Joel Klatt reveals which teams in Coaches Poll can win the national championship

College football fans got their first look at what the national perspective might look like to start this season in college football with the release of the US LBM Coaches Poll on Monday. With that, how many of those teams in that Top 25 could truly win a national title come the College Football Playoff?

Joel Klatt answered that question earlier this week in an appearance on ‘The Herd’ with Colin Cowherd. He projected nearly the entire Top 10 could win a national championship in his mind, crediting the coaches for the voting they did, as he labeled the top nine in the rating as contenders.

“The top nine,” Klatt said. “I think the coaches got it pretty right. Those top nine teams, things go the right way? They could easily play for or win the national championship, which is a much more expanded list.”

No. 1 Texas, No. 2 Ohio State, No. 3 Penn State, No. 4 Georgia, No. 5 Notre Dame, No. 6 Clemson, No. 7 Oregon, No. 8 Alabama, No. 9 LSU, and No. 10 Miami is how the Top 10 read at the release this week of the Coaches Poll. Those first nine were also the same top nine for Klatt in his own Preseason Top 25, which he released around the same time on Monday. They’re also the same first nine in title odds in the latest lines over at BetMGM.

There’s some consensus on what the top five to top 10 looks like coming into this season, just with varying orders of how they stand amongst and compared to one another. Still, regardless of how they’re slotted in whatever poll or rating you’re looking at, Klatt thinks it says a lot that college football is now talking about nearly a double-digit number of teams in the title race rather than just a handful.

“The top of the sport? You argued in your last segment that the top of the sport has narrowed. I could not disagree more. It has expanded,” Klatt said to Cowherd. “The top of the sport was as narrow as it was ever in the history of the sport, five, six years ago. Georgia, Alabama, maybe Clemson could win the national championship – we knew that before the season and that was it, that was it. And, now, we at least have an expanded version of that.

“If you were ranked sixth in the preseason poll in 2018, you had no chance. This year, the sixth-ranked team, at least in the Coaches Poll, is Clemson. They’ve got a great chance to win the national championship.”

We should be getting another preview on the national outlook for this season next week with the eventual release of the preseason AP Poll. For now, though, Klatt fully agrees with the top nine in the country for this poll, being the same as his own top nine as well, as they all have realistic title hopes to him.