Joel Klatt predicts how 12-team College Football Playoff will shake out

Fox Sports’ Joel Klatt predicted how the 12-team College Football Playoff will shake out upon expansion. And spoiler alert, it might heavily favor the SEC and Big Ten early on.

“And I do believe that what’s going to end up happening is that in the 12-team playoff, which remember is coming, so when these schedules are enacted in 24, in the Big Ten and in the SEC, we’re also going to have a 12-team college football playoff,” Klatt said on the Will Cain Podcast. 

“That expansion is going to basically broaden the pool, I believe, for those conferences almost specifically, versus third place teams out of the Big 12 or if we have a Pac-10 at that time or whatever they’re calling themselves or ACC right? I don’t believe that a committee is going to sit there and reward a 10-2 from the Big 12 over a 9-3 team from the SEC or the Big Ten.” 

Klatt broke down how the playoff will give out its bids. But after the conference champions in the Power Five and the top Group of Five champion, those at-large bids are up for grabs, likely from two conferences.

“To me, you’re gonna get those six best champions into the playoffs and then the rest of the six spots are going to be almost reserved for the rest of the best of the Big Ten or the SEC and maybe even more specifically the SEC,” Klatt said. “So at least that’s my hope, we’ll see how it all plays out. I do have some hope that the expansion of the playoff is going to lead to a bit more parity within conferences and within college football, as more teams can define themselves as successful on the top end.”

But with the College Football Playoff expansion comes more opportunities. Now the definition of success expands and can carry across more schools.

Whether that’s a good or bad thing on the surface, the very definition of success, it’ll create more parity across the sport, according to Klatt.

“Remember when we were growing up, it was a big deal to get to a New Year’s Day bowl game,” Klatt said. “It was a big deal, right? And it was a big deal even to play for a conference championship or be in the mix there. And so a lot of teams could define themselves as successful in recruiting, a lot of teams. Now with only a limited number of spaces in the playoffs, at four, those are the only teams that can define themselves as successful. 

“So what we’ve done is we’ve basically created a separation, which we’ve seen over the last six or seven years where only six to eight teams can really recruit at the highest level. As we expanded out the number of teams in the postseason and expanded that definition of successful out, I’m hoping at least that we’re going to have more quality teams across the whole sport.”