Joel Klatt believes College Football Playoff committee 'absolutely screwed' Oregon

The Oregon Ducks may have been ranked as the top seed by the College Football Playoff Selection Committee, but FOX’s Joel Klatt believes Dan Lanning’s team was screwed a bit with how it all shook out.

Due to the way the rest of the teams in the bracket were placed, Oregon might have a gauntlet to get to the finale after their first-round bye. During the latest episode of The Joel Klatt Show, the namesake broke it all down, siding with the faithful Ducks fans in Eugene.

Get your team’s official College Football Playoff watch from AXIA by CLICKING HERE: “Watches that tell so much more than time”

“Oregon’s path to the National Championship [Game], their reward for going 13-0 and having the best regular season in all of college football, which is supposed to be the most valuable regular season in all of sports — the reward for that is having to play the three highest odds team to win the national championship,” Klatt stated. “They’re going to have to go through possibly Ohio State, Texas, and Georgia to win the national championship.

“Congratulations, Dan Lanning and the Oregon Ducks. You got absolutely screwed by the Playoff Committee because their sentiment of trying to create artificial floors rose some of these teams to the levels where they shouldn’t be. That’s the problem.”

While Klatt doesn’t blame Penn State, the team Oregon defeated in the Big Ten title game, for their role in this, he’s wondering how the Nittany Lions potential path to a title is slated to be less difficult than the Ducks, when Oregon is the top-seeded team.

“You can tell me that the logic of rewarding conference championship games is right, and the theory is correct. And you know what? I think that you believe that. But in actuality, what happens is that in the dead set objective, in the valuing of conference championship games above everything, which has happened both in the creation of this playoff and now in the rankings of these seeds, in the effort to value the conference championship game over everything, you’ve devalued it, because Oregon’s path is actually harder than Penn State,” Klatt added. “Penn State is sitting there, and it’s not their fault. This is not me ragging on Penn State.

“Penn State made their bed, and they’re going to have to be in it. But playing SMU, and then potentially, Boise State Their path to the college football semifinal is far easier than Oregon’s, and Oregon just beat them. But you were supposed to value conference championship games. And in the effort to value them, you devalued them. That’s the problem.”

Joel Klatt: ‘Oregon’s got the toughest route of anybody that got byes’

Alas, Klatt simply wants to see some perks for Oregon for being the best team throughout the season in college football. If there isn’t, then what’s the real value of going undefeated? That’s what the FOX analyst is questioning.

“Oregon’s got the toughest route of anybody that got byes. It’s tougher than Georgia’s. It’s tougher than Arizona State’s. It’s tougher than Boise State’s. And to me, like this — that idea just escaped everybody,” Klatt elaborated. “The team with the biggest gripe — which they won’t gripe, because this is not what Dan Lanning does. He just says like, ‘Fine, send me wherever, and we’ll play whomever,’ and that’s why I love Dan Lanning. I really do, because he doesn’t sit there and whine about things like seeds, and he doesn’t get on Twitter and whine and cry about what this committee is doing and what the commissioner did to me. He certainly doesn’t do that on the podium.

“I will just tell you, Oregon got hosed in this, and they got hosed by the committee, and the committee was doing this artificially. I mean, it’s pretty clear. It’s pretty clear the seeding was wrong. So, flawed format, born out of this idea that you have to retain value of the conference championship game. The committee then clearly overvalues conference championship games, when they shouldn’t, and in the objective of protecting that game above everything, they devalued it by creating the hardest possible path for Oregon. Well done, everybody. Slow clap for college football.”

As Joel Klatt mentioned, Dan Lanning and his Oregon Ducks won’t make any excuses, but it does beg the question of whether the College Football Playoff has a seeding problem. Time will tell if the Big Ten champions are able to overcome, but their path to a national title will be an admirable one, if they can pull it off.