Joel Klatt slams NCAA for 'mind-blowing' decision to suspend LSU's Maason Smith

The one-game suspension of LSU DL Maason Smith has fired up several people around the sport as we enter its opening weeks. FOX Sports’ Joel Klatt was among them and no different as he also ripped the NCAA for this call.

Klatt ripped into the NCAA for suspending Smith during his show on Monday. He described it, frankly, as “stupid” considering it would look like nothing now considering how far college sports have come overall in the era of name, image, and likeness.

“This is such a stupid ruling from the NCAA,” Klatt stated.

“Let’s just go through it from this standpoint: The NCAA will technically call this an impermissible benefit. Now, if this were LSU straight paying for his electric bill? Maybe you could, maybe, convince me, like, ‘Hey, that’s an impermissible benefit’. Okay, maybe if someone paid him 10 grand directly for nothing. He didn’t tweet, appear, nothing. It was just like, ‘Hey man! Here’s the old school ‘remember the program”, you get the envelope, and it’s here’s ten grand in an envelope for nothing. Maybe, maybe,” explained Klatt. “But, again, the world is changing. This was, literally, in the grand scheme of things, a whisper before the NIL legislation changed things in terms of name, image, and likeness, a whisper before that.”

All in all, Klatt sees this going back to the very issue at the heart of NIL from the start. He doesn’t see any reason, especially in hindsight, why Smith is being subsequently punished for something that would now be perfectly legal considering the right that he has to his own name.

“He goes and signs his name and gets paid for it! And the NCAA blows the whistle? Are you crazy, insane, or stupid? Probably all three,” said Klatt. “It is mind-blowing to me that they think that this is, like, ‘Ha! Yep. We got him!’. Are you serious? Are you serious?”

“You’ve heard me say, and I will continue to say, we are in the middle of a long string of dominoes that are toppling over and those are instances in which everybody gets their eyes opened and their frustrations up with the inept bureaucracy which is the NCAA,” said Klatt. “This is another one of those dominoes.”

The fact that LSU’s first game is against Florida State in Orlando has also heightened the criticisms. It would obviously be a lot less impactful if they played, say, a normal layup of a home opener. Instead, Klatt sees this as the NCAA making what could be a season-changing impact in one of the year’s biggest games.

“Maason Smith gets a one-game suspension, he’s their best player, in one of their most important games of the year. So, like, the NCAA is going to butt in on the actual competitive nature of the season because the guy signed his name, a whisper before the NIL legislation changed? Are you kidding me??? Are you kidding me?,” Klatt asked. “Spare me the ‘letter of the law’ crap! This is about understanding what’s going on in the larger sense. In the larger sense, the NCAA is a robotic bureaucracy! This is just one instance.”

It’s easy to see why Klatt, along with the majority of the public in college football, aren’t happy about this. All that anyone can hope for now, though, is that the best game of week one, and one of the better matchups of the year, isn’t too adversely affected by off-the-field circumstances and that should have been handled earlier on, if at all.