Fox’s lead college football analyst, Joel Klatt, has had enough of college football players holding re-signing announcements. And it’s hard to blame him.
Are we, as fans, now supposed to wait for re-signing announcements to make sure players on our favorite college football team aren’t leaving the program? Can we no longer assume that players who are already signed to NIL deals and just finished playing a season for our school will come back if they don’t declare for the NFL Draft?
“I don’t think I normally do this because as you know, I remain very optimistic about our sport. I really do,” Joel Klatt said this week on his show. He added that he thinks college football’s in in a great spot, but it can get better.
“That doesn’t mean that I’m blind to the problems. And some people are like, ‘What are you talking about? It’s ruined.’ It’s not ruined. It’s not ruined. And if handled properly, these issues that we face in college football, like the calendar and you know, player movement and coaching movement and these things that are frustrating to fans, they’re fixable.
“So, I’m not going to throw out college football and be all, you know, displeased with the entire sport when the things that are broken are fixable. … This sport is amazing, and it will be amazing for the foreseeable future. With that being said, I can’t with the resigning of players. I’m sorry.”
These re-signing announcements aren’t good for college football
“Oh man, I started seeing some of these announcements on social media, guys would text me these announcements, and this is going to sound like I’m picking on guys,” Klatt continued. “This is not their fault, but like Malik Washington, Waymond Jordan, LaNorris Sellers, there’s all these stories about like, ‘Oh, they’re re-signing. They’re working on a deal to stay.’ And I’m like, I don’t want to hear that. I don’t want to see it. You mean, wait, was he about to leave?”
‘I don’t want to know that that player was about to leave’
“You know, this is so different than in the National Football League when your favorite team has a player that you love that you know is a free agent, and then they re-sign him, and you’re like, ‘Nice!’” Klatt added. “That feels a lot different than like I’m a fan of a college team and I just think that this player who’s committed to this school, who’s at this school, who has more eligibility left, and is making a large sum of money through NIL, and then all of a sudden he’s like, ‘I’m re-signing.’ It’s like, ‘I didn’t know you thought about leaving.’
“It feels a lot different, doesn’t it? It feels a lot different. And candidly, I don’t like this. I don’t like it. And I’m trying like I’m not upset about it, but we need to stop. We need to stop. This is one of those things. This turns fans off. You think that it’s like a huge plus and you think your fan base is going to be excited about it. I’m just telling you programs out there, stop sending these messages out because it sends the wrong message. We didn’t know these players were about to leave in the first place.”