College Football Embraces the Crazy

0:04Congratulations! You made the varsity of the podcast. My name is John Aranda and I am Puck's sports correspondent and the host of this pod. And today, Joel Klatt joins the pod. You all know Joel. He's the Fox Sports' lead college football analyst and, for my money, one of the sharpest minds in the business. Most of you know him as Gus Johnson's partner in Fox's top college football broadcast booth, where he dissects all the plays on the field. But I have him on this pod because he is very plugged into the college football world and has a clear-eyed vision of all the chaos that's involved with the sport these days.

0:44I really enjoyed this conversation. I'm pretty sure you will too. But before we get to Joel, today is Sunday, August 24th, and here's what I'm watching. College football season officially kicked off yesterday. Week zero, they're still calling it. And there are dozens of storylines that intrigue me as someone who covers the business of sports. We'll get into a lot of them a little later with Joel Klatt. College football playoff expansion, conference re-alignment, name, image, and likeness, transfer portal, you can go down the list. But there is one storyline that I'm gonna really enjoy following, which has to do with the pregame shows.

1:23Yes, the pregame shows. ESPN's College Game Day is the multi-year, multi-decade defending champion. It is a legendary pregame show. It is dominant. But one thing that makes College Game Day so great is its adaptability. It's now known for Pat McAfee and the field goal kicking contests that go viral as just about anything else. And then you have the upstart challenger, Fox's big noon kickoff. Fox smartly started to schedule its biggest games in the noon window on Saturdays. And so it launched this pregame show as a way to get a little bit more juice. So the people that wanted to watch Michigan or Ohio State or really whoever from the Big Ten or Big 12 would presumably tune in earlier and catch the last part of the pregame in order to see the opening kickoff.

2:20Well, there really hasn't been much competition between the two. College game day gets a lot more viewers. It's been around a lot longer. But this year, Fox decided to add Dave Portnoy to its pregame mix. Portnoy, as most of you know, is the king of college-age boys. He founded Barstool Sports a couple of decades ago and is probably its most enduring on-air personality. Portnoy's popularity and unpredictability should really make this a much watch for Fox. So get this, McAfee versus Portnoy. A royal rumble every single Saturday. What's going to happen? Well, here's my guess. ESPN's College Game Day is going to remain the college football pregame king.

3:05It's had such a big head start. I mean, it launched way back in 1987. It has big stars McAfee, Herbstreet, Nick Saban, Desmond Howard. I called up my buddy Austin Karp from Sports Business Journal to get viewership stats from last year. And sure enough, College Game Day nearly doubled Big Noon Kickoff's audience. Last year, the final hour before kickoff, from 11 to 12, ESPN's College Game Day clocked a viewership that was 84 % higher than Fox. In fact, Game Day's overall average last season was 2.2 million viewers. It's best to date. And again, it's been around since 1987. So success for Fox is not about overtaking that.

3:50Fox executives certainly would view it as a big win if it's able to cut into that difference. They'd be thrilled if that was a significant cut. So expect College Game Day to continue to rule the roost. By far. But with the addition of Portnoy and his Barstool cast, Fox certainly has a chance to make some games. Now, let's get to Joel Klatt. So, Joel Klatt, thank you for joining the pod. I'm anxious to get you on this pod, really anybody involved with college football, because the sport seems like there just seems like there's so much chaos in the sport right now. And so I just want to ask you a really open ended question at first.

4:32What are the storylines that you think fans should be taking a look at this season that are off the field? Oh, my goodness. Yeah, that's such a large question. And by the way, we have two hours, so just go. That's right. That's right. Off the field, there's more going on with college football right now than there ever has been at any singular time. Now, college football has been a sport of change throughout its history. And I think that would be one thing that I always try to remind fans, you know, as they lament change. I think change is hard for fans in any sport. But in college football in particular, you know, there's this yearning for the past as if the past was, you know, some sort of utopia in college football.

5:21And it wasn't. You know, there was frustrations and there have been changes forever. Conferences have constantly changed and grown and some of them have gone away. And so that's nothing new as we have had these growing pains over the last, let's call it four or five years, where we've had the Pac-12 disintegrate and we've had them trying to bounce back and we've had the Big Ten and the SEC grow and the Big 12 and the ACC try to stay together. So all of those things that the fans lament as current realities have actually been going on for a long time. Okay, so now more specifically to your question about the biggest ones going on right now.

6:02I think that the structure of what's happening in two areas. One is on the field with specific postseason play and structure and the power generated with how that is created and who is going to be behind creating that. That's the first one. And then the other is the governance of the sport and where the actual governance is going to lie. And more specifically, in terms of who's enforcing whatever rules we're trying to adhere to in our sport. And I know that those are big things, you know, and a lot of times fans get tired of hearing about all of that. But I would say, at least I believe, NIL, name, image, and likeness, and the money behind NIL, and now the revenue sharing model that college athletics is going into, where each school can share up to$20.5 million with athletes from any program in their department.

7:06that along with, I would say, transfer portal, that is, to me, distraction and will be figured out and become more solidified and sustainable as we get a better governance structure in the sport. And more specifically, like I said, in terms of the enforcement aspect. Well, yeah, the whole idea of the governance structure, we've brought in now somebody that's going to decide whether the name, image, and likeness deals are worthwhile. A person from Major League Baseball has professional experience. You know, as well as I do, none of these deals are name, image, and likeness deals. They're all payment deals.

7:50I can't imagine that he's going to sit first day at the job. He's going to sit down and say, well, that wasn't for name, image, and likeness. There was no barter trade there. Like, how do you see that progressing? Well, I think that's what was so important about the revenue share model in terms of programs being able to share, you know, this 20 and a half million dollars. I think most programs are going to allocate about 16 and a half to 17 and a half of that million toward football specifically. Now, some of the more basketball-centric schools may lower that dollar amount for their football program and increase it for their basketball program.

8:30But those details aside, John, I think that what you have seen up to this point is the collective model. Let me explain what the collective model is. The collective model is that a program goes out and they get a collective of boosters and they gather them up and they all just give a bunch of money to an entity that then goes and essentially enters into pay for play deals with players. and there isn't a lot of reciprocation or value as it relates to what's required for the name, image, and likeness. So what we had was in the name, name, image, and likeness, but in action, pay for play. And so now they came in and said, okay, listen, let's try to do away with that.

9:18What would be a better model? Well, a better model would be if we're sharing revenue from the revenue distribution that each school gets. And that goes to the players. And then if they're going to enter into a name, image, and likeness deal, it has to be legitimate. So now we're trying to separate this idea of some of this money is going to be pay for play, and it is going to be basically contractual between the university and the program and the player. And then if you want to get a name, image, and likeness deal, that's fine. And the school can even help with that. But then you're going to have to essentially enter it into this database where they're going to evaluate it and they're going to try to say, are you providing the value that they're paying you for?

10:03Is that enforceable? I'm not totally sure. I do know that that is, in theory, a much better model than what we've had over the last three years, where it was definitely a pay-for-play model, and yet we were calling it name, image, and likeness. So it's going in the right direction. Do I think it's going to be perfect? No, no. But the more that we can get guardrails around all of this stuff, I think the better. And I would say the oxygen in the room and conversations like this around college football generally get sucked up by the money aspect, name, image, and likeness, or now the revenue share.

10:43But really, the thing that is, I would say, hurting the sport to a greater degree is the autonomy of movement. And it's the transfer portal. And more specifically, the idea that there are two windows of transfer portal and that there are no limits to the number of transfers that can happen. So there's two moments of free agency for every single player in the sport. Well, that's completely unsustainable and much crazier of a model than even like NIL being pay for play versus so on. That's semantics where the money is going to come from. what's what's what's more i think i think what's more of a problem is the autonomy of movement and that's something that i am i'm hoping that they can limit because i'm not a fan of the autonomy of movement and in particular if they're going to enter into actual contractual agreements and get paid by the school those contracts should have some some teeth and some requirement every contract, as you know, needs to be reciprocation.

11:52And if we can cut down on the amount of time players can move, I think that we're going to find a lot more sustainability in our sport. Let me ask you a quick question about NIL before we get into the transfer portal. From your answer, it seems like there's going to be no need by eventually, like next year, for these collectives. Are collectives a dying breed or are they still existing to find NIL type deals? They're going to be changed. Great question. And John, I believe that this model is trying to cut them out. And now what they're turning into is essentially marketing arms. And so these collectives, these groups of people that want their program to succeed, now what they're going to have to do is rather than just raise money from individuals, as in boosters, they're going to have to go out and secure commitments from legitimate businesses.

12:51Now, those businesses might be the same boosters, but they're going to have to run them through their business and then require the player to do something for the money that is paid out. Is that a better model? Yes. So do collectives go away? I don't think that they go away. I think that they morph into what I would consider to be like the marketing arm for the players for that program. I do want to get into the transfer portal a bit. And so people listening to the pod know, I'm a Maryland guy. And when you mentioned sort of basketball first schools, that's what I consider Maryland to be. We lost our coach basketball-wise.

13:34Next season, there are going to be 15 new players, 15 that I have to learn wearing Maryland jerseys. So you do root for the laundry in some sense. I'm still going to go to games. I'm still going to watch them on TV, but I don't know. I can't even tell you who the starting five is going to be, or probably even four of them right now. And so the whole idea of a transfer portal dampens fan interest. But then we did have a coach that just left in the middle of the night. And, you know, do those players then have to stay? What are the transfer portal rules in your mind that will, A, work or B, likely get implemented?

14:15So I do think that there's going to be just one window versus two. And they are currently, I think that that's going to actually come out fairly soon, is that we're going to have it cut down from right now. There's a transfer portal window that is open basically in December and into January, and then there's another one at the end of spring. So there's these two windows. That's going to go to one, and it's going to shift where it falls. I've been hearing that the transfer portal window is likely to wind up in January. That's where most, I guess, people want it in the sport. I would be more of a fan of something that landed later in the spring than in January.

15:07But if you were asking me, like, Joel, you create kind of the rules for the transfer portal. The first would be, unfortunately for you in the Maryland example, if your coach leaves, I think you should be able to leave. Absolutely. I don't begrudge anybody that took off. Yes, I a hundred percent, because as as anybody that played college athletics knows, yes, you commit to the place, but you really commit to the program and the program is the coach. So in that regard, I. I think that being able to leave if your coach leaves is largely a good thing. Now, it also should encourage. programs to retain their coaches.

15:51So we don't have so many coaches being fired every single year, which got to be egregious in the last five or six years. The amount of money that was being spent on buyouts of coaches' money, that's another sidebar. Let's go back to the transfer portal. So that would be the first thing. Once again, we have two hours here, Joel. Yeah, there's a lot to get into. If your coach leaves, you should be able to leave. Now, Now, outside of that, I do believe that because we have revenue shared now, I believe that we should enter into a collectively bargained agreement with the players, which then creates classifications of contracts within the revenue share.

16:29I believe there should be two and three year contracts that are like lock a player in. You can't move. If you sign one of those deals, maybe the money is more guaranteed or it's a higher dollar amount or something along those lines where you're committing to the school and they're committing to you. And in that respect, you could start to limit some of the movement. There should be some deals that are one-year deals, which everyone knows then. You're a free agent at the end of the year and you can leave. So some sort of structure or guardrails around knowing which players are eligible for the portal that year and which players aren't very similar to what we have in pro sports when we know who's a free agent that year and who is not a free agent.

17:13Because trying to recruit or retain your entire roster is totally unsustainable every single year. You can't tell me that every player can leave. And, you know, so, well, what's my roster? How many seats are open? That's a problem. And then the last thing that I would say is that I think that we need to look at the calendar as it relates to competition, roster building, and preparation. And from a year perspective, if you look at college football and you say, like, what should our calendar look like? I would tell you those three sections need to be distinct and they need to be separate. And right now, we kind of have them overlapping in our sport.

17:51And I think that that's very dangerous, number one. and two, totally unproductive and unsustainable. So what I mean by that is, for example, last year the transfer portal opens and then we're trying to play the college football playoff while that's happening. And Bo Probula was the backup quarterback at Penn State and a pretty important cog for them because they would bring him in in short yardage and run him because Drew Allard wasn't much of a runner. So he was a part of the game plan. And yet, because the rules of the portal were open, he needed to leave because Drew Aller was going to come back for his senior year, which he's coming back this year.

18:31So in order for Bo Perbula to get an opportunity to go and play, he needed to leave and go find another spot to do that. Well, he's being pressured by all the other coaches who aren't in the playoff who are saying, hey, we really need your commitment. So we know, you know, one, you're not going to get hurt. And two, we know who we've got as we're building our roster. I can't just wait until you're done and out of the playoffs. What if you tell me no? And then I'm up a creek without a paddle. So he had to leave his team during the playoff. Well, we should never be forcing a kid in college athletics to be making that decision.

19:04It also happened in the NCAA basketball tournament. So again, let's just think of it in terms of blocks. And they need to be distinct and they need to be separate. When are we competing? When are we building our roster? And then when are we preparing to go and compete? And if those three things are separate and they're distinct, then I think that we're on the right track as far as the portal goes. Joel, you have a really unique career to me, a great college career. You walked on at Colorado. I mean, great, John. You know what? I'm a reporter, so the storyline behind it, I think, is really cool.

19:41You walked on as a freshman, and then you were a three-year starter. at quarterback. Do you ever stop to think about how your experience would be different if you were an 18-year-old now? I would imagine that, you know, you walk on as a freshman, great. You're a starter as a sophomore. And wow, I'm going to pay you more to come, you know, go from Colorado to Texas A &M or who knows where. I mean, when you think about that, how do you project that out? It's really hard to think of it in a hypothetical because as is the case when anybody buys a lottery ticket, you start thinking about only the upside and what you're going to do with the winnings.

20:27If I win the$700 million Powerball, this is what I would do. By the way, if I was a walk-on and a starter as a sophomore, I'd play in Honolulu or something like that. Yeah, that's right. So what people don't think about is the downside. And I actually call me a pessimist, but I think of it the opposite way. I don't think of it as, oh man, look at all the NIL money that I didn't get that I would have gotten. I think of it as, no, no, like Colorado got stuck with me as their quarterback when I was a sophomore and a walk-on because there were some things that happened with the roster. There was a player that was a really good player that was supposed to just be still still be there.

21:18I actually played against him in high school and he ended up transferring, like leaving this, leaving, leaving school for, you know, whatever reason that he did. And all of a sudden, the only other two quarterbacks, this is my true freshman year, our starting quarterback ended up leaving. And the only two other quarterbacks on the roster were both seniors. Well, so all of a sudden, you could see the handwriting on the wall that's like, oh, man, I'm going to be able to compete for the job next year, which when I first walked on never would have been the case because that quarterback was there. So Colorado got stuck.

21:54Gary Barnett got stuck with me, unfortunately. Now, I worked really hard and took advantage of that opportunity and ended up having what I would consider to be a solid career. Not a great one, but a solid career and did my best. But I think of it now and I'm like, listen, if the rules were the same then as they are today, Colorado would not have been stuck, John. They could have just gone out and gotten another quarterback. And I don't think I would have ever had the opportunity to get onto the field. And so that's what I lament. My path I don't think is available anymore. And that's sad to me because those three years totally changed my life, obviously.

22:47Look at what I'm afforded to do now. And I lament that, the fact that it's totally different now. and the idea of a player overcoming adversity, maybe not being the best player but developing into something, is not totally afforded, at least in the top-end schools, because they can just replace you right away. Really good programs don't have to take a risk anymore with like, well, we hope he's okay, but we'll see. they don't have to wait and see, you know, they can go out and get a known commodity or a higher rated recruit. Yeah. And on top of that, forget the, forget the programs, by the way, you'll, you also have a fan base that is like, wait, we're going to entrust this to a 20 year old sophomore.

23:43In the middle of when you're trying to raise all this money, you know, from your collective, or if I want to call it a marketing arm, you know, like go back to now. So this is between 2002 and 2003, you go back to those years, if in the spring of 2003, Gary Barnett was going in front of boosters trying to raise$10 million and saying like, yeah, hey, this former baseball player that was a no-star recruit and walked on and has been away from the game for three years is going to be our starter. And everyone's like, yeah, we'll write a check to that. Like, no one's writing a check. So, you know, that's what I think about.

24:21And that's what I think is disappointing. And I got lucky in a lot of respects is I played in an era where my path was available. I actually talked, I did a sit down with Tom Brady, which was, he was so engaging and he was so good in that conversation. And he said something very similar. He said, I don't know if my path was available where you just compete and you compete and you compete and then eventually, you know, you're able to win the job because I think in so many respects, fans expect and coaches want to just bring in known commodities year after year. Joel, let me take a quick break and come back.

25:06I got a couple other quick questions about the business behind college football.

25:20So a lot of headlines about the Big Ten's position to expand the college football playoff, potentially doing away with, actually, it would have to do away with the conference championship games and get up to 24, 28 teams. That doesn't sound likely, at least not in the short term. What's going to happen with the college football playoff? Give me sort of a near and far term prediction of where you see this going. So let me answer that in two sections, if you don't mind. So I tried to think really long and hard about like, why did it get accelerated that quickly? Like 24? Wow. You know, like, wow, that happened so fast.

26:04Like, wait, what am I missing? And I think if you actually think about it, not in terms of what model would be the best model, but of the constituents, what model appeases them. You know, that's how you can, you can at least in theory land on like, okay, that's why that was proposed. So let me, for example, the SEC favors a selection-based model. They feel like that is best suited for them because the narrative and the common thought is that they're the toughest conference and they have the deepest conference. And so therefore, if you're going to be in a selection-based model, they're going to win a lot of those arguments over other conferences.

26:57If South Carolina is being argued against, call it whoever you want to call it, Iowa State. Well, South Carolina is going to win that argument. So that's why they favor the selection-based model. It's best for them. The Big Ten would like an access-based model. They feel like that's best for them. They want to grow valuable inventory, and they had a thought about a play-in weekend where they could add two games to championship game weekend and then expand the meaning of November where more fan bases would be more engaged because they would be within a game of sixth place. And if you're in the top six seeds in the regular season, you would get into play-in weekend, and then you would get these access-based spots where four teams would go to the college football playoff.

27:46And they felt like that was best for them. And so that's what they favored. Meanwhile, the ACC and the Big 12, they realized that they're in a second position. And really what's driving them and motivating them is to not officially deem themselves less than the other two power conferences. So they didn't want to sign on to a model that on paper said, you're half the other conference or you're definitely worse than the other conferences. So for them, it was more based on optics. So that's where these four players are at. And so you've got this 5-11 model from the SEC where it's mostly selection-based.

28:28And you're going to retain the committee, and it's going to be more subjective than objective. And then you've got the access-based model from the Big Ten, and it's like four, four, two, two, all these spots, and it's all carved out, and we're going to have a play-in weekend. And guess which one garnered more support? The one that didn't tell the Big 12 and the ACC that they were less than the other two conferences. So just based on optics, whether the access-based model would have been better for the Big 12 or the ACC in practice or not, they had to side with the 5 and 11 model. And so now you're sitting there and you're like, okay, well, let's try to cast a bigger net and try to get everybody at least to the table and under a tent where they can at least say like, okay, maybe some of our concerns are met or demands are met.

29:17Well, that's how you get to 24 is because you can grow the automatic spots. You can also keep a bunch of at-large spots. So you get the Big Ten and the SEC and you make them happy. And you're telling the Big 12 and the ACC you have equal access. And so that's how you get to a 24. And 24 is not all that different from a Big Ten access-based model where you're having play-in weekend. Because in a play-in weekend across college football, you would have about 24 to 26 teams competing during that weekend, four spots to go to the playoff. So what is the 2014 model? It's really just calling it playoffs instead of play in.