Belt To Ass - Conference Championship Recap & Other News

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Good morning and welcome back to 4th & Forever, Rand & Tate’s College Football Newsletter. All ten FBS conference championship games took place last weekend ahead of the final, official College Football Playoff bracket reveal on Sunday, which, as you might assume, everyone is being completely and totally normal about. We thought we’d have a little bit of downtime in the 12 days between the release of the bracket and the start of the playoff until Sherrone Moore lit the world on fire by getting canned by Michigan and then immediately arrested within a two-hour period last night, but given the lack of concrete information about what seems to be a delicate situation, we won’t make jokes about it until at least next week. Well, we’ll try. But we do find it interesting that in the aftermath of a major sex scandal that led to Moore’s firing and arrest, Michigan decided to promote Biff Poggi, who is himself sex personified, as the interim head coach. Excited to see how all of that shakes out! Anyway, it was a good weekend of football that set us up for a few more fantastic weeks of football, so without further ado, let’s get to it.

But First, HBTFD

Georgia fans do not need little old me to explain how big of a win this was for the Dawgs, but the feeling of catharsis that Saturday’s SEC Championship provided us all with has not yet faded into memory nearly a week later. The 2021 national championship felt like the moment we’d officially rid ourselves of the Bama curse, until Saban broke our hearts in Atlanta in 2023 and Kalen DeBoer pulled out one-possession games both last year and earlier this year. Somehow, despite beating them in the literal national championship game just a few years ago, the feeling that we would just never beat them was stronger than ever. There’d been some luck and improbable plays that had led to those past Bama victories, and Kirby’s program is just too good for Alabama to keep beating us over and over and over again. Surely we’d pull off another 4th quarter victory against them at some point, but it damn sure didn’t feel like something we could ever expect.

What we certainly could never expect - or therefore imagine how awesome it would be - was a full 60-minute, complete and utter ass whooping of the Crimson Tide with the entire country watching. That is exactly what happened in Saturday’s 28-7 win, where even Bama’s lone touchdown came at the heels of multiple UGA penalties and a missed assignment on defense. It was a total shellacking of an inferior opponent in Alabama, in Atlanta, for the SEC Championship Game. That is a fact, a reality that my brain is still struggling to process.

I’m not exactly sure how this playoff will turn out for our Dawgs. Our offense has been banged up and his fallen back into some of their early season ways of looking a little unsure and reserved at times, without a serious downfield passing game. That could come back to bite us if we don’t get healthier and keep defenses honest by respecting our ability to stretch the ball downfield. But what I do know is this: we have the most physical team in the entire country. We have the best 4th quarter team in the entire country. We have an incredibly resilient team that is led by the best coach in the entire country. We are still incredibly young, but have improved (especially on defense) throughout the season more than anybody in the country. Yes, there are multiple teams in this playoff bracket that could beat us if we don’t bring our A-game. But if you asked me right now who I think is built to win the 2025 College Football Playoff more than anybody else in the field, I’d struggle to pick anybody over Kirby Smart’s Georgia Bulldogs.

4th & Forever Bowl Pick ‘Em Contest

One of our favorite annual traditions around here is the 4th & Forever Bowl Pick ‘Em Contest. We sincerely love connecting with our readers, but also kicking your ass. (Editor’s note: neither of us has ever won). Do we do preliminary research on how Louisville QB Miller Moss’s foot injury is progressing? We’ll never tell you, but we do expect him to put his body on the line before facing Toledo at 2 pm two days before Christmas against Toledo in the venerable Bush's Boca Raton Bowl of Beans. Hell yes we do. This sport is so, so dumb, and as much as people will proclaim bowl games are dead, they’ll never die because ESPN knows you’ll watch that Bush’s Bowl of Beans. 

Last year, bowl viewership grew by 20% and bowl games averaged 2.7 million viewers. To put that in perspective, 3 million people watched Duke-UNC in basketball each time they faced off last year, and that Duke team had household name Cooper Flagg. That’s the same number of people who watched the Armed Forces Bowl between Oklahoma and Navy last year, and just a little bit more than the viewership of the GameAbove Sports Bowl between Pittsburgh and Toledo. 

Do we care about TV viewership numbers? Hell no, and neither should you. Unless you’re a fan of FSU who needs the money from the ACC to save your dying program. But the Bowl Challenge adds some spice and vigor to the bowl season. We’re looking forward to taking you to the woodshed.

Signup Link: 4th & Forever

Password: Newsletter (if you did this in previous years, the group should pop up for you - you’ll just need to re-enter the password)

Rules: $20 entry fee and 1 entry per person, straight up pick ‘em. Venmo @Rand-Fisher or @Tate-Smillie. Venmo is preferred but we accept any other form of payment like Zelle or CashApp. Rand is wary of Zelle after almost getting scammed by a guy off Facebook Marketplace so send your Zelle to Tate. 

Prize: Winner takes all and gets a 4th & Forever shirt. 

Deadline: First bowl kicks off this Saturday at noon ET, so get your picks in, and please remember to pay so we don’t have to track you down.

Want to support 4th & Forever with minimal effort? The easiest thing you can do is click this ad. You can also Venmo us, but this is pretty much the same thing.

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Army-Navy

Not one of, but the best tradition in college football is back on Saturday as the Army-Navy Game kicks off in Baltimore. Kickoff is at 3 pm on CBS, but if there’s one pregame show to tune into, it’s this one, so you can watch the cadets and Midshipmen march on the field, the flyover, and of course, the prisoner exchange, which is one of the most euphoric and powerful moments you’ll see in college football. One-half of the 4&F contingent has made the trek to an Army-Navy game in his lifetime, while the other shouldn’t be allowed to call himself a college football fan until he does, much less write a newsletter about it. 

The game is still 48 hours away but like every great CFB rivalry, the war has already begun. Earlier this week, Army posted a video that made it seem like they had stolen Navy’s live goat mascot, Billy 38. However, thanks to some very impressive goat horn structure sleuths on Twitter, it seems they stole the retired Billy 37 and passed it off as Billy 38. Or they just got a random goat and dressed it up to look like the real thing. Props to Army for the stunt to rile up the cadets, though.

Navy comes in as touchdown favorites and trounced Army last year, but the Black Knights have won 6 of the past 9 meetings after finally breaking their 14-year losing streak. The guy to watch on Navy is senior QB Blake Horvarth, who leads the nation’s most potent rushing attack. Horvarth is the team’s leading rusher and leads the American conference is rushing yards/game. Right behind him is Army’s junior QB Cale Hellums, who also, unsurprisingly, leads the team in rushing and is near the top of the conference as well. Navy passes the ball more often than Army, but both teams are triple-option at heart. This game always delivers, no matter the score, and we couldn’t encourage you enough to indulge. 

Notre Dame Freakout

Sherrone Moore somehow had only the second worst crashout of the week, and we hope that he’s writing a letter to Notre Dame AD Pete Bevacqua from his Washtenaw County jail cell thanking him for having an even more embarrassing week than him. As we all know by now, Notre Dame was (somewhat) surprisingly left out of the 12 team field on Sunday, having been jumped in the rankings by Miami - who beat Notre Dame in Week 1 - after weeks of being ranked ahead of the Hurricanes. Before we dive into the week that was in South Bend, we’ll provide the caveat that we do understand why Notre Dame nation is upset. We here at 4th & Forever have been very clear about our thoughts on the weekly CFP rankings in that we recognize that they are utterly pointless and, actually, actively harm the committee’s credibility by the time the final rankings are revealed because their previous rankings constantly back them into a corner that they have to illogically explain their way out of. But the situation is this: Notre Dame and Miami were both 10-2, had almost identical strengths of schedule, and Miami beat the Irish head-to-head this very season. Notre Dame played two playoff teams, lost to them both, and was left out of the playoff in place of a team that beat them on the field. It is important to remember that we are talking about the ~11th ranked team in the country after decades upon decades of having somewhere between zero to four teams competing for an actual national championship in this sport. This isn’t 2004 Auburn, 2014 Baylor and TCU, or 2023 Florida State and Georgia. We are talking about a team that was begging for the final spot in the second-ever 12-team playoff.

After the Irish were left out on Sunday, Notre Dame’s athletic department announced that the team would not accept a bowl invite and would instead take their ball and go home. On Monday, Bevacqua told reporters that the CFP rankings were a “farce”, and that the playoff was “stolen from our student athletes.” All of this could have been chalked up to a sudden emotional overreaction and quickly forgotten, but Bevacqua and ND were far from done. On Tuesday, Bevacqua held a press conference calling out ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips for the crime of lobbying for Miami - an actual ACC program - to get the final spot in the playoff. Bevacqua claimed that Phillips and the ACC had done "permanent damage to the relationship” between Notre Dame and the conference that they share a scheduling partnership with. These official statements from Notre Dame were surrounded by a full-on outcry from former Notre Dame players and fans, claiming that something truly egregious and unfair was done to them.

For a multitude of reasons, it cannot be understated how truly ridiculous this line of messaging is. Let’s briefly recap where Notre Dame stands as a figure in this sport. 

1. Notre Dame remains independent in football despite being a full member of the ACC in all other sports (except hockey), but is in a football scheduling partnership with the conference, who schedules five ND vs ACC games per season.

2. The College Football Playoff Management Committee, the group that plans and organizes the structure of the playoff (not the rankings/selection committee), is made up of eleven people: the ten FBS conference commissioners, and Notre Dame’s President.

3. On Tuesday, a past-negotiated clause in the current CFP Memorandum of Understanding clarified that on a move-forward basis, Notre Dame will be guaranteed a spot in the CFP as long as they finish in the top 12 in the CFP rankings. This means that Notre Dame, for seemingly no real reason other than its outsized influence in this process, essentially gets the same benefits as conference champions, who, in limited fashion (only the top 5-ranked champions), are the only teams to be guaranteed a spot in the playoff.

It is completely f***ing asinine for Notre Dame to be doing this level of crying, to be posturing like some horribly unfair crime has happened to them. There is not a single program in college football that receives anywhere near the undue benefits that Notre Dame gets, all so Notre Dame can hold onto its long-outdated and only self-important concept of “independence”. Just so we’re clear on this CFP in particular, we’d like to remind everybody that we’re in the situation where there are two G5 teams in while ND was left out because the ACC fell on its face and let 7-5 Duke win the conference. All of Notre Dame’s problems in 2025 could have been solved, even if it had lost to the only two playoff-caliber teams it played all year, if they were just a full member of the conference, played in the ACC Championship, and won the game to earn an automatic qualification. It is Notre Dame’s status as an independent itself that landed the Irish in this position this year, and it is that exact same independent status that they’ve managed to leverage into advantages that no other team in college football will benefit from in the future. 

Notre Dame wasn’t done with its pettiness quite yet - on Wednesday, it was reported that Notre Dame’s bookstore had cancelled a scheduled book signing event on Friday for author Ivan Maisel, a member of the 2025 Playoff Selection Committee, who said he was disappointed. Notre Dame was seemingly shamed into putting the event back on, but holy sh*t that is a bad look. And all of this hasn’t just been a bad look to fans - college football administrators are fed up with Notre Dame’s actions, as well. On Tuesday, Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark described Bevacqua’s behavior as “egregious.” On Wednesday night, Yahoo!’s Dan Wolken reported that other administrators throughout college football are saying they won’t schedule Notre Dame in the future due both to this week-long temper tantrum, in combination with the absurd automatic qualification status Notre Dame will receive for the playoff moving forward. This situation will likely lead to changes in how Notre Dame manages its conference/scheduling affiliations in the future, but we must never let this program off the hook of shame for its behavior in December of 2025. No program in the sport receives more undeserved preferential treatment, and yet no program has ever cried this hard about being snubbed from the national championship/playoff. Let us never forget the absurdity. 

The Fox is in the Henhouse

This was inevitable, but it doesn’t make it any less shocking, and most importantly, likely one of the stupidest decisions in college football history, Utah’s athletic department has gotten into bed with private equity. I mean, Tennessee hiring Jeremy Pruitt, Kirby Smart’s fake punt against Bama, Reggie Bush’s lateral against Texas, Tulane leaving the SEC, and UNC hiring Belichick (lol) are undoubtedly some of the worst decisions in college football history, yet somehow, this is almost guaranteed to be worse.

Utah created an entity with private equity backing that could generate upwards of $500 million in greater investment into the athletic department. Select boosters will be able to buy into this entity and, as they already do, influence the board, which will be chaired by the Utes AD. To be clear, some schools like Clemson and Kentucky have already created entities separate from their athletic departments to raise revenue, but not with the dementor that is private equity. 

As I heard on a podcast this week, just about everything in America that used to be good is probably due to private equity. Jersey Mikes, Panera, newspapers, hell, even Denny’s and Red Lobster. Gah! Utah is the first to the market here, but will assuredly not be the last. This is just the most recent trend in college athletic departments trying to raise money and attract recruits just like waterfalls in locker rooms and indoor practice facilities were all the rage ten years ago. The key difference is, waterfalls and sleeping pods don’t show up at your door like a mafia enforcer and cut your volleyball team. 

Utah AD Mark Harlan said of the deal that it’s a “short-term solution,” while the CFO said, “the upside is the difference between surviving and thriving.” Harlan and random CFO man likely will be retired in Park City by the time the check comes due because, as we all know, private equity doesn’t exist to lose money. The doomsday scenario is that non-revenue teams and important athletic department positions get cut while Utah gets dug into a massive financial hole they can’t recover from. UCLA and Maryland are prominent examples of mismanaged athletic departments with massive debt and they definitely didn’t use PE, they’re just stupid. I understand Utah and every other non-P2 school is in a very tough position right now, but this can’t possibly be the answer. Just a few months ago, Michigan and USC denied the Big 10’s private equity proposal and Michigan’s admin said they didn’t want (or need) a payday loan. That’s a champagne problem for Michigan and USC, but props to Michigan for having common sense for once.

Lastly, what exactly is this entity going to do to raise money that the athletic department isn’t currently able to do, or that they haven’t thought of doing? There are 130ish FBS teams and, therefore, 130ish athletic departments and marketing professionals who have been trying to think of innovative ways to raise revenue, increase ticket sales, sponsorships, etc. for their schools. If someone had a good idea, it would’ve been thought of by now. There might be a silver bullet out there, but we can guarantee you it is now with private equity.

Michigan…

Michigan fired head coach Sherrone Moore for cause yesterday after an anonymous tip led them to investigate if he had an "inappropriate relationship with a staff member." Moore is sitting in a county jail as of writing and is an overall sad situation, but even more unfortunate, not that surprising for Michigan recently.

Michigan is probably going to go after Alabama’s Kalen DeBoer, who is from South Dakota but has spent time at Indiana and Eastern Michigan. They’re going to have to wait and likely hope Alabama loses to Oklahoma next weekend before they can interview, but then again, Lane Kiffin just left a playoff team like 20 seconds ago. Hell, call him up, he’d probably at least answer. If not DeBoer, just about everyone not named Kirby Smart or Ryan Day is on the table. Lincoln Riley will probably get a call, and we know damn well Marcus Freeman isn’t doing anything right now. 

But there’s a greater point to be made here, being that the ‘Michigan Man’ ethos of being holier than thou is fraudulent and rotten. Harbaugh won a national title and bolted for the NFL before the NCAA could levy penalties, fines, show-causes, and even more suspensions on him. We all know the deal with Connor Stalions, but you might’ve forgotten the Harbaugh’s old QB coach, Matt Weiss, had his laptop seized by the FBI and indicted on hacking into computers to seize intimate pictures of female athletes at UM. 

Michigan’s athletic integrity has come crashing down quicker than the Berlin Wall, and they sure as hell don’t need a ‘Michigan Man’ to clean up this mess. One of the best candidates for this job would be former DC Jesse Minter, but he got out of dodge with Harbaugh and is also under a show-cause penalty by the NCAA for recruiting violations. The head of the snake also needs to get cut off sooner rather than later. AD Warde Manuel - also a Michigan alum - has been in place since 2016. Michigan defended Stallions like he was wrongly convicted of merging without a blinker, lambasted Ohio State during tattoo gate, and you can read the message boards on your own time after Michigan State had the Mel Tucker sexual abuse scandal. The athletic department has been a sewer ever since they sold their souls to get Harbaugh back…but banners hang forever.

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Rand & Tate met a few years ago through a mutual friend who went to college with Rand and high school with Tate. Tate went to Georgia and has spent the last few years collecting championship rings while traveling to watch the Dawgs. Rand went to known CFB powerhouse Wake Forest, and currently pays rent in Charlotte, but is rarely found there with all the work & CFB travel he does.