FOX Sports' Joel Klatt really didn't like the fact that the one-loss Sun Belt champion James Madison Dukes and two-loss American Conference champion Tulane Green Wave got a shot in the 2025/2026 College Football Playoff.
After claiming in the build-up to the CFP's first-round action that JMU and Tulane making the field was bad for the sport because Cinderellas don't happen in football, Klatt took a victory lap and stood up for a group of Power 4 schools that hardly need any more institutional support:
The Notre Dame Fighting Irish, Vanderbilt Commodores, Texas Longhorns, and BYU Cougars, all teams with as many losses as the Green Wave, and fewer than the Dukes, albeit with stronger competition, but vitally lacking what has always mattered in the CFP selection process when it's a toss-up, a conference championship.
"It was a tough day for the Group of 5," Klatt said. "It was a tough day for the creators of this playoff. It was a tough day for the leaders of college football. All of us sat there and were like, ‘How do you continue to screw up what is so obviously an easy fix?’ I think that this playoff is not built right.
"I got into all sorts of hot water this week when I said, ‘In college football, we don’t want Cinderellas.' I'm right. Did you watch the last two games of the first round? Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, Texas and BYU were just sitting at home watching Tulane and JMU play in games in which they were overmatched. That's not cool.
"We had the 20th and 24th-ranked teams in the country. If you want to keep access for the Group of 5 in this playoff, then just say if you win your championship and you're in the top 15, then you can go play in the College Football Playoff. But until then, you just get what we got to this weekend. And I didn't think that was fair for Tulane or JMU."
Joel Klatt should've been mad at Alabama but no longer can be
Klatt was never someone who questioned the Alabama Crimson Tide's inclusion in the 2025/2026 CFP field. Meanwhile, the Tide was a three-loss non-conference champion that got blown out during championship week.
Alabama did less with more. Tulane and James Madison did more with less. Everyone is living off the nostalgia of the 2010s Tide and early 2020s Georgia Bulldogs, but the SEC hasn't had a truly dominant team since pay-to-play rev share began. Nick Saban retired because of how long it had been in Tuscaloosa since the "Bama Standard" was up to his.
Even with its resources, Alabama laid several eggs this season, including a worse loss than the Dukes, Green Wave, Fighting Irish, Commodores, Longhorns, and Cougars had, against the Florida State Seminoles, 31-17, in Week 1 at the "Doak."
The Tide beat the Sooners when it counted, though, so now it can't seem to be used as a talking point anymore.
And that's a damn shame, because this Alabama team should've been excluded in favor of Notre Dame in the CFP field to begin with.