Joel Klatt calls college football games for Fox Sports every Saturday. He has been doing it for years. However, there is one decision he made back in college that turned out to be way more significant than anyone knew at the time.

Being the new color commentator for EA Sports College Football 27, he shared how the video game influenced his decision about his jersey selection. When Klatt walked on at Colorado Buffaloes as a freshman, he got No. 14. But before his sophomore year, he was given an option to change it.

"I had the option to switch my jersey number before my sophomore year, which was going to be my first year as the starting quarterback," Klatt shared in an interview with FOX Sports on June 10. "But I didn’t change my number because I knew the game would have my No. 14 as the starting quarterback at Colorado."

He kept it. A college kid made a jersey decision based on a video game. And 23 years later, that same game just made him its lead commentator, replacing Kirk Herbstreit, who held the commentator seat for the two previous editions of EA Sports College Football.

EA reached out to his agency first. By the time Klatt even heard about it, the deal was nearly done. A quick Zoom with the executives, a signature, and then the real work started.

"There was certainly part of me that, as I was recording, was thinking to myself, 'I can't believe I'm actually doing this. '" Klatt said.

The EA Sports college football video game series was first released in June 1993 under the title Bill Walsh College Football. When Klatt became the starter in Colorado in 2003, it was known as NCAA Football 2003.

Klatt has three boys, ages 14, 12, and nine. They all play the game. He played it back when it first came out. This one was personal in a way most broadcasting jobs never could be.

A New Experience for Joel Klatt

Klatt had no idea how different this would be from calling a real game. No crowd. No momentum. No sequence. EA sent him a script, and he recorded each situation completely on its own.

"You're not actually calling a game in sequence," Klatt said. "You're just trying to take each situation for its own and give a line for that situation."

EA flew out to his house and built a proper sound booth. Sessions ran two hours at a time, two to three mornings a week, starting at 6 a.m. He did roughly 90 hours total across weeks of recording.

Klatt, who has called Big Ten championship games, said it remains one of the most memorable experiences of his career.

As Joel Klatt becomes the new voice of EA Sports College Football 27 share your thoughts on the story behind his No. 14 jersey.

Read more at Michigan Football Community.

Written by

Farheen Fathima

Edited by

Soheli Tarafdar