Joel Klatt: No team can dispute champion in 12-team CFP format

Joel Klatt says the College Football Playoff was a success with what it proved in the expansion’s first year.

Klatt applauded this season’s playoff and its results on his show last week. There are still things needed to improve upon it in the ones to come but, as for this year, he thinks that did all that it was intended to do from the level of games and the strength of the opponents in those matchups.

“Kind of zoom back out to what we just got to witness. Not just on Monday night but for the entirety of the playoff. Now, did it take too long and are there problems with the playoff structure? Yes. And I lament that and I talk about that and you understand, okay. You understand that. However, what we just witnessed was awesome,” Klatt stated. “The College Football Playoff’s expansion to twelve worked. This thing was fabulous. It was fabulous. As a college football fan, there is no way that you can sit there and witness what we just witnessed, whether it was Monday night or in the semifinals or in the quarterfinals or throughout the entirety of the back end of the regular season, conference championship game weekend, and say to yourself, like, ‘No, that wasn’t better than it used to be’. Nope – that’s not a thing. This was great.

“We got to see postseason games on campus. We got to see what a playoff always should do, which is, yeah, you might have a few games that have a large margin in the first round but we started getting some better games and better games and great games. That’s exactly what a playoff should do is that you start to weed out some of the teams that, you know, qualify, get themselves in there but maybe aren’t going to make a championship run. Then you get some teams in there and it’s like, listen, they’re playing their best football. You’re going to get great football games. We got a great football game in the semifinals, each of them, and we really got a quality game, even though it was a large margin at one point, in the national championship.”

However, the biggest accomplishment of the expanded edition of the CFP to Klatt is that it justified the eventual national champion. All 134 teams in the FBS had a chance to start the season. By the end of the fall, multiple teams still remained in contention for a spot. Then, once the field was set, it eventually came down to the team that most earned the title.

“This was one of the great seasons that we’ve witnessed in college football history and this playoff achieved what we’ve always desired in college football, which was, without a shadow of a doubt, identify the best team as our national champion – and that’s exactly what happened. That is exactly what happened,” said Klatt. “There is no team that can wake up on Tuesday morning or Wednesday morning and say to themselves, like, ‘Yeah, but if we would have had a chance!’. That’s not a thing anymore. We don’t have a split national champion. We don’t have a team that was left out of a four-team playoff, left out of a two-team BCS National Championship. We do not have a team that has a gripe.

“Everybody had a chance – everybody. Everyone got to come to the table and Ohio State gets to take the trophy home. That was the best team. The best team in college football was Ohio State this year and they won the national championship.”

Again, no format is ever perfect and this expanded playoff can be better in the future. This past one, though, has Klatt even more excited for what it can be moving forward in the sport.

“The College Football Playoff has done what it set out to achieve. Made the season incredible and this was a great year,” said Klatt. “Man, like, it’s hard to argue with what we got with this actual, legit, twelve-team College Football Playoff – identifying what we all know to be now is the best team in college football.”