Joel Klatt addresses spat with Lane Kiffin, doubles down on pushback to CFP criticism

Fox Sports’ Joel Klatt finally fired back at Lane Kiffin on Twitter over the Ole Miss coach’s complaints about the College Football Playoff committee.

So once that went viral, Klatt took to his podcast to address that decision. Basically, Klatt was just fed up with the discourse.

“I felt like it was irresponsible, and it was coming from some, like, really prominent places, and I and I was frustrated by that,” Klatt said on his podcast. “I was frustrated by that, and because of that, I got into a little spat with Lane Kiffin on Twitter. And so here’s the thing, I really like Lane Kiffin. I’ve covered him for years. He’s one of my favorite coaches to cover. I love Lane. Text with Lane, and yet he has been out there playing these hypothetical games for days, ever since the committee gave us the 12 team playoff, he has been chirping on Twitter, and he’s been talking about, you know, what a mistake the committee made, and this or that, and and it was finally my breaking point, and it was my breaking point because of all the things I just talked about.” 

Kiffin’s biggest talking point is Ole Miss, and perhaps other SEC teams, deserved spots over Indiana and SMU, claiming they would’ve had more competitive games in the first round.

“It’s hard to win on the road, and yet, here we go, after some of these results,” Klatt said. “He’s like, way to keep us on the edge of our seats committee, riveting. And I just couldn’t, I was broken, and so I fired back: ‘If your team played half as well as you tweet, you would likely be in’ and obviously that went wild. I’m not going to take it back. Not sorry. I tweeted it. Love Lane. And by the way, part of that is complimentary. He tweets incredibly. He’s great for college football. I love that Lane Kiffin is at Ole Miss. 

“I hope he stays in college football for a long time. He’s a great follow. Love Lane. I’ll say it time and time again. But this idea that he was going to continue to play these hypothetical games, I get frustrated. The easiest position to argue from is the position of a hypothetical because there’s no proving you wrong.”

Joel Klatt addresses spat with Lane Kiffin

Klatt couldn’t take any more hypotheticals because there was no concrete way to prove them wrong or right.

“Where do you go with that, other than like, ‘Well, you didn’t when you played Kentucky at home or Florida on the road, when your quarterback was crying in the fourth quarter,’” Klatt said. “Like, those things happened. So I don’t know what to do with that. You can’t argue with someone that always wants to play hypotheticals. And I tell you, there was a lot of trophies being thrown out in hypothetical scenarios, you know, and then from those same people, it was awfully quiet when Tennessee was getting absolutely drilled by Ohio State on Saturday Night. I think it’s interesting. Listen Lane, if you wanted to be in the playoff, you had your chance. In fact, you were in my man, like you were in the playoff, and I love you. I really do. I love you. But you blew it. 

Klatt couldn’t understand Kiffin and other’s arguments to a point because it totally dismissed what actually happened on the field.

“What started to make me frustrated was this idea that we’re going to tell Indiana and SMU and those players that worked their guts out and had remarkable years for them, and in a lot of ways, unprecedented years for the locations, specifically Indiana, and then we were going to tell them like they don’t deserve to be on the field,” Klatt said. 

“I don’t think that that’s right. I don’t … And I get it that it’s subjective, and this is part of what makes college football great, and I understand that it’s part of what makes a podcast like this possible. And so I appreciate that about the sport. I just want us to kind of make sure we understand the game, make sure we understand the guard rails, like, what are we really talking about? And I’ll go back to this again. This happens all the time, happened in the NFL last year, and it’s really hard to win on the road. And by the way, what made this special is what made it hard, which was the home games. That’s kind of like the end.”