FOX Sports analyst Joel Klatt calls out ESPN for SEC bias

A common contention in many college football circles is that the SEC benefits from its partnership with ESPN and ABC quite a good deal, even in terms of the way the network covers the league compared to others.

And on Sunday, FOX Sports analyst Joel Klatt took exception to one particular piece of ESPN writing for perceived SEC bias.

The segment in question came from ESPN’s David McHale, who put together a lengthy column recapping Saturday’s events. One section of it was titled “Sluggish day for the top teams” and included quick blurbs about Ohio State and Georgia back to back.

Klatt seemed to believe the two were not evaluated on the same basis. He took to Twitter to voice his complaint.

“They don’t even hide it and when you see it and call it out then you’re an ‘SEC Hater,'” he wrote. “ok … cool story!”

Despite the fact that Ohio State posted a convincing 35-7 win over Iowa, complete with a dominant second-half performance, Hale wrote that it must have felt “like a loss” for the Buckeyes.

Check it out below, from the ESPN article:

No. 3 Ohio State: Had little trouble swatting away Iowa 35-7. Still, it had to feel like a loss for the Buckeyes, who are the first ranked team to allow points to Iowa’s offense since Michigan surrendered two touchdowns in a win over the Hawkeyes in Week 5 of 2022.

Then there’s the Georgia segment, which takes a somewhat similar vein but seems to excuse things a bit more for the Bulldogs.

As written:

No. 5 Georgia: Responded to last week’s loss to Alabama with an entirely reasonable 31-13 win over Auburn. Carson Beck was 23-of-28 passing, and Trevor Etienne scored twice, and yet it was hardly the offensive performance that offered significant reassurance this uneven start to the season is insignificant. More than anything, Georgia wore down Auburn rather than delivering any sort of statement. If anything, it was a bit embarrassing not to get a single Payton Thorne interception. Typically, Auburn is giving those away with the purchase of any large soft drink.

Was there some SEC bias in that bit from ESPN? That’s for the readers to decide. But a large number of people on Twitter seemed to think so.

The original tweet that included a screenshot of the two blurbs — with the caption “ES(ec)P(in) is next level propaganda.” — had more than 440 retweets and 3,400 likes at the time of this writing.