During FOX Sports’ coverage of the 2024 Holiday Bowl between Syracuse and Washington State, Joel Klatt and Gus Johnson made their stance on the state of the College Football Playoff.
The pair chimed in on teams like SMU, Indiana, and Tennessee, all of which lost their opening matchup to home teams.
“Listen, home teams should win,” Klatt said. “The better teams got to host. It’s tough to win on the road in college football. What did we expect? Everyone is making this like an indictment on the losing teams. The home teams played great. It was an exciting weekend of college football.”
Many in the world of college football chose to use the opening weekend of the College Football Playoff as a deterrent for the current model. With SMU and Indiana getting blown out in their respective games, SEC fans chose to aim at the pair of teams and debate resume with teams like Alabama and Ole Miss that nearly missed the playoff. Tennessee, however, a highly-touted SEC team, suffered the worst loss of the weekend with a 42-17 loss to Ohio State.
“What I loved about it was that SMU and Tennessee had to go play in cold weather,” Johnson added. “SEC teams finally played a game in cold weather!”
“How’d that work out for them?” Klatt interjected. “I knew Ohio State was going to run them [Tennessee] out of the building when they ran out there with that fake toughness with their shirts off and started warming up. Buckeyes got this.”
