There is a new system to determine college football’s national champion, but the teams that will be likely fighting for that title come from the old guard.
FOX Sports analyst Joel Klatt predicts stalwarts Alabama, Florida State and Oklahoma will be three of the four teams in college football’s new playoff system. The Crimson Tide may not sound like a huge surprise, but they are coming off a rare disappointing — by their standards — 11-2 season and have serious questions at quarterback.
The steady hand of A.J. McCarron will be replaced by a combination of fifth-year senior Blake Sims and Florida State transfer Jacob Coker. Sims is expected to start against West Virginia in Alabama’s opener on Saturday, but the competition is far from decided.
Nevertheless, Klatt said he believes Alabama’s talent is overwhelming enough to overcome any deficiencies at football’s most important position.
“They have the best stable of running backs in the country, they’ve recruited better than anyone in the country, they have great skill-position players on the outside,” said Klatt, who started 39 games at quarterback for Colorado from 2002-05. “So no matter who is playing quarterback they don’t have to play elite-level football for them to be an elite-level team.”
Oklahoma is hoping the momentum from its 45-31 Sugar Bowl scorching of Alabama will continue into this season. In that game, then freshman Trevor Knight torched the Tide for 348 yards and four touchdowns.
“With what you saw from Trevor Knight at quarterback, I think will pay huge dividends heading into this season,” Klatt said. “And the feather in their cap is they play Baylor, the second-best Big 12 team, at home. Bob Stoops in his career at Oklahoma is 87-5 at home. He doesn’t lose there.”
Perhaps, the least surprising team to get Klatt’s nod into the new Final Four is Florida State. The defending champion Seminoles are led by sophomore Heisman winner Jameis Winston, who carried them to an undefeated season in his first year.
“I know they’ve lost a lot of talent to the NFL, but they have recruited on par with a team like Alabama,” Klatt said. “They are loaded with talent and the talent gap within their conference is the greatest in the country. I had an ACC coach tell me, if you created an All-Star team from the bottom three quarters of the ACC, none of those players would start at Florida State. That’s a pretty good margin that Florida State is playing with.”
The last team, which Klatt admits is a “trendy pick” is UCLA, which comes in ranked seventh in the country and is expected to battle Stanford and Oregon for Pac-12 supremacy.
As excited as Klatt is for the season, he is intrigued to see how the selection process develops in its inaugural season.
“We haven’t gone into a college football season with this big of an unknown, maybe ever,” he said. “And to see how that is going to play out, the subjective nature, I can’t wait to see that. This is going to be the most drastic change we’ve seen in college football.”