Joel Klatt's road has gone a long way outside of Boulder
It’s a Friday night and your scribe ain’t got nobody, except my beer drinking buddy. We’re sitting at the bar of the Congress Park Taproom. Our favorite watering hole in central Denver. We hang out there a lot.
It’s day two of the NFL draft. Favorite bartender, and pub proprietor, Woody, flips the television to the NFL Network’s coverage from Detroit. Some 400,000 crazy fans attending the spectacle. We’re watching former Buff great Joel Klatt do his thing as a NFL Network correspondent.
Watching It sends this ol’ “Buff Guy” down memory lane with Klatt. So many memories. Back in the days as a sports guy for KCNC-TV, now CBS News Colorado, I remember the Arvada native’s gutty quarterbacking of Buffs’ teams from the 2002-04 seasons and starting as a walk-on.
Before the son of a successful high school football coach arrived on CU’s campus, I gotta admit, didn’t know much about the athletic guy except he was trying football after an unsuccessful attempt at professional baseball. Klatt’s admittance, “I couldn’t hit the curveball,” opened the door to an older guy looking for a chance to compete for the starting quarterback position. A role the intelligent dude performed quite well while in high school at Pomona High playing for his father.
I’m watching Klatt give insight into the NFL draft and two things pour through the porous cranium of a 66-year-old dude blessed to be embedded inside the CU football program for almost twenty years and still deeply connected in many ways. This much will follow me to the grave: When conversations turn to the “toughest Buffs” entrusted with the pride and tradition? Few, in this commentator’s opinion, sit at the table with Klatt.
I can remember so many games. Afterward? In the locker room of a Colorado win, loss or tie - more victories by far - there was the team’s quarterback. Beaten, battered and, most important, victorious. In Klatt’s three years as a starter the Buffs won the Big 12 North division twice only to lose the championship games to Oklahoma or Texas.
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I’m watching this handsome and articulate father inform and entertain viewers of the NFL draft and remember one tough hombre who made Colorado fans proud for the spirit and determination brought to every snap under center for Gary Barnett’s Buffs.
Tough and talented. When talking about Klatt? As Hall of Fame football coach Bill McCartney loves to say about certain things in life, “Take it to the bank and hang your hat on it!” Amen, buddy.
A second thing kept banging around the ol’ cranium while watching Klatt. Long ago, he was planning his future post-college competition. We had lunch at a Denver landmark, now gone with the passage of time. Always a student, Klatt wanted advice on getting started in the sports broadcast industry.
I have no idea if anything shared had influence of the direction of Klatt’s quick and deserved rise to the top of the profession as Gus Johnson’s partner on FOX’s featured college football Game of the Week. The dude was a really good quarterback but is even better when it comes to articulating the game. He’s emerged as one of the best and the future looks bright indeed. The sports commentating world is his oyster.
Just for grins and pride, while sitting there at the bar with the crowd growing, I couldn’t resist texting Klatt with this: “Hey man, sitting at the bar watching you do your thing on NFL Network.” I included two emoji. One a “thumbs up” and the other, a “buffalo.”
During the next commercial break, my phone pings. It’s Klatt with a thumbs up. What a guy. A warrior carrying the pride and tradition of Colorado football to the masses. Coach Prime? In this transfer-portal and NIL crazy-world that is college football today? May you find 60 Joel Klatt’s. Not the biggest, fastest, or strongest, but darn blessed in all those phases with a toughness that cannot be taught.
Desire. Toughness. Talent. A cord of three strands not easily broken. Most often, a recipe for success in whatever task we seek to accomplish. Joel Klatt, you go boy.
MARK MCINTOSH
Mark McIntosh covered the Buffs as a sports broadcaster for KCNC-TV during the glory years of Colorado football from the late 1980’s through 2006. He also hosted the television coaches' shows of Bill McCartney, Rick Neuheisel, and Gary Barnett during that time frame. McIntosh is an author, motivational speaker and encourages others to persevere despite life’s challenges. The father of two is an advocate for equity in education and helping displaced men build a stronger cord to their families, purpose and communities. The Missouri native also suffers from a rare bone marrow disease, Amyloidosis, and advocates for earlier detection of the incurable disease that attacks vital organs like the kidneys, heart, lungs, and liver.