Rocks, Horses, & PVC Pipes - The Best and Worst CFB Traditions

Good morning and welcome to 4th & Forever, Rand & Tate’s College Football Newsletter. This newsletter may look different but our content remains the same: rocks, horses, PVC pipes. In this edition, Rand discusses how childhood trauma led to getting heckled by elementary schoolers last year while Tate picks a fight with the entire state of South Carolina. So without further ado, let’s get to it!

4th & Forever Housekeeping

You may or may not have noticed by now but 4&F is looking a little different in your inbox this morning. We moved away from Gmail & Wix to a platform called beehiiv, hence the new email address, newsletter framework, and revamped website. The good news about this move is no action is needed on your end. The bad news is beehiiv gives us the capability to make our content more dynamic so we’ve been brainstorming, thinking, and talking. That sentence alone should scare almost all of you. We surprised ourselves too that we could talk about business strategy and subscriber growth instead of Oklahoma’s quarterback succession plan or if UConn football is salvageable. Don’t let NASA or supermodels get wind of our intellectual curiosity. 

We’ve got a lot of cool ideas planned for the rest of the offseason and once the season kicks off. Perhaps 4&F merchandise is on the way. Maybe Tate will attend his first-ever Wake Forest football game. Have we mentioned there’s a new CFB video game coming out in 2 months? The point is, we appreciate all of your support and we’re excited for what’s to come. As always if you have feedback, comments, or suggestions don’t hesitate to reach out. That’s enough corporate talk for now. We need a dopamine rush so what better way to achieve that than making fun of fan bases, dumb traditions, and discussing Stormy Daniels?

College Football Traditions

It’s the middle of May which means the NBA and NHL playoffs are in full swing, the MLB season is hitting its stride while college baseball accelerates to its postseason, and absolutely nothing is going on in the world of college football. We have plenty of preseason content coming up soon, but in the meantime, we here at 4th & Forever have been reminiscing on some of our favorite experiences over the years, and we figured this would be a good time to reflect on why this stupid ass sport is the greatest thing in the entire world. The absurdity of the various fanbases and the wide-ranging, ridiculous traditions throughout the country make college football unlike anything that any other American sport or European citizen could even dream of. Perhaps the most ridiculous tradition of all is our readers receiving an email about college football every Thursday morning regardless of the fact that the sport only lasts four months out of the year, but we digress. We’re exactly 100 days away from Week 0, so let’s try to invoke some nostalgia and get ready for the season, shall we?

What’s the best college football tradition?

Rand: The answer is Ralphie running across the field at Colorado and whatever Tate writes below is a distant second. There are a lot of live animals in college football but most of them are stationary and held captive like a Russian circus animal. Call me if LSU decides to let Mike the Tiger run on the field or Alabama gets a live elephant, but until then, the answer is Ralphie the Buffalo. Is it recency bias after seeing Ralphie in person last fall? Maybe, but where else can you see a live buffalo run across a football field closely followed by DaBaby and Lil Wayne high-stepping in front of the players? This is Deion Sanders America and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. 

I have to caveat that if you were to google ‘best CFB traditions’ you’d probably get a lot of Army-Navy content. I don’t consider an annual game a tradition, because then it’s just a rivalry. Is Christmas a tradition because it happens every year? Alright, maybe, then what about Tax Day? Getting your car inspected? This is a rectangle isn’t a square conundrum. That being said, Army-Navy is the best rivalry in college football and if it’s not #1 on your bucket list for the uninformed, it’s time to reorganize your list.

Honorable mention: Florida State’s Chief Osceola planting a flaming spear while on a horse called Renegade. Oh, and for all the Georgia readers out there, Florida fans singing ‘I Won’t Back Down’ by Tom Petty is pretty sick. At least it’s lyrically accurate given Florida is usually losing to Georgia Southern or Vanderbilt at the end of the 3rd quarter. 

Tate: Give me a G! Just kidding. Rand stole my clear and obvious #1 choice with Ralphie, so I’ll go with Virginia Tech’s Enter Sandman stadium entrance. Few songs evoke such violent and aggressive urges out of human beings, and the Virginia Tech team’s slow walk out onto the field during a night game is truly an intimidating maneuver. The tradition has a great backstory - in 2001 a member of the VT band started jumping up and down to the song in order to warm himself up on a cold night. Then the rest of the band started jumping. Then the student section started jumping. Legend says that within a minute or two, the entirety of Lane Stadium had lost its collective mind, and the Hokie faithful have never looked back. 

I haven’t yet experienced this one in person quite yet, but it is very much on my bucket list to go watch a bunch of psychotic Virginians lose their sh*t to Metallica when the Hokies get back to being one of the better teams in the country. By then I may even get to take my grandkids!

What’s the most overrated college football tradition?

Tate: I don’t think it would be entirely fair for me to call a tradition “overrated” without having experienced it in person, so you’re safe for now, Wisconsin. The answer is the “most exciting 25 seconds in college football” as Clemson runs down their dumb little hill and touches… a rock? I attended a huge UGA @ Clemson matchup in 2013, a game between two top 10 teams that kicked off at 7:30pm on ABC, and even in that atmosphere I was unimpressed. The players leave the locker room to get themselves back on their team buses, drive around the stadium, and start shaking the buses before getting off and running down the hill. It all felt very contrived and forced to me, and it didn’t come off as intimidating at all. I can’t even imagine how lifeless it must be for a noon game against Boston College in early October.

The origin of Howard’s Rock is also just… really dumb? In 1967, Clemson’s head coach at the time - Frank Howard - was gifted this very rock from some other old guy who picked it up from the actual Death Valley (which is actually a cool place, and not just Auburn with a lake), brought it to the stadium and put it up on a little pedestal, and told his players they could touch the rock if they “gave 110% effort.” Dude what??? That has got to be the dumbest origin story of any college football tradition, and again, the tradition is just touching a random rock. I’m not saying the entire stadium entrance experience is horrible because it’s certainly unique, but the question here is about the most overrated tradition. There are cooler stadium entrances than Clemson’s, and none of them demand such physical effort just to be allowed to rub a rock. Also, Clemson sucks.

Rand: As someone who has been to Death Valley 15+ times in my life I can attest that Clemson does rub a rock before coming down the hill but given I haven’t personally seen a Wake Forest victory in that stadium (last win in 1998) I’m going to do the smart thing and keep my trap shut. I will say that the small ass cannon they shoot off during the run and after every score is loud as hell…and unfortunately I’ve heard that thing go off a lot.

Clemson is also not the only school that rubs or slaps something on the way out of the tunnel. Sidenote: this newsletter is turning slightly promiscuous. Might be the Stormy Daniels testimony from last week. Notre Dame slaps the “Play Like A Champion Today” sign that’s more worshiped by Catholics than The Vatican itself. LSU slaps a PVC pipe that says ‘WIN!’ on their way out of the locker room. Virginia Tech smacks whatever a ‘Hokie Stone’ is on their way out to the field but their Enter Sandman tradition more than makes up for it. Hell, even Maryland rubs a statue of a turtle on their way out of the tunnel. Rubbing and slapping random shit on the way onto the field is ubiquitous in college football. Oh, I just thought of another incredibly stupid tradition. Michigan football slapping the bottom of a Go Blue Banner. If the overweight assistant coaches have to duck to not hit their heads on the bottom of it, it’s not high enough. 

For all the dumb good luck charms football players are supposed to rub before kickoff, none of them are as overrated as Tennessee’s ‘Running through the T’. I’ve seen it personally and for all the fanfare it gets, I truly don’t understand the appeal. I fail to see how it’s any different than any JV high school football entrance throughout America. Tennessee’s band just gets into two lines and marches away from each other. I could probably get a few litters of puppies to do that. At least at Ohio State, they spell out their name in cursive. I’m not a product of the Tennessee public school system but I guess I’m asking too much for advanced handwriting to be a part of the curriculum. When Tennessee runs through a cursive T, call me. Until then keep worshiping your Peyton Manning shrine and blaring Rocky Top. 

What’s the point of having a college football newsletter if we’re going to write about overrated traditions and not mention Texas A&M’s Midnight Yell? If you don’t know what that is, just watch this 1-minute video of the yell leaders making jokes about App State that’ll make your skin crawl. Keep in mind TAMU lost that game the next day. 

What’s the most underrated college football tradition?

Tate: Those who know me know that I am likely being forced against my will in some sort of hostage situation if I ever say something nice about Auburn, but I can assure you that Rand is not holding me captive forcing me to watch the 2009 Wake vs UNC basketball game. I truly hate to admit it, but Auburn’s eagle flight truly is very awesome. I view it as the most underrated tradition in the sport because unless you’ve been to a game at Jordan-Hare Stadium, you wouldn’t think it was all that cool. 

First of all, bald eagles are sick, and using America’s national animal is a great cover for Auburn’s terroristic way of life. The crowd gets pumped to see this majestic creature, and the eagle itself always puts on a show, flying around seemingly the whole stadium before landing on the field. The team runs onto the field, the game starts shortly thereafter, and the Auburn militia fanbase is ready to rock. If you’ve been to Jordan-Hare Stadium to watch your team play at Auburn, you probably know that’s not a fun sight. If you haven’t been, go see this bird.

Rand: Auburn’s bird thing is cool but if you haven’t seen the video of ‘Spirit’ (dumb bird name by the way) running into the press box window during a flight you should. The bird was fine, don’t come after me PETA. Speaking of, I don’t know what it is about live animals and football but they just go together. I mentioned Chief Osceola above but Virginia, Texas Tech, and USC all have live horses running amuck on their field at various points during the game. South Carolina has a big dumb cock sitting on a pedestal while Texas has a grown-ass steer roaming the Texas sidelines. Seeing any of those in person is cool, minus the stupid rooster.

My quasi-answer is so niche and off the wall that you could never accuse AI of writing this newsletter. I want to go to Oklahoma State and watch their fans slap Pokes Paddles against the wall. Is it because I really want one? 100%. Might I cause harm to objects and/or those around me? Likely yes. Point is I want one of those damn paddles to slap it over and over against some soft matting. Related: I have never been tested for ADD but think I can guess the result.  

Other underrated college football traditions that don’t involve bodily harm include Alabama singing ‘Dixieland Delight’ (explicit version) and LSU’s band playing ‘Let The Band Play Neck’ (explicit version). Dishonorable mention for West Virginia fans singing ‘Country Roads’. Song sucked to begin with and isn’t any better with 60,000 drunk Mountaineers trying to belt it.

Given we’ve both extensively traveled around the country for college football so what’s the worst experience you’ve had as a visiting fan?

Rand: As a Wake Forest fan who has been trained through a brutal regiment of getting one's hopes up as a young, naive child, to growing and learning as an adult that we simply can’t have nice things, I tend to keep my mouth shut in road environments. I was chirped by a few 12-year-olds at Clemson last year (no, Mom, I did not instigate a fight with a 5th grader) and the Pitt fans during the 2021 ACC Championship were unsurprisingly malicious, but it was understandable. If I was from Sewickley, PA, and had to go to Robert Morris for undergrad, I’d mask it and hop on the Pitt bandwagon too.

However, I do have a bad fan experience that turned great thanks to Florida State’s semi-recent incompetence in football. In 2022, my dad and I went to Tallahassee to watch the Deacs play the Noles. We went to a bar across the street from the stadium wearing semi-incognito but standard visitor fan garb. Gameday polos, maybe a hat, and 10-year-old khaki shorts we both refuse to throw away but definitely need to. We were having a great time talking to a random and friendly Florida State fan who is now a 4&F subscriber, Bill, until this muscle hamster kid my age came in wearing Oakleys & a Phiten chirping my dad about how FSU was going to kick Wake’s ass. We brushed it off given we were at an FSU bar, FSU was favored by 7, and this kid was about to pop like a pimple with all the roids and creatine he was on. As you can guess by now, FSU lost to Wake for the 3rd year in a row and we went right back to that bar, found that kid, and bought him a beer for his troubles.

Tate: The Georgia/Florida tailgates are filled with severe trash-talking and threats, but that just comes with the territory. In 2018 after the Dawgs got whooped by LSU, we got chirped at us as we walked out of the stadium. I’ve been to countless games at Auburn, including the 2010 UGA game that ended in a brawl with fans fighting in the stands. Georgia Tech football fans live their lives dreaming of the day they once again beat the Dawgs, and being around them is truly a miserable experience.

But nobody, and I mean nobody, is worse than South Carolina fans. The level of constant delusion and anger that fills them is not matched anywhere else in the country. My childhood years happened to be the most successful in South Carolina football history, culminating in their greatest season ever in 2010 when the Gamecocks lost 4 games but made the SEC Championship. Somehow, even through the last ten miserable years for that program, South Carolina fans convince themselves every. single. offseason. that they are about to be the greatest team college football has ever seen. In 2022 while attending 4th & Forever reader Eli Shankman’s wedding, I sat next to a South Carolina fan who asked me if I, as a Georgia fan, was worried about our game at South Carolina in Week 3. When I responded, “Uhhh no, not really man, we just won a national title and it’s Memorial Day right now. I am unequivocally not worried about South Carolina.” He was absolutely flabbergasted. Like, seriously shocked. Georgia went to Columbia and beat the Gamecocks 48-7 a few months later.

The Spurrier years made these people wildly cocky (pun intended) and they are sure to let you know about that as a visiting fan. The area around the stadium in Columbia also just f*cking sucks, it’s arguably the hottest place I’ve ever been to in September, and if your team dares to lose to them, I promise you are going to experience a level of anger you never saw coming. Unless South Carolina gets ranked in the top 10 again sometime soon (lol), I’ll never return to that place.

What’s a college football tradition you haven’t seen in person but want to?

Rand: I want to see Oklahoma’s Boomer Schooner but only if it falls over.

Tate: I wanna see that duck do pushups.

Where in the World is Rand?

On Sunday I’m flying to Albuquerque, NM for a Monday morning site visit, immediately driving 5 hours to Durango, CO for another site visit, before driving another 4 hours to Grand Junction, CO, and staying the night. After a Tuesday morning site visit, I’m driving 5 hours to Salt Lake City for - you’ll never guess - a site visit before taking a redeye back to Atlanta on Wednesday morning. Don’t ask me what I do for a living because I couldn’t tell you either.

Texts of the Week

“Buffalo should offer to join whichever Power 5 conference will pay the most to become that league’s punching bag and inflate stats of star players. After all, WFU has been doing that for Carolina hoops for years.” - Jay Reed who is a former 4&F reader until getting banned for sending Rand this text

“The Anthony Bennett vibes are incredibly strong right now.” - Jack Zucker after the Hawks landed the #1 pick in the draft

“Jalen Brunson I’m pouring honey on you GOAT.” - Knicks fan Alex Sztejnberg, who is married and was at a work event when he wrote this

“Something about seeing Ozuna with that pink bat is just special.” - Adam David

Have a great weekend and we’ll talk to you again next Thursday.

Thank you for reading 4th & Forever. Feel free to forward this to friends & family and if you have comments or suggestions on the newsletter, please let us know. We really appreciate any and all feedback on this project. Check out our website by going to 4thandforever.beehiiv.com where you can drop us suggestions, read and comment on previous newsletters, and argue with us and other readers.

Rand Fisher & Tate Smillie met a few years ago through their good buddy Dave Peljovich who went to college with Rand and high school with Tate. Tate went to Georgia and has spent two years of the last three years collecting championship rings while traveling to watch the Dawgs. Rand went to known CFB powerhouse Wake Forest and currently pays rent in Atlanta but is rarely found there with all the work & CFB travel he does.