Joel Klatt questions if Clemson, Notre Dame scheduling agreement is good for ACC, college football

Clemson vs. Notre Dame reads great as a headline and should make for a quality series with the two programs set to play in every season from 2027 to 2038. That said, Joel Klatt isn’t sure it’s what’s best as far as scheduling in college football.

Klatt took some issue with the scheduling agreement between the Tigers and Fighting Irish during his show on Monday. He thinks it’s good on its own but doesn’t know if it’s something that’s good for the sport as it further gets away from a formatted schedule that benefits the collegiate level as a whole.

“While this is a really cool thing and something that we can all get behind and say, yeah, of course we want to see that game, I would just pose this question. Is it better for the ACC and for the sport overall? I don’t know. I don’t know,” said Klatt. “The more that we allow teams to make these individual decisions, the more that we’re going to get away from a more universal scheduling, what would you call it, model.”

Klatt just wants schedules to be better overall considering the games that aren’t being played either in the non-conference or because of how the conference ones are set. He doesn’t think the teams, or the fanbases of those teams, get the most out of their seasons by going out and putting their slates together on their own.

“It calls into question, like, well shouldn’t this be better? Shouldn’t scheduling be better? Could it be better? Yes! Yes,” said Klatt. “Let me go back to the original point of this, kind of, conversation. Clemson-Notre Dame scheduled this agreement. And, folks, in my mind, it’s like the let them eat cake announcement. It could be better. I don’t want to throw cold water on this because I can’t wait to see the game and I want to see this more often. But this needs to happen on a much larger scale. There are so many games – valuable, valuable games – that we’re missing out on. There’s so much valuable inventory just in terms of the way we make the schedule that we’re missing out on. It could be better.

“I’m not going to blame Clemson and Notre Dame for looking out for themselves in the current model. That’s what we do. that’s what the structure has mandated on these programs and athletic departments. But it should be better. I’m a huge proponent that schools shouldn’t make their own schedule…I’m going to take your non-conference and I’m going to make it more valuable for the sport overall, and more specifically for the fan, for the fan both sitting in the stands and around the country watching on the TV. I’m going to make the sport better for them. I think it would be better for the players as well.”

However, Klatt didn’t want to take away from Clemson vs Notre Dame as a matchup we’ll now see well into the next decade. He wanted to say, though, that there are more games than that out there to be set up, which led to a top-five from him ranking the non-conference games that should be on the schedule every single fall.

“I think there’s more games like this that need to be scheduled in college football. I think other’s should take Clemson and Notre Dame’s lead and think about locking in games that we want to see, that would drive value, in particular on a regional basis, that maybe we’ve lost because of all of the movement in the last few years from a conference realignment standpoint,” said Klatt.

Clemson vs. Notre Dame should bring a lot of value to both schools and the ACC as part of their respective schedules through ’38. Even so, Klatt wants more of those games set on a larger scale, rather than individually by team, to get everything there is to have out of a given season for the better of the sport.