Joel Klatt on The Joel Klatt Show. Photo Credit: ‘The Joel Klatt Show’
By Sam Neumann on

Joel Klatt has a March Madness problem.

The Fox Sports college football analyst thinks the NCAA basketball tournament is fundamentally broken — that it doesn’t crown a true champion and needs to be completely restructured to eliminate the single-elimination chaos that makes it popular in the first place.

“In fact, hot take, I mean like the hottest of all takes that I’ve ever had in my entire life, the NCAA basketball tournament is a joke,” Klatt said during an appearance on The Next Round. “It’s the dumbest tournament and the least fair tournament in all of sports. We go, and we put teams at odd times on neutral sites in a one-game affair. That doesn’t crown a true champion. We’re not doing anything that tells us who’s the best team over the course of the entire season.”

Klatt’s proposed fix would eliminate everything that makes March Madness interesting. Instead of 68 teams in a single-elimination bracket, he wants group stages in which teams play multiple games at the higher-seeded arenas. No more 15-seeds upsetting 2-seeds in the first round. No more mid-majors making improbable runs. No more one-and-done scenarios where Kentucky loses to Saint Peter’s.

And when it was noted that the current format works pretty well for CBS, which broadcasts the tournament, Klatt dismissed it with “I guess, but it sucks for the fans.”

This all came up while discussing whether it matters if James Madison and Tulane look competitive in their College Football Playoff games this week. Klatt’s short answer was no. He said the Group of Five is only in the playoff to avoid antitrust litigation, that nobody in college football cares about Cinderella stories, and that the entire debate will ultimately be decided by finances and lawsuits rather than on-field performance.

“It would help in the sentiment, you know, the public sentiment, but it will be determined by finances and litigation,” Klatt said. “And the reason the Group of Five is included in this playoff is to avoid antitrust litigation — that’s it, guys. We’re not looking for a Cinderella. Nobody cares in football about James Madison, or the equivalent of George Mason going to the Final Four. Nobody cares in football about that. We don’t want Cinderellas. We want the best teams playing each other at the end.”

That sure sounds like a miserable way to consume sports.

About Sam Neumann

Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.

View all posts by Sam Neumann