Joel Klatt reveals first reaction to Big Ten’s 28-team College Football Playoff model proposal

With the college football season officially kicking off this Saturday, FOX Sports‘ analyst Joel Klatt was relaxing on vacation last weekend when his phone began buzzing with notifications out of Big Ten country. The news centered around a viral report from ESPN’s Pete Thamel that revealed Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti had “populated” a 24- or 28-team College Football Playoff expansion model to his league’s decision-makers.

The report came with the caveat these proposals were “in the very early stages” and were far more speculatative. Still, given the jump from the Big Ten’s previous 16-team proposal — termed the “4-4-2-2-1-1” model — it certainly raised eyebrows around the college football world. And even reached wherever Klatt and his family were vacationing, it turns out.

“I was actually on vacation with my family and all of a sudden I see some of these news reports about the Big Ten floating a 28-team Playoff model, and I was like (mocks head exploding) – WHAT?! BAM!” Klatt said on Wednesday’s episode of The Joel Klatt Show on YouTube. “Like head exploding … 28?! Holy cow. And I’m sure — I’m sure — you felt the same way.

“Because this feels like they went from four and it took us a long time to get to 12, and then there were starting to be discussions about maybe going to 16, and then it’s just like (claps) 28! (laughs) Like, oh, wow! That escalated in a hurry. Brick killed a guy. That’s from a movie, just if you don’t know that.”

Anchorman jokes aside, Klatt’s instant reaction echoed much of the overwhelming perception coming from those around the sport. In the week since, college football pontificators have sounded off on the Big Ten’s 28-team proposal, many of which mocked it thoroughly.

For his part, Klatt analyzed the circumstances surrounding the current College Football Playoff debate, including why some conferences like the Big 12 and SEC are in support of the popular 5+11 model, and why the Big Ten could now be proposing a significantly larger format.

“The SEC favors a model very similar to what we have now, which is fewer automatic spots, and more at-large spots,” Klatt said. “The SEC, in simple terms, favors a selection-based model because they feel like that favors them. They feel like the narrative surrounding their conference, the depth of their conference is strong – they’re not wrong about either of those things. So they feel like in a selection-based model, they’ll get the benefit of the doubt, which is why they support the current model and/or an expansion with more at-large spots.

“The Big Ten favors a different model, which I would consider an access-based model,” Klatt continued. “Where there are more spots given as automatics, which can expand to something like a play-in weekend to try to increase fanbase engagement throughout the month of November. More teams would be more relevant for longer into the season than we have right now.”

The Big Ten’s newly-expanded proposal came just days before the CFP Selection Committee announced changes to its weekly ranking metrics that would emphasize strength of schedule and add a new metric called “record strength” to better assess how a team performed against their respective schedule. Effectively, the SEC powers-that-be got their wish that the CFP Selection process puts more weight behind schedule strength, which would tend to favor the SEC given its top-to-bottom depth.

The SEC has also since agreed to adopt a nine-game conference scheduling model like the Big Ten and Big 12, beginning with the 2026 season, which was deemed a prerequisite for the Big Ten to even consider the “5+11” Playoff format. Now, it appears the ball is in the Big Ten’s court.