Joel Klatt offers a blunt opinion on the devaluing of championship games in the new CFP seeding
Well-known analyst Joel Klatt has a bone to pick with the new College Football Playoff (CFP) seeding method. The top-ranked conference champions will no longer get automatic bids, as they did in the inaugural 12-team CFP last season. Instead, all teams will get their seed based on the final ranking of the CFP Selection Committee.
While Klatt admits that the SEC and the Big Ten certainly deserve the majority of spots for the CFP based on performance, he feels like the system devalues the conference championship games, and for that reason alone, it does more harm than good.
On Monday's edition of the Joel Klatt Show, he said:
"These two conferences (Big Ten and SEC), which continue to get better and better and house the best teams in the country. Now you've devalued the conference championship game. None of us likes that. So while the seeding might be better for this season, and moving forward, I certainly don't like the thought of devaluing a game that I think should be very important and should've some really meaning and consequence for the winner and the loser."
Klatt's solution to keeping championship games relevant is not to play a straight bracket but rather to pair the lowest-seeded teams against the highest-seeded teams in each round (Say, No. 1 against No. 12). That way, teams would have an incentive to do well in the championship games to avoid getting a lower seeding.
Joel Klatt on why Missouri vs. Kansas needs to be a yearly matchup
Speaking on his show earlier this month, Klatt put forward the idea to turn the Missouri versus Kansas encounter into a recurring yearly clash. He argued it as follows:
“How about one of the most historic,” Joel Klatt said. “And before they actually ended their annual matchup because of conference realignment was the game that had been played more than any other game in the country, and that’s Kansas-Missouri. Give me Kansas-Missouri.”
The rivalry, better known as the Border War by the fans, started all the way back in 1891 for football. It also holds importance in basketball, starting in 1907 for that sport. However, over the last decade, the encounter has been dormant in football, with the last game taking place in 2011, resulting in a 24-10 Missouri victory over the Jayhawks.