Replacing Kirk Herbstreit is a pretty big pair of shoes to fill. Joel Klatt thought he was signing up to replace a voice. But did he foresee that he was signing up for nearly 90 hours of talking to a wall? That’s the hidden cost of becoming the new voice of EA Sports College Football 27, the latest installment of a franchise that means as much to some fans as actual Saturdays in the fall. 

Speaking on The Next Round, Joel Klatt pulled back the curtain on what it actually took to become the game’s new lead analyst. He revealed that he works from home with a mini sound booth installed. And if anyone thinks he’s simply sitting down in front of his setup to read a few lines, he’s giving some clarity on that.

“I did about almost 90 hours of recording during the course of starting in about right after the season, basically started my sessions in December,” he admitted. “I would wake up and from 6-8 AM, two or three times a week, I would do a session, and we would Zoom… and they’d send the script.”

What made the job so demanding was the way EA records its commentary. Joel Klatt wasn’t sitting there reacting to game plays as they happened. The company gave him thousands of different football situations and asked him to come up with natural reactions for each one. 

“They would send a script, but it really wasn’t a script,” he explained. “It was basically just situations. So they would say, the situation would be, we’re going to do all post-run plays today. So it’s not sequential… And like that situation, then I would come up with the line and give a couple of different versions. Then we’d move on to the next situation… We probably did shoot thousands of lines, maybe 4,000, maybe more lines during the course of those 88, 90 hours of work.”

By the end, Joel Klatt had recorded thousands of unique responses designed to make gameplay feel authentic rather than robotic. And that’s impressive for someone working out of a mini sound booth installed inside his own house. But that’s the price the FOX analyst had to pay to replace Kirk Herbstreit, who’s also the face of ESPN’s College GameDay. 

Kirk Herbstreit already showed how demanding this booth can be. When EA Sports College Football 25 was being built, he said he and Chris Fowler spent multiple sessions over the course of two years, sometimes a few hours at a time, recording hundreds of hours of commentary and replaying the same kinds of football moments in different ways.

Funny enough, Joel Klatt’s relationship with the EA franchise goes back much further than FOX’s Big Noon Kickoff. It began when he was still a walk-on QB at Colorado, wearing No. 14. He never changed that number even after getting a starting job. The reason is that he knew EA Sports would make the Buffs’ starting QB wear No. 14 in the video game. Fast forward more than 20 years, and he’s now one of its lead voices, something even he feels is unreal. 

“I’ve loved the game for a long time, and there was certainly part of me that, as I was recording, was thinking to myself, ‘I can’t believe I’m actually doing this,’” he admitted. 

And while his voice will be one of the biggest changes fans notice, EA Sports College Football 27 arrives with plenty of excitement.

EA Sports College Football ‘27 arrives with huge expectations

College Football ’27 is the third release since EA Sports revived the franchise in 2024, ending a hiatus since 2013. Fans spent years waiting for college football gaming to return, and the comeback became one of the biggest success stories in sports gaming. 

The standard cover of the 2027 game edition features Oregon QB Dante Moore, Miami WR Malachi Toney, and Ole Miss RB Kewan Lacy. The deluxe edition expands the lineup with USC QB Jayden Maiava, Notre Dame CB Leonard Moore, Indiana coach Curt Cignetti, and several mascots. Fans will also get back the popular Mascot Mashup mode, while Dynasty Mode has been updated with several new features. The game launches in July, with players who purchase early access able to start playing from July 2.

When fans hear Joel Klatt on launch day, remember this game was a commitment of nearly 90 hours and more than 4,000 lines. For fans, it’ll sound effortless when they fire up the game in July. But for the commentator, it was anything but that.