"My heart breaks for Drew Allar": Joel Klatt makes his stance clear on Penn State's heartbreaking loss to Notre Dame

Notre Dame's Jaylen Sneed seemingly got to Drew Allar just as he let go of the football in the College Football Playoff semifinal at the Orange Bowl.

Allar's first-and-10 pass from his 28-yard line wound up in Fighting Irish cornerback Christian Gray's hands with 33 seconds to play. Kicker Mitch Jeter nailed a 41-yard field goal 26 ticks later, sending Notre Dame to the title game against Ohio State.

Joel Klatt, a former Colorado quarterback and the lead college football and NFL Draft analyst for FOX Sports, feels for Allar's mistake.

"You threw an unfortunate interception at the wrong time to the wrong spot on the field," Klatt said Saturday on "The Joel Klatt Show." "Drew Allar is gonna have to live with that for the rest of his life. I feel bad for him in that sense. Listen, I never played in a game of this magnitude in college, but I can tell you this — there are still things that I have a hard time getting over. I'm 43 years old.

"Drew Allar did it on the biggest stage. So, in a lot of ways, my heart breaks for him. I stood in those shoes. My heart breaks for Drew Allar."

Klatt also thinks that Allar will receive much of the blame for the Nittany Lions' disappointing shortcoming. Earlier in the fourth frame, Penn State's defense allowed Riley Leonard to hit Jaden Greathouse for a 54-yard touchdown that helped tie matters at 24 points apiece.

Why the loss for Drew Allar and Penn State isn't a bad one

Klatt later said that he thinks the way in which a team loses can wrongly affect how the defeat is viewed.

"College football fans do a weird thing where they will take a heartbreaking loss and they'll start calling it a bad loss," Klatt said. "I'm here to tell you that those two things are totally different. That was not a bad loss for Penn State. That was a heartbreaking loss, and the reality is that everybody is gonna have those now who's in the playoff because that's what a playoff is.

"One team gets to win their last game. One. Penn State fans, you've got to distinguish between a heartbreaking loss and a bad loss. ... I know it's gonna hurt. In a lot of ways, it hurts worse than a bad loss. But, they were right there."

Before the season-ending trip-up, James Franklin, Drew Allar, and the Nittany Lions proved they belong in the conversation of the sport's upper echelon with wins against ACC runner-up SMU and Boise State, which featured Heisman Trophy finalist Ashton Jeanty.