Joel Klatt shares embarrassingly uninformed take on Matt Campbell and Penn State’s 2026 schedule

Penn State may have the easiest schedule in the Big Ten next season. It’s hard to predict which teams will be the best. Nobody saw Indiana turning into a national title winner when Curt Cignetti took over, but knowing what we do about the hierarchy in the league, the Nittany Lions got off easy in 2026. 

Penn State does not play Ohio State, Indiana, or Oregon, which have combined to win the last two Big Ten and national titles. The Nittany Lions do host USC and make a trip to Michigan in Matt Campbell’s first year at the helm, but with Marshall, Temple, and Buffalo as the three non-conference games, they’re in a great spot to get right back to the 12-team College Football Playoff. 

After the Big Ten schedule was released last week, FOX’s Joel Klatt sank his teeth into it and shared an embarrassing take on it. 

“If you would have know this schedule before this hiring process, guys would have clamored to take the Penn State job,” Klatt said, acknowledging that they ultimately landed on a great candidate in Campbell. 

Penn State’s 2026 opponents have been set for over two years

Of course, what Klatt is referring to is the number of top candidates, Curt Cignetti, Mike Elko, Matt Rhule, and others who signed extensions to stay put over leaving for Happy Valley. The only problem is that Cignetti, Elko, Rhule, Campbell, and every person with access to Google, did “know this schedule before this hiring process.” 

They’ve know it since 2023. 

Yes, last week the Big Ten released the dates for the games in the 2026 season, but the opponents have been established for years, including the non-conference games. In fact, the schedule release may have given Penn State the most difficult possible draw with their set opponents, forcing the Nittany Lions to play their two toughest games against Michigan and USC back-to-back in October. 

That’s early in the year for a team that will be constructed primarily of transfers. Yes, many of those transfers played together under Campbell, and many of his assistants at Iowa State, and Rocco Becht is the most experienced starting quarterback in the country, but that’s still a tough ask for a new team thrown together in one offseason. 

That light schedule in Year 1 was one of the things that made the job attractive to potential James Franklin replacements, though it took a while for athletic director Pat Kraft to ultimately land Campbell. It’s also a reason that Campbell has considerable pressure to make the CFP for the first time in Year 1. 

Joel Klatt is an excellent announcer and analyst of college football. It’s also an incredibly difficult job to cover the entire breadth of the sport. However, for somebody who has been in college football since 2002 as a player at Colorado, Klatt should know that schedules are set years in advance. 

To somehow tie the schedule release to Penn State’s hiring process is pretty embarrassing when his argument is so easily rebuffed by the fact that every prospective head coach Penn State contacted had easy access to see this schedule and how easy it would be in 2026.