 while the floor is four. 

The post Joel Klatt Raises Another Red Flag for College Football Amid Surprising Verdict for Deion Sanders’ Colorado appeared first on EssentiallySports.