The DMV, US Foreign Policy, & Fried Chicken - 4 Questions from 4th & Forever

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Good morning and welcome to 4th & Forever, Rand & Tate’s College Football Newsletter. You may or may not notice that we’ve begun the process of selling our souls to corporate overlords. Capitalism can be a bitch sometimes but that hasn’t altered the spirit of this newsletter. For example, is there an advertisement in this newsletter that we’d get money from if you click on the link? Yes...BUT we’re also talking about terrorist organizations, burning furniture, and answering the most pressing question on all your minds: what did Rand write his senior year thesis on? We’re shaping our summer preview plans as we gear up for the season and speaking of, there might be some 4&F gear coming down the pipeline. See, capitalism isn’t that bad Mr. Putin (don’t whack me). So, without further ado, let’s get to it!

4 Questions from 4th & Forever

As we all sit here this morning pretending to be productive at work, the countdown to the 2024 college football season has ticked down to 72 days. That means we’re almost just two months away from the previews and predictions that you all love, the recaps that break down each Saturday, and of course, cooking up some of the worst parlays the world has ever seen. In the meantime, we both posed a few questions for the other to answer, and believe me when I say this: we did not see the questions until we sat down to write. Hot seat, site unseen, whatever you want to call it, there was no editorial oversight by the other and you’ll soon figure out why. The questions highlighted a handful of high-level topics, hypotheticals, and some downright blasphemy as Rand made Tate talk about a world where Kirby Smart becomes Ohio State’s head coach ahead of our conference previews that will begin with the Big 12 next week. Enjoy!

Penn State is easily the prime example of a team that couldn’t crack the four-team playoff over the past decade but would have made a twelve-team playoff just about every year had the new format been in place. Rand, do the 2024 Nittany Lions have a chance to finally break through and make some real noise this fall?

Rand: I held strong last year by not believing in the Penn State and QB Drew Allar hype and will not let you, Tate, convince me otherwise. Back in our first-ever newsletter Tate wrote, “New QB Drew Allar looks to vault Penn State into being something more than just a “good win” for OSU and UM.” Just one week later we had a roundtable discussion on Penn State and Tate doubled down by saying, “...the possibility for a massive upgrade at QB with 5-star Drew Allar, Penn State has the chance to take the step that we’ve been waiting for them to take for years.” Drew Allar was 0-2 against Michigan and Ohio State last year where he went 28-64 (44% completion rate) for 261 yards, 2 TDs, 0 INTs (yay!), and 5 sacks combined. That’s a stat line an Air Raid QB would put up in one half, not four. So I now ask you, are we really going to do the Drew Allar thing again? 

Penn State brought in the OC from Kansas, Andy Kotelnicki, who transformed the Jayhawks offense into one of the most explosive offenses in college football. Explosive and Penn State are words that haven’t gone together in the past decade unless you’re talking about scandals. RB Nick Singleton returns after a stellar sophomore campaign but when was the last time Penn State didn’t have a future NFL player in their backfield? WR Julian Fleming is a former 5-star from Ohio State who got lost in the shuffle at the Columbus NFL WR factory but should be the featured WR1. DE Abdul Carter is a future 1st round draft pick but new DC Tom Allen (former Indiana head coach) must replace a lot of star power and implement his own system following the departure of Manny Diaz to Duke. Penn State is the most proven, unproven commodity and that hasn’t changed since Franklin has been in town. Promising (white) QB? Check. Stud RB? Check. One good WR and a hodgepodge of guys behind him? Check. 1st round NFL caliber DE? Check, check, and check. I could’ve written the same thesis in 2019 with Sean Clifford, Journey Brown, KJ Hamler, and Micah Parsons when they went 11-2. 2016 with Trace McSorley, Saquon Barkley, Chris Godwin, and Marcus Allen when they went 10-3. Why should I expect anything less this year?

A quick schedule glance shows they’ve got tough games at USC, at Wisconsin, and vs Ohio State but should be favored in every other matchup. Is 9-3 and 10-2 good enough to get them into the playoff? Most likely, but just because the postseason format changed doesn’t mean Penn State will.

Last week we wrote about 2024 conference realignment changes and that got me thinking - which is a dangerous proposition in and of itself - from 2004-2014 fifteen schools either joined or switched Power 5 conferences. They are: Miami, Virginia Tech, Syracuse, Boston College, Louisville, Pittsburgh, Nebraska, Colorado, TCU, Utah, Missouri, Texas A&M, West Virginia, Maryland, and Rutgers.

Combined number of conference titles: 8 (4 - Virginia Tech all before 2011, 2 - Utah, 1 - Pittsburgh (ugh), 1 - TCU which was split with Baylor)

BCS Title or Playoff Appearances: 1 - 2022 TCU

Should we reframe our expectations that teams like Oregon, Texas, Oklahoma, Utah, and theoretically USC and Washington can come into these new conferences and immediately find success? 

Tate: Every example you provided would indicate that the answer is a resounding “yes”, and yet, I’m not sure I can say that. There is no doubt that in past eras of realignment, we’ve seen teams struggle to keep the success that got them “promoted” going to a degree, but this is an entirely new era. Realignment in the past was largely done for conferences to jump into new territories to acquire new cable markets. Did the Big Ten grab Maryland and Rutgers in 2014 to make the league more competitive athletically? Of course not - it got them the NY/NJ and DMV markets for the new Big Ten Network. The same could be said for the SEC with Texas A&M and Missouri, grabbing the Texas and St. Louis/Kansas City markets, but the SEC East was so bad that Mizzou at least made the conference championship a couple of times.

This time is very different. The Big Ten and SEC are no longer trying to simply put their TV networks in more homes - they are attempting to fundamentally change the power dynamics of college athletics for good. The teams that have moved conferences over the past few years aren’t just top 15-30ish teams - they’re teams that have won national championships, some of the biggest brands in college football. We’re no longer asking if UCF or Maryland have the athletes to move up and compete quickly - we’re talking about the two schools who played this game less than 20 years ago.

Now, does that mean I think all of these teams are going to seamlessly flow into their new leagues with no dropoff? Certainly not. USC and UCLA have spent a decade playing some of the most un-physical football you could possibly play, and now they’re going to be traveling into cold northwestern territories to play teams that want to run the ball down your throat 50 times a game. Washington was in the national championship last year but lost everybody from the team, including their head coach. They are going to struggle in the Big Ten, probably for more than just this year. But Texas is one of the best programs in the sport right now with athletes that only ~5 programs in the sport can say they have, and frankly, so does Oregon under Dan Lanning. Are the schedules going to be harder? Yes. Are the “down” years going to look worse now that you’re in the SEC/Big Ten in the years to come? Of course. But both Oregon and Texas are potential national championship-caliber squads in year one in their new leagues. We don’t need to downgrade our expectations for these teams, we might need to upgrade them.

I’ll broaden it up a little for you Rand - what CFB storyline are you most interested in following headed into the 2024 season?

Rand: In the days of the BCS of 4-team playoff I could make some stuff up about how I’m keenly interested in how USC’s defense, Iowa’s offense, or Alabama as a program is going to look post Alex Grinch, Nepobaby Ferentz, and Saban respectively. However, the 12-team playoff is upon us and I cannot be more excited to watch the season unfold. The 4-team playoff was always a precursor or a trial run for the inevitable 12-team. CFB fans have begged, prophesied, and now manifested this format for decades and it’s finally here. Gone are the days of hypothetical matchups, split national champions, and FSU fans saying they were robbed. It’s time for the programs who have excused eons of underperformance and mediocrity to put their money where their mouth is - looking at you Tennessee, Nebraska, Penn State, Texas A&M, and NC State. Make no mistake, the 12-team playoff will still favor the big schools in the big programs but there’s an opportunity for every FBS school to make this playoff. 

Four days before Christmas we’re going to get four playoff games on campuses throughout the country. Lindy’s CFB preview magazine is predicting we will see Liberty @ Texas, Missouri @ Oregon, Notre Dame @ Ole Miss, and Alabama @ Michigan. The winner of those games will go on to play Georgia, Oklahoma State, Ohio State, and Florida State. Who didn’t want this again?

The regular season will still be important, as will conference championship games. Yes, an early season loss might mean less and we could end up with a national champion with two or more losses. However, that same early season loss would mean a lot for seeding purposes just as a late season loss in a conference championship game would. For instance, this year Texas could lose to Michigan, Georgia, and the SEC Championship game this year and still make the playoff. However, they’d likely be relegated to a 10 or 11 seed, have to go on the road to a team like Notre Dame or Oregon, and then win 2 more games against likely top 4 teams. Would Texas be a deserving national champion? Absolutely. We’d also unequivocally be able to say they’re in fact back. If you’re apprehensive this makes college football closer to becoming the NFL well I’ve got news for you sweetheart. That’s been happening under your nose for the past 20 years, the 12-team playoff is just more pungent. Also, Deion Sanders.

I couldn’t think of a good question so I asked our future overlord ChatGPT to give me a random CFB team and he/she/it spat out West Virginia. So, Tate, without spoiling our Big 12 preview next week, encapsulate West Virginia for me holistically. 

Where do they stand in the new Big 12 hierarchy but you’re not allowed to cheat and say ‘somewhere in the middle but legit chance to compete for a conference championship’ like I would. Can they get back to the Steve Slaton/Pat White days or are 8-9 wins more realistic? Are they better suited in the ACC? Do you like the song Country Roads and have you ever burned a couch?

Tate: West Virginia is a weird one because they were the first Power 5 team that joined a conference that we deemed to be geographically insane for them, and there is no doubt in my mind that it negatively impacted their program over the past decade. If you had asked me three years ago if I thought the Mountaineers were better suited in the ACC (despite the ACC viewing WVU as academically less-than… elitist losers), it wouldn’t have taken me more than a second to say “yes.” Well now the ACC seems to be falling apart, and the Big Ten is now having UCLA travel to New Jersey to play a conference game this October, so geography is clearly becoming less important…to a degree because I’m pretty sure it’s still going to matter to recruits. And that’s West Virginia’s problem.

WVU took the Big East by storm in the late 2000s under Rich Rodriguez because it was able to acquire elite-level players that the rest of the league simply could not defend. Rand mentioned Steve Slaton and Pat White in his question, but there were also guys like Tavon Austin and Noel Devine who just terrorized defenses in their years. Rich Rod certainly deserves credit for getting those guys on campus, but I’d argue that even more credit should go to the fact that West Virginia’s biggest games every season were happening much more locally, and not in Stillwater or Norman, Oklahoma. If I’m a low 4-star recruit from the DMV area, would I rather go to UVA, VT, or even down to UNC and play my games on the East Coast, or would I rather go to WVU with back-to-back trips to TCU and Texas Tech in November? We’ve thrown out geography as a factor in conference realignment, but it still matters when high-level players are choosing where they want to play.

With all of that said, this is obviously a new Big 12, too, without Texas and Oklahoma. We’ll discuss it in far more depth during our Big 12 preview next week, but this league seems to be wide open now that OU and UT are gone. West Virginia has seen success at times in this league, and now it seems more open for the taking than ever. Head coach Neal Brown was on the hot seat last year but coached his way out of it. I think Brown is a good coach, but I am not sure if he has the chops to start getting those high-level athletes to come up to Morgantown like the old days. 8-9 wins is a realistic expectation for this program in this league - maybe all it takes is one good coach, or maybe this program is too geographically screwed to acquire the talent it will take to keep that expectation realistic. Evaluating WVU’s program does make one thing abundantly clear, though: we should bring back the Big East.

And no, Rand, I have never burned a couch but I do like beer, fire, and Country Roads. If we ever take a trip up to Morgantown I am not afraid to burn some furniture, whether you’re sitting on it or not.

Rand, we write this newsletter because, at some point in our childhoods, we fell into a hopeless addiction to this dumb sport. What was the one moment when you were a kid that made you realize this was the greatest sport on earth?

Rand: I don’t know if there’s one specific moment in time when I became a college football aficionado but there are a few games that unlocked a core memory (google it, boomers). My first ever college football memory is watching the 2002 Seattle Bowl between Wake and Oregon which randomly launched my fandom for the Oregon Ducks before they were cool so spare with the bandwagon slander. 10 years later I remember Oregon and LSU kicked off the season in Arlington and after being sent to bed at halftime I tried to sneak back downstairs to continue watching it before getting caught by my parents. God forbid I enjoy myself on a Saturday night by watching football! Other fun superlatives I can ramble off: the first time I cried after a Wake game was in 2004 following a 2OT loss in Death Valley which resulted in me sitting on my front lawn for about an hour. The first Wake game I ever remember being at was a 2003 loss to Maryland and my dad and I were up in the pressbox huddled next to a space heater watching some Terps running back named Bruce Allen rush for 240 yards and 3 TDs. I was so young and naive back then.

Not to make it all about Wake but I think if I posed the same question to you, your answers would heavily revolve around the early 2000’s and perennially underperforming Georgia football teams. Heyo! My obsession with college football is a product of my Wake Forest fandom, the teams they played, and where Wake fits into the national picture. Answer: in the corner of the frame with their name misspelled to Wake Forrest Deamon Deacons or someone asking if it’s in South Carolina. One last story I’ll tell that encapsulates my Wake Forest and college football obsession at a young age. In 2008 Wake was playing Vanderbilt the Saturday of Thanksgiving and it was a night game, 40 degrees, and raining. My sister was a junior cheerleader meaning we had to be at the game early and stay through the first half. That’s not generally an issue for me except at the time I didn’t have a driver's license and shockingly, my Mom isn’t a big fan of freezing her ass off in the rain. We were sitting under this tent outside of the stadium eating Mountain Fried Chicken (it ain’t greasy) when a Wake marketing staffer sprinted up to me and begged me to be the kickoff kid. The thing where you run out on the field and grab the tee for some sponsorship after the first kick. Kind of demoralizing now that I know some schools employ dogs to do this. She told me I was chosen because there was no one else at the game and who’d be crazy enough to willingly watch Vanderbilt v Wake in these conditions? Even though we left at halftime - eyeroll - I had a blast and Wake won 23-10. Sorry, Mom. 

I’ll give you a fun one because I don’t think the next one will be. You’re college football’s czar for a day. What are the two things you’re changing? Could be conference realignment, playoff structure, kicking Pat McAfee and Desmond Howard off College GameDay, or requiring all Auburn & Florida fans to get their licenses renewed at the DMV monthly? 

Tate: Let me make one public service announcement: if you see a Florida license plate anywhere near you on any road, you need to operate your vehicle with the utmost concern and caution. You are dealing with a person who has no regard for their own life, let alone you and your family’s.

To answer the question, my first act as college football’s dictator would be to rewrite the transfer rules - everyone gets one free transfer with no forfeited eligibility, but if you transfer for a second time, you have to sit out for a year. This is admittedly a little bit of a cop-out answer because it’s not the NCAA that wants to allow unlimited transfers, it’s the US court system that’s told them they have to. But given my stunning looks and the general cult of personality that seems to follow me around my life, I think I could pull this off.

In all seriousness, this is the biggest issue in the sport right now, and it has gotten completely out of control. Alabama’s starting left tackle played in the Rose Bowl on January 1st then transferred to Iowa for the spring semester, and then transferred back to Alabama to be their starting left tackle again. UCF linebacker Zavier Carter announced his intentions to enter the portal this spring - his next school will be his 5th in five semesters. It’s entirely out of hand, and on top of making life miserable for coaches who are trying to maintain a roster as well as being horrible for fans trying to learn and love their team’s young players, it seems to me it’s often bad for the players as well. We here at 4th & Forever are about as player-friendly as it comes, but you can’t tell me Zavier Carter’s life is improving just because he’s allowed to do this, and he’s far from the only one. Unlimited transfers with no repercussions are bad for the sport.

Outside of officially labeling Auburn University as a terrorist organization, I’m not sure there is a second issue I’m as passionate about fixing. Sure, I’d love to force the PAC-12 to come back, but that toothpaste is so far out of the tube that I’m not sure what I’d really be “fixing” - those schools would fall financially further and further behind the Big Ten and SEC, I’d just be kicking the can down the road. I’d have loved to propose a plan for the schools to pay their athletes directly rather than begging their fans to do so, but the House vs. NCAA settlement has already cleared the path for that.

So how about this… a G5 playoff. Despite the new 12-team playoff format reserving a spot for the highest-ranked G5 champion moving forward, it has never been more clear that the power conference schools are further separated from the G5 schools than the G5 schools are from FCS programs. The new TV revenue going to the sport’s top programs makes comparing P5 schools to G5 schools less of an apples-to-oranges discussion to more of an apples-to-wagyu beef comparison. And the transfer portal has made it that virtually any high-level G5 player will transfer to a P5 program before his college career is over. It’s always been a bit silly that we consider Miami (OH) and Ohio State the same thing, but it is asinine at this point.

So why shouldn’t these schools do their own thing and play for their own title? The big TV networks just want the big brands competing against each other anyway and the G5’s invite to the current format is nothing more than a gesture of generosity and inclusion. A G5 playoff obviously wouldn’t draw near the television revenue that the current 12-team format does, and it would be an admission that the G5 no longer considers itself as a part of the highest level of the sport anymore, but this is why I’m czar dammit. Give me Fresno State @ Georgia Southern leading into App State @ Marshall on a December Thursday night. Who wouldn’t like that?

Florida would also be declared a terrorist organization.

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Alright, Rand, the fun is over. Every month that passes it seems the ACC is closer to falling apart, and the House vs. NCAA settlement is going to accelerate the already rapidly increasing divide between the haves and have-nots in college sports. Wake Forest has an undeniably great athletics program, especially when you consider the lack of resources (read: $$) available to them. How do you see Wake navigating the changing landscape in college athletics - particularly college football - to remain a relevant player at the highest level?

Rand: Any Wake team that is merely mediocre is punching above their weight and it has been that way since the University was founded. Wake fans will be the first to tell you they have the smallest enrollment (less than 5,000 undergrads) in the Power 4 by a wide margin. The only FBS schools that are smaller than them are the three service academies, Tulsa, and Rice. Duke, Stanford, and Vanderbilt are not far behind but they’re 33% bigger than Wake. There are only 82,000 people in Wake Forest’s alumni base which would barely fill Clemson’s football stadium. Put another way, Wake Forest was founded in 1834 and there will be more students on UCF’s campus this fall than the number of people who have graduated from Wake Forest…ever.

What was the question again? How did a small, private, baptist, and tobacco-funded institution become one of the 67 Power 4 conference schools that consistently overachieves relative to its peers? I could write a thesis on the history of Wake Forest athletics. In fact, I tried but much to my dismay, my professor who focused on international relations and US foreign policy wouldn’t let me. I settled on measuring US military response following terrorist attacks. Light, 30-page read if anyone is interested. 

Anyways, you’re right Tate. Big alumni base = large number of boosters = more money. Wake certainly doesn’t have the first two but they do have money. However, their prerogative hasn’t been to funnel it into air-conditioned lockers or heated bathroom floors for the football team. That changed in the past decade thanks to a few generous boosters who transformed Wake’s facilities into some of the nicest in the ACC but we don’t have unlimited money or boosters. Luckily those donations were made pre-NIL and whatever this House settlement ends up being but of course, those jacuzzis will be outdated next year if they aren’t already.

Wake is set up for success in the next iteration of college athletics but the two unanswerable questions are when is the next round of realignment and who are we competing against? Right now they’re in the same conference as Clemson, Florida State, and UNC who are all but gone from the ACC by 2034. Can Wake Forest survive with the likes of Miami, Louisville, Virginia Tech, and NC State? Undoubtedly. I also cherry-picked those schools because Wake has more national championships than all four of them despite having fewer varsity sports. Wake isn’t a sleeping giant by any stretch of the imagination but they’re also not some poor, apathetic program that needs to be taken behind the barn like Boston College. What sucks for Wake fans and other institutions alike is it might not matter what you’ve done, what you have or have-not, or how much you’ve prepared for the future of college athletics. A Super League is coming and that ship is leaving port without Wake, Louisville, Kansas State, Duke, and Texas Tech. Will we have the opportunity to compete at the highest level of the sport? Will we be able to decide or are big state schools and some self-entitled Irish Catholics in Indiana going to decide for us? The unknown sucks but what is there to do about it other than what we’re already doing?

Here’s a hypothetical for you: For the next three years, Georgia finishes with a Top 5 recruiting class, an average regular season record of 10-2 (never undefeated), 0 SEC championships, and 3 playoff appearances but never makes it past the semifinals. Georgia is nowhere near firing Kirby but the 2022 natty would be half a decade old and the luster has worn off. Do you know who won a natty half a decade ago? Clemson.

Meanwhile, Ryan Day wins a national championship at Ohio State next year but flames out the following 2 years and darts for the NFL. Ohio State calls Kirby Smart and offers to make him the first $20 million/year coach. Convince me why Kirby shouldn’t take them up on it.

Tate: Rand I understand what your question is getting at, but I couldn't help but shake my head while reading it. Kirby Smart played football at Georgia, where his wife Mary Beth played basketball at the same time. His kids (15, 15, and 12) have spent the past 8 formative years of their lives in Athens, and the Smarts are currently renovating a multi-million dollar house to move into, right across from Vince Dooley’s former home in the city.

On top of that, Kirby likely already has a statue bust of himself just waiting to be erected at any moment. Our beloved Dawgs - his beloved Dawgs - had not won a championship in 41 years when he won in 2021. Then he won again in 2022 and is now the favorite headed into 2024. Even if he went to the Tennessee Titans and won 5 straight Super Bowls, his legacy will always be about his time in Athens, GA. Georgia and its surrounding states are the most fertile recruiting grounds in the entire country, and nobody spends more money on recruiting than the University of Georgia. Kirby has every resource, every built-in benefit, and as much proof of concept that he could possibly need at UGA. He is UGA.

More than anything, though, he would say no to Ohio State because of something that even UGA fans likely need to come to grips with: Kirby Smart is not going to do this for much longer. The current state of college football coaching is in shambles in the world of free transfers combined with NIL - a former Nick Saban staffer recently said that coaches at top programs are working seven-day weeks, 42 weeks out of the year. Kirby has made it clear, including to Nick Saban’s face ahead of last year’s SEC Championship, that he does not intend to coach nearly as long as Saban did, and rumors around Athens tell the same tale. Kirby has another 10 years of relentlessly pursuing championships… if we are lucky. Unless Ohio State will let him golf and eat Ron Swanson-level meals 4 days a week, there is no amount of money that would make him start his program-building over to go spend the last ~5 years of his career in Ohio.

Texts of the Week

“Definitely put in Kolten Smith. That worked very well last time.” - Sam Weinbach. Kolten Smith gave up 11 runs in one inning two days before

“NC State saw we were going all black and decided to bring out the most ass uni’s possible.” - Alex Sztejnberg

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 4thandforevercfb.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.