Joel Klatt wants scheduling out of CFB programs’ hands

The 2024 college football season is only a few months away. It seems like forever ago that Michigan finished the 2023 season with a bang by defeating Washington to win the College Football Playoff. Five months and change later, and we’ve approached the home stretch. Fox Sports’ Joel Klatt is ready for this coming season, and this week, he offered an interesting suggestion.

Klatt, Fox’s No. 1 college football analyst, discussed scheduling this week during an appearance on The Herd with Colin Cowherd. Scheduling is often a recurring “issue” in the sport. It depends on who you ask, but certain teams play “softer” schedules than others, and those teams are often judged on their opponents’ quality. In college football, like basketball, the programs have the power over scheduling versus a conference or a similar body.

Klatt has the solution for that. He thinks that there should be an outside source that schedules games for college football programs.

“I’m going to go on a different wavelength and layer than what you just did. I would love if we stopped allowing individual teams to control their own schedule,” Klatt said via On3. “You know, the Detroit Lions don’t build their own schedule. The New York GIants don’t build their own schedule. I don’t think that we should do it in college football, in particular, as we’re moving into an era where we’re going to have a 12-team playoff.”

Klatt said that the committee will have to measure these teams fairly, and unbalanced schedules could tip the scales in different directions.

“We’re going to have to rate these teams somehow against one another for inclusion into the most important tournament in college football, which is going to be the College Football Playoff. I firmly believe that we need some sort of agreement on how many conference games we’re going to play within our conferences,” Klatt said. “Then the non-conference games need to go into a pool. We need to start playing each other more often.”

While we’re making advancements toward College Football Playoff expansion, it’s true that there’s still a lot to iron out. Scheduling is one of those things, so Klatt might have a point one way or another.

[On3]