Despite being one of college football’s primary voices during the regular season, Joel Klatt found himself sidelined for the first-ever 12-team College Football Playoff.
That’s because the sport’s postseason tournament exclusively belongs to ESPN, which even produced the games that it had leased to Warner Bros. Discovery.
The Worldwide Leader is currently set to remain the CFP’s exclusive rightsholder through the remainder of the 2031-32 season, which means that Fox will be on the outside looking in for the foreseeable future. But if there were a way for his employer to get a piece of the CFP, Klatt would unsurprisingly love to see it happen.
“I’d love to be a partner,” the former Colorado quarterback told Barrett Media’s Derek Futterman. “I would love if Fox had some of these playoff games. I would do anything to do one of these playoff games, and I think that the playoff was really good for the sport, incredible for the sport. Think of all the teams that had access to this top end of the sport that would otherwise not have access. You look at Indiana and Arizona State and Boise State, and these teams got to have a playoff run and their time in the sun, and rightly so.”
While Fox’s only hope in the immediate future might be for ESPN to lease it games, a lot can change in the next seven years — especially in college football. Most notably, the contract for the current College Football Playoff format expires after the upcoming 2025-26 season, with all indications being that another round of expansion is very much a possibility.
Even if the playoff were only to expand by two games, that would give ESPN more inventory to sell, particularly in the earlier rounds. And considering that like WBD, Fox was also a partner with ESPN on the since-shuttered Venu Sports project, a similar deal between the two sides might make sense.
Factor in that Fox has one of the strongest allies possible in the current college athletics climate in the form of the Big Ten, and the idea of the network eventually hosting a College Playoff Game is hardly far fetched. If nothing else, we know that Joel Klatt would provide a more positive experience for fans than the one that ESPN offered this past season.
About Ben Axelrod
Ben Axelrod is a veteran of the sports media landscape, having most recently worked for NBC's Cleveland affiliate, WKYC. Prior to his time in Cleveland, he covered Ohio State football and the Big Ten for outlets including Cox Media Group, Bleacher Report, Scout and Rivals.