Q&A: Pomona grad Joel Klatt preaches importance of multi-sport participation

Joel Klatt is perhaps most remembered as a three-year starting quarterback at the University of Colorado. But he was also quite the three-sport athlete at Pomona before he began his athletic career as a professional baseball player.

Klatt was drafted in the 11th round of the 2000 MLB draft by the San Diego Padres. After two years in the minor leagues, he opted to try his hand at a college football career.

In his second year as a walk-on at the University of Colorado, Klatt earned the starting quarterback job and never looked back.

Now the lead college football game analyst for Fox Sports 1, Klatt knows that his time at CU may not have been possible without options. His desire to play three sports made him what every athlete aims to be, a true competitor.

He took some time to discuss the state of youth and high school sports today and how important it is for kids to involved in as many sports as possible.

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Question: When you were in high school, did you know that you could potentially have a future in both football and baseball?

Klatt: It’s hard to say. I knew that I would have at least the option potentially, but nothing guaranteed by any stretch. Going through it, I thought I had a much better chance having a post-high school career in baseball than anything else.

Q: Did it help when you were playing at a high level in both sports that you felt like you would have options at some point?

Klatt: I never viewed it that way to be honest with you. For me, I obviously wanted to play something in college but it was always more about competing. I love playing each of the sports.

It was never anything strategic along the lines of post-high school career.

Q: You played basketball as well, was that more for fun just so you can do something in the winter?

Klatt: Yeah, I played it my whole life. I loved playing it. More than anything, I thought the best attribute that a lot of great athletes have is the ability to compete.

What’s better to learn how to compete than doing it?

Regardless of what you’re competing at, whether it’s checkers or ping pong or basketball or football. Having an opportunity to go out there and play all the time, I thought was the most beneficial. And I played with some of my buddies and I wasn’t going to let them down and not go out and play basketball and hurt the team just because I was better at other sports.

Q: So looking at it now as far removed as you are from high school, how happy are you that you were able to consistently play three sports during your high school career?

Klatt: As I look back, I’m incredibly proud that I stuck with it, played three sports and it actually makes me really sad that other guys don’t that nowadays. I think they do themselves a great disservice by not competing.

Q: That’s my next question, when you see people trying to specialize and stick to one sport when they’re young, what’s your reaction?

Klatt: I think it hurts. I have a lot of different feelings about it.

One, I get really upset with these coaches claiming that they have to have these kids specialize because of a special league that they have to be in out of season. I hate it. I think those coaches have no idea what they’re doing.

It’s selfish and they’re hurting a lot of kids.

I had a guy, who I’m actually really good friends with, and he has a son that I think is 11 or 12 and he’s really good soccer player. He’s fast, good hand, feet, eye coordination; that type of deal. He’s also really good at golf. He’s also really good at basketball. And he loves doing all three.

And this bozo soccer coach of his basically said that he had to be at all these different events or else he can’t be on the team. (The kid) is 11 or 12. What are you doing?

Again, I think what we’ve lost is the ability to compete. There’s only so much you can teach from a skills perspective and the technical perspective at a young age, even within high school.

And these coaches that are making kids specialize at an early age are doing a huge disservice, a monumental disservice to the development of the whole athlete and the whole person. Specializing, just point blank, doesn’t help anybody.

I’m one of the reasons that you can point to that it’s true.

It makes me really frustrated.

Q: It seems like a lot of NCAA coaches are putting it out there that they love seeing multi-sport athletes, why doesn’t that message get trickled down?

Klatt: I have no idea. I think it’s born out of insecurity and selfishness from some of those coaches.

I think it’s even more of a problem that we are starting to see it in the youth levels as well like we were just talking about. One of the things that has been lost on this generation of athlete is the knowledge of how to just flat compete.

There’s only so much you can do to “skill level” your way to success, I guess is a way to put it. Whereas if you have the knowledge to compete — look at Jim Furyk. He’s competing with Dustin Johnson and Rory McIlroy because he understands how to compete and he understands how to grind.

You see it all levels. Matthew Dellavedova. You see it on the football field in particular. You see guys of all different skill levels and all different sizes and shapes succeed. A lot of that is the ability to understand how to compete and find success in certain spots.

I don’t understand why that message doesn’t trickle down.

Again, I’ll go back to this. It’s born out of two things: selfishness and insecurity.

Photo courtesy of CU Athletics

Q: You’re still very much in tune with what’s going on with CU. With Coach (Mike) MacIntyre and Coach (Darrin) Chiaverini, how much emphasis are they putting on recruiting multi-sport athletes?

Klatt: I think it’s everybody. I think it’s the type of player that you’re bringing in. You’re getting someone that wants to compete and wants to be a part of a team, that understands how to be unselfish.

I think Coach Mike MacIntyre has done a good job at bringing in kids like that and I think coaches around the country have done that as well.

I hope they continue to do that so the message becomes loud and clear for everybody out there that specializing is not what you need to do.

Q: Coach MacIntyre already has a couple of in-state guys for next year’s recruiting class. How important is for programs at CU, CSU, CSU-Pueblo, Northern Colorado to keep the guys who go to school here in state?

Klatt: At one point, Coach (Bill) McCartney knew that he had to keep all the best kids in state. He got guys like Jon Embree and those type of guys to stay in state and help the resurgence of Colorado get to where it was and then they could go out and get the best kids from Houston and L.A.

What I think is lost on what Colorado does now, and even CSU to a larger extent, is that they think they’re going to go out and get great kids from other places without a whole lot of recent success in their rearview mirror.

I think that’s very difficult to do without building some sort of foundation, which you have to do locally.

Now I’m under no type of spell that thinks you can just go out there and win with Colorado athletes, because you can’t. Plain and simple, Colorado high school football is not good enough to win on the Division I level with just local recruits. You have to get strong recruits from other areas.

Now at the lower levels, that’s what has killed Northern Colorado is that they stopped recruiting the state and the CSU-Pueblos of the world started to do so.

John Wristen got some amazing kids from this state and ended up winning a national championship because of it.

Q: How much do you stay in tune with the high school sports landscape here in Colorado?

Klatt: I’d say enough. I follow it. My brother is the head coach at Mead High School and my brother-in-law was a coach at Mountain Vista and I grew up here and I’m always interested in what teams are doing well and I keep up with the Pomona Panthers, of course.

I think Jay Madden has done an amazing job.

Q: I hate to ask, but were you heartbroken over what happened in the (Class 5A) state title game?

Klatt: Oh I was heartbroken. My dad explained it to me and then I went and watched the end of it and, ugh, I’m still sick to my stomach over it.

That fumble at the end was heartbreaking because it was born out of effort. It was a tough one. They had Valor dead to rights there. They had that state championship won.

Q: Was it nice to see your school get back to that level?

Klatt: Oh yeah. I think Jay has done a tremendous job. He’s had a lot more success than I certainly did at my four years at Pomona.

We had one pocket of success and they had a great history of success from about 1982 until about 1996 or so. It’s been great to see them get back to that level where year-in and year-out they’re competing really at the highest level.

He’s done a remarkable job, he really has.

Q: Last one for you, if you had the ability to address a group of eighth grade athletes heading into their freshman year of high school, what’s the message you want to instill to them?

Klatt: My major points would be twofold. My first point would be don’t get pressured into specializing, even in high school. And I would talk about the benefits in learning and understanding how to compete.

And my second one would be that you have to understand from that day how important your academics are because of NCAA standards and how kids are recruited and how they set themselves up so well just by having their academics in line and how prepared to be to go to school after high school and go to college and really flourish because they’re ready academically.

Those are the two things that I think are the upmost important.