Consider Fox Sports’ Colin Cowherd as one of the believers of the Tennessee football program.
While talking with college football analyst Joel Klatt on Wednesday’s episode of The Herd, Cowherd declared Josh Heupel’s Volunteers for his pick as the 2024 National Champions.
“Those two teams aren’t the best teams in the SEC,” Cowherd said about Georgia and Alabama. “I’m going to call it right now. Tennessee is going to win the National Championship. I came on this show before the Oklahoma game and I said that Oklahoma, they’re not going to score. Tennessee’s got the best defense in college football. Excellent coach. Explosive offensively. I think Tennessee is the best team I’ve seen.”
Cowherd invited Klatt to tell him he was wrong, to which Klatt immediately did.
“There’s not a pause,” Klatt said about his quick response. “They are certainly – I think and I have said this on my program this week – they are National Championship caliber. I do not think that they’re the best I’ve seen, partly just because of the inexperience at quarterback. Remember, Iamaleava, while he played really well, still made a few mistakes because OU still plays really quality defense. I love him as a talent and the defense certainly is, I would say, making up for a lack of blue-chip ratio. So they don’t have the requisite roster, you would say, to go win a National Championship. Like, for instance, did you know that Michigan’s roster was the worst roster as far as a composite to win a National Championship in the last two decades? They were ranked, like, 14th in the talent composite. Tennessee, I believe, is 16 right now.”
“I’m gonna call it right now. Tennessee is gonna win the national championship.” – Colin Cowherd pic.twitter.com/VEyXA8HNhu
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) September 25, 2024
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Klatt goes on to say that it would be “a bit unprecedented” for Tennessee to go out and win the National Championship this year. And while he does think that the Vols have the right championship caliber, Klatt doesn’t believe that Tennessee is the best team that he’s seen so far.
He did give Tennessee a compliment on their way out of the segment, saying that the Vols have an “incredible” defensive line, to which Cowherd replied, “dominant.”
Klatt was right – during Michigan’s championship season in 2023, the Wolverines had the 14th-ranked composite roster while Tennessee was at the 16th slot. The Vols have actually moved down to No. 17 in the 2024 rankings, though, with the roster being made up of four five-stars, 37 four-stars, and 41 three-stars.
The stars conversation is tough. On one hand, sort of an Occam’s razor route, it does make sense. But at the same time, Tennessee just fairly handily beat Oklahoma on Saturday, which is the 7th-ranked team in the 2024 composite rankings. The Vols might not be in the Top 15 of composite standings but make it for that in a number of other ways, scheme and system being at or near the top of that list.
To hear Joel Klatt’s response and rebuttal or more of the duo’s college football segment, check out Wednesday’s full episode of The Herd with Colin Cowherd here.
