Joel Klatt was again critical of the setup of the new playoff with this issue being about the game locations
During his show last week, Klatt discussed his problems with the amount of neutral sites in the College Football Playoff. To him, it’s the powers in the sport maintaining the bowl era in a time where it doesn’t fit anymore. That’s why it needs a full redo as far as game sites, among other changes, to keep fans in mind.
“I will just say this about the neutral site. I think that neutral sites are really taxing fans,” said Klatt. “Having this many neutral site games is not good for our sport.
“I’ve said this time and time again and I will say it again. The bowl system and the College Football Playoff does not mix. It is old college football and new college football. We need to do a full gut job of the postseason. A full renovation of the postseason. Not a paint job. The fact of the matter is is that the people that are going to bear the brunt of this – because, listen, the environments were fine. I’ve got nothing against the bowl system – really, I don’t. I love the Peach Bowl, you know. I love the Fiesta Bowl. I love a lot of these things but, if we’re really honest with ourselves, there’s only a couple, and really one, that carry the weight of, like, ‘Oh, man – The Rose Bowl’. Yet we continue to try to shove all these neutral sites into this playoff format.”
That’s with Klatt acknowledging that the playoff is the way it is because of the deal they made to keep it from being two more years away.
“I understand they were contractually kind of, like, handcuffed in terms of getting us to the 12-team playoff before 2026,” Klatt noted. “Rather than get into the minutiae of that, they gave us the playoff and it has to be played in bowls.”
Of the 11 games in the expanded playoff, four are now being hosted at home fields. The quarterfinals through the semis are then held at neutrals for bowls with the national championship also being neutral.
With that, Klatt criticized that the system doesn’t allow the four teams with byes to host a game.
Klatt also went in on how much of a cost it is for the fans of teams who advance from the first round, which all four of the remaining teams have done, to travel to four games, if not five when including their conference championships, with essentially all of those being in a neutral city somewhere in the country.
“What happens is that it’s basically just taxing college football fans,” Klatt said. “Do you know how many times I heard today walking around the Rose Bowl, like, ‘Oh, man. I don’t know if I can go to Dallas and Atlanta’. Because now Ohio State is going to have to go to Dallas to play the Cotton Bowl and, if they win that one, they would have to go to Atlanta to play in the national championship game. So Ohio State was going to have to go host then Rose Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Atlanta. So you expect thousands of Ohio State fans to just, like, pay thousands of dollars three different times within the span of a month? That’s pretty short-sighted. I don’t think that that’s good for the sport. I really don’t.
“You look at some of these teams that have to play in a neutral conference championship game like Texas, who’s still in it? So they go to Atlanta, then they have to host, then they go back to Atlanta, and now they’re going to have a Dallas game. And they’re thinking to themselves thankfully it’s just in Dallas in the Cotton Bowl as they take on Ohio State. And, if they win that, they’ve got to go back to Atlanta. So, I’m sorry. You want the Texas fanbase to go to Atlanta three times in a month and a half?”
As such, Klatt mentioned that the market on tickets for the playoff reflects this problem.
“You look at the ticket prices and just the overall market for these tickets in all of these games in these neutral sites and it’s a soft market. It was even soft for the Oregon-Ohio State game. You could go on today and get tickets on any site,” Klatt noted. “Why? Why? Because it’s a tax on college football fans.”
The bowls will continue to be a part of the playoff until it gets any updates in the future. However, if it were up to him, Klatt would start having these games at hosting fields for higher seeds until the title game of the CFP in the Rose Bowl.
“Again, like, I think we’re asking too much of fans to go to all of these neutrals,” said Klatt. “So, would I change it? Yes. I would move a lot of this more towards the campus.”
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