The new-look Big Ten is a godsend for Fox Sports, and nobody at the network gets a more featured role on huge games this week than its top announcers, Gus Johnson and Joel Klatt.
Johnson is most discussed because of his penchant for exuberant calls in close games. But in a new New York Post story on the duo, who, along with Jenny Taft, are in Year 5 together calling college football for Fox, Johnson heaped massive praise on Klatt as a “football savant” who he believes is in line with generational schemers like Sean McVay and Norv Turner.
“He’s a coach,” Johnson told Ryan Glasspiegel of the Post. “He’s a young, innovative mind that can decipher and present football at any level because he’s an incredible broadcaster.”
Johnson believes Klatt could be changing the game as a coach the same way the Los Angeles Rams coach revolutionized football with his outside zone schemes and Turner did with the West Coast offense. Instead, he delivers analysis to college football fans on Fox’s top Big Noon Saturday broadcast each week.
As Glasspiegel wrote, Johnson said Klatt “should be looked at as a football savant in accordance with great young offensive minds in coaching, like Ryan Day, Lincoln Riley, Sean McVay and, when they were young, Joe Gibbs and Norv Turner.”
Producer Chuck McDonald added some details about what makes Klatt special.
“Nobody I’ve ever been with sees the game as quickly and can break it down like Joel,” McDonald told Glasspiegel.
“A lot of other guys have monitors that are on five-second delays [and ask the producer], ‘Was that 99 off the end?’ I have never had to confirm that for Joel in the 10 years we’ve worked together. He sees it now.”
Because he joined Fox as a relatively green announcer known most for being the former QB of a small Pac-12 school, Klatt is typically reduced to his most extreme soundbites. It’s easy to forget he has been calling top college football games for Fox for nearly a decade.
Joel Klatt may not be every fan’s favorite analyst, but he has worked hard to move up in the business and clearly has massive respect from his peers at Fox.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.