Joel Klatt Admits His March Madness Take Was ‘Terrible’ While Arguing About CFP

“The NCAA basketball tournament is a joke,” Klatt said earlier this week, after claiming “no one cares about James Madison” in the College Football Playoff.

Joel Klatt caught heat for calling March Madness “a joke” while arguing against Cinderella programs in the College Football Playoff. / Doral Chenoweth/Columbus Dispatch / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Joel Klatt is among the college football cognoscenti who believe that the College Football Playoff shouldn’t open its doors to smaller programs, claiming that the automatic bid for the fifth-highest ranked conference champion (designed to be the top Group of 5 champion) is only in place to “avoid antitrust litigation.”

In the process, he took a blowtorch to the NCAA basketball tournament—perhaps the most popular postseason sporting event in the country.

“We’re not looking for a Cinderella. No one in football cares about James Madison. ... 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 on The Next Round. “It’s the dumbest tournament and the least fair tournament in all of sports. 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 continued down the rabbit hole, pitching a World Cup-style group play round for the NCAA tournament. His greater point is a fair one—the one-and-done nature of March Madness can lead to some wonky results and often times the teams treated as the best heading into March don’t reach the Final Four. But the Cinderella stories create incredible interest, while the schools that wind up winning the tournament—who are more often than not still the powerhouse programs that Klatt promotes—earn it by surviving a grueling six-round gauntlet.

The Fox analyst was unsurprisingly excoriated for his take—and on his own podcast Thursday, he admitted it was a “terrible” one, while doubling down on his football stance.

"It was a bad take. It was a terrible take."@joelklatt revisits one of the "worst takes of the year" on the structure of March Madness. Thoughts? pic.twitter.com/FzwDTsiBVA

— The Joel Klatt Show: A College Football on FOX Pod (@JoelKlattShow) December 18, 2025

“I had an interesting take. It was a bad take, it was a terrible take. To be fair, what I said on their show on Monday morning early was sloppy, and worded wrong,” Klatt said on his podcast. “... The NCAA basketball tournament, if the objective was to crown the best basketball team of the college basketball season, then it’s a bad format, and because of that, it’s not fair is what I said, and I said ‘is a joke, it’s the dumbest,’ and that’s obviously going to grab headlines. And that’s stupid of me to use those terms.

“But the structure of the NCAA basketball tournament, its objective is entertainment, it’s supposed to be a gauntlet. So the point is, the best college basketball team of the year doesn’t always win the NCAA basketball tournament. That tournament is set up to crown its own champion. It’s a made-for-TV entertainment event. And it’s great. And by the way, I do love the NCAA basketball tournament. But if you’re asking me if its structured properly to crown the best team of the season, then the answer’s no.

“It’s a hot take. It’s a bad take, and not everyone’s going to share that with me because everyone loves the entertainment value of Cinderellas in the NCAA basketball tournament. But here’s the thing: If you’re actually honest with yourself, you love the Cinderellas early, but late, you want to see the best teams playing against each other. ... Because that’s greatness.

Joel Klatt maintains that he doesn’t want Cinderellas in the College Football Playoff

While he re-explained his stance on hoops, he hasn’t pivoted at all on how he feels about college football’s tournament. And while he certainly has a point, and is far from alone in his stance, if James Madison goes to Eugene, Ore. on Saturday and knocks off the heavily-favored Ducks, it will be one of the biggest stories in recent college football history and the ratings for Texas Tech vs. James Madison in the quarterfinal will be quite good. Michigan fans will be calling for the program to go swipe Dukes coach Bob Chesney from UCLA before he takes over the Bruins next year. It will be pandemonium in a way that a 12-seed BYU beating Oregon in the first-round wouldn’t touch.

Meanwhile, it is the Big Ten—the main conference partner of Klatt’s network Fox—that has been out on a limb looking to expand the CFP to 24 teams, with a format that would be far more of an invitational than even the current selection committee-chosen 12-team CFP or the 68-team NCAA tournament. In the Big Ten’s desired format, the league (as well as the SEC) would receive the most automatic bids for their top teams, no matter whether the fourth-ranked Big Ten team is a true national championship contender or, as is the case this year, a 9–3 USC team that pretty clearly doesn’t belong in the mix.

Just two weeks ago on his podcast, Klatt promoted a format with a round of play-in games that would largely mirror what the Big Ten is going for with automatic bids for a number of its teams.

Fischer: What Potential Matchups in 16- and 24-Team CFP Formats Would Look Like in 2025

Why two Group of 5 programs are in this year’s College Football Playoff

As currently constituted, the 12-team College Football Playoff awards automatic bids to the five highest-ranked conference champions, with the thought that most years, those five would come from the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC, as well as one Group of 5 program.

The first two years of the format have turned that assumption on its head a bit.

In 2024, Big Ten champion Oregon and SEC champion Georgia claimed the top two seeds, while Mountain West champion Boise State leapfrogged the Big 12 and ACC to grab a bye as the No. 9-ranked team. Big 12 champion Arizona State finished at No. 12, earning the fourth automatic bid, while Clemson beat SMU in the ACC champion to make the field at No. 16.

The 2025 season result was even crazier, and once again, the topsy-turvy ACC was at the center. No. 1 Indiana, No. 3 Georgia and No. 4 Texas Tech—the Big Ten, SEC and Big 12 champions—took three of the bids, while American champion Tulane earned the top Group of 5 honors. However, because of a bizarre tiebreaker situation, five-loss Duke reached the ACC championship game and defeated 10–2 Virginia. As a result, 12–1 James Madison earned its bid because it ranked higher than the Blue Devils. The ACC was not fully left out, but Miami had to sneak in as an at-large to keep the conference from being totally eliminated from national championship contention.

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