The Immune Jim Harbaugh & Alabama in Shambles

Good morning and welcome to 4th & Forever, Rand & Tate’s College Football Newsletter. The coaching carousel and transfer portal keep spinning like those god-forsaken teacups in Disney. But just like Walt himself, you promote the good news and pretend the bad news isn’t your fault. This most definitely applies to college football, Jim Harbaugh, Florida State, and the NCAA, so without further ado, let’s get to it!

Jim Harbaugh Wants Immunity

Legal expert Rand here, who’s fresh off a four-episode binge of Suits which means I’m well versed on the Constitution and the British Monarchy thanks to Meghan Markle. 4th & Forever is Team Sussex for what it’s worth. Anyway, innocent until proven guilty is the letter of the law but luckily for the NCAA lawyers, Washington and Adams weren’t overly concerned with whether SMU should’ve gotten the death penalty while Alabama narrowly avoided it. Whether Washington, Adams, & Co. should’ve given thought to such salient topics such as if college athletes should be considered employees or if a school can get off scot-free for saying their fake classes aren’t an athletics concern because anyone could’ve taken them instead of worrying about if the military can crash on my couch is a conversation for another time. Point is, Jim Harbaugh spent all last season professing his innocence and ignorance (read: plausible deniability) about the whole Connor Stallions thing, and it doesn’t matter if you believe him or not. What matters is he was suspended at the end of last year by the Big 10, but the NCAA investigation is still ongoing and he wants language in his contract that’d shield him from being fired or punishment from potential findings from the ongoing NCAA investigations. Investigations - plural - was not a typo because, in addition to Stallions, Harbaugh is still being investigated for withholding from NCAA officials regarding violations from a few years back. Who knows where Harbaugh will end up but, given he’s now also interviewed with the Chargers and Falcons and accomplished what he set out to at Michigan, let him publicly posture for the Michigan fanbase and let him have this ‘I tried but it’s Michigan’s fault I went to the NFL’ moment. 

Ugh, Florida State Again

On Tuesday, we tried to bury the hatchet with FSU and start with a fresh perspective. We discussed their NCAA sanctions, head coach extensions, playoff snub, and transfer portal wins, but how silly of us to forget that they’re still in the middle of a legal fight with the ACC over the Grant of Rights. Yesterday, the ACC fired back and accused Florida State of breaching their contract, fiduciary obligations, confidentiality, and of course, operating in good faith. What about anything that’s happened in college athletics in the past 5 years, nay, 6 months has led anyone to believe there are contractual obligations, confidentiality agreements, or financial incentives to make decisions for the greater good? Contracts may as well be written in the sand at low tide, the news of Jim Harbaugh’s contract verbiage just so happened to go to Yahoo Sports before it’s even been signed, and Texas A&M is paying a coach $70 million to sit on his ranch and smoke cigars. This is all simply legal posturing by the ACC, but dare we say it’s not without precedent? The ACC doesn’t want FSU making decisions about the future of the conference, especially considering they were one of the schools that voted against conference expansion, and its president is on the Board of Directors and conference finance committee. Just last year, a judge in Washington ruled in favor of Oregon State & Washington State effectively giving them autonomy and financial control over the Pac-12. It’s too early to make judgments on how this case will play out, but it’s going to be a long, ugly battle. I also have no idea if the Pac-12 case serves as a precedent or not, but if you allow me to get back to watching Suits, I might be able to tell you on Monday.

Uh Oh Alabama

We’re not sure if you heard yet, but Nick Saban retired last week and Alabama announced Washington’s Kalen DeBoer as Saban’s replacement this past weekend. Since then, things have been, uh, pretty rough for the Crimson Tide. Several Alabama players went ahead and declared for the NFL draft, including star players Dallas Turner, Kool-Aid McKinstry, Terrion Arnold, #2 receiver Jermaine Burton, and starting running back Jase McClellan, among others. Then Saban retired, and we saw an influx of Alabama entrants into the transfer portal, including #1 receiver Isaiah Bond (Texas), #2 running back Roydell Williams (FSU) starting tight end Amari Niblack (unofficial, but sounds like Texas), and defensive back Antonio Kite, known as one of the more athletic players to ever come out of the state of Alabama, already announced his commitment to rival Auburn. 23 (!!) Alabama players had already entered the portal at the start of this week.

And then it got worse. After days of speculation, star true freshman safety Caleb Downs officially entered his name in the portal as well. Downs was absolutely incredible this past season - he was the SEC Freshman of the Year, he was an All-SEC and All-American selection, the Shaun Alexander Freshman of the Year award winner, and down the stretch of the season was simply one of the best players in the entire sport. He was a 5-star coming out of high school and largely thought of as one of the best defensive backs in a long, long time. Here is what the world’s most famous recruiting analyst, Steve Wiltfong, had to say about him on Wednesday. Losing Downs is an absolute blow to the Tide, not just because of his talent, but because he was looked at as a leader on Alabama’s defense, which was only going to continue to continue and grow over the next couple of years. Georgia appears to be the destination for Downs who is originally from GA, which was certainly helped by Kirby’s hire of Alabama DB coach Travaris Robinson last week. Landing Downs, who immediately became the #1 player to enter the portal this year, certainly furthers the consensus opinion that the 2024 Dawgs are about to be an absolute death squad.

But oh, it didn’t end there. Wednesday also brought the news that true freshman left tackle Kadyn Proctor would also be entering the portal. Proctor started at left tackle for the Tide from day 1, as he was also a 5-star and the consensus #1 OT coming out of high school last year. This is especially tough because Terrance Ferguson, Proctor’s very talented backup, already transferred to Florida State earlier this month to pursue more playing time. Proctor appears to be headed to play for Iowa, where he is from and was originally committed before flipping to Alabama.

To be fair to the Tide, we are not entirely sure that the current transfer portal setup is really fair to teams that are in Alabama’s position. As a reminder, there are two primary transfer portal windows - one immediately following the season, and one still to come following the end of spring practices in April. But an additional 30-day window opens for players at a school where there is a head coaching change, which is the situation that Alabama, Washington, and Arizona are currently in. It certainly seems like an uneven playing field for other schools to be allowed to cherry-pick your roster, while their own players literally aren’t even allowed to enter the portal for another 3+ months. We’re not sure that there’s a clear fix here, but we’ll be interested to see if the NCAA attempts to solve this issue this offseason.

Regardless, what a rough week it’s been for the Tide. We still believe that Kalen Deboer was as good a hire as Alabama could have made, and we certainly don’t think Alabama is falling to the bottom half of the SEC or anything of the sort. Deboer made another good hire this week, landing his second former head coach on his defensive staff in Buffalo’s Maurice Linguist. But it seems clear that the Tide are about to take a clear step back in the short term, and Deboer’s responsibility to keep the Alabama roster more talented than 99% of the sport looks to be getting more difficult by the day. Let’s see what you got, Kalen.

Quick Hitters

After losing DeBoer to Alabama, Washington went ahead and got their replacement in Arizona’s Jedd Fisch, which we discussed on Tuesday. Now, Arizona has landed its own guy in San Jose State’s Brent Brennan. We fully understand that you’re probably not up to speed on your San Jose State football, but Brennan is thought of very highly in West Coast football circles as a really good coach. San Jose State is one of the most under-resourced programs in the entire country, but Brennan has won at least 7 games in three of the past four seasons there, an honestly commendable feat. Brennan has worked at Arizona in the past, and it appears he’ll be hanging on to star freshman QB Noah Fifita and top receiver Tetairoa McMillan, which is absolutely massive for the Wildcats, as those two guys had Arizona in many people’s way-too-early 2024 top 10 rankings. We aren’t sure if Brennan will be able to maintain the success that Fisch has built at Arizona over the past few seasons, but things are already off to a good start from a player retention standpoint, and we are glad that Arizona targeted a truly good coach rather than just a big name that they might be hiring for the wrong reasons. We’re rooting for you, Zona.

In the world of high school recruiting, the news of the week was that 5-star QB Julian “Juju” Lewis out of Carrollton, Georgia, will be reclassifying to the 2025 class from the 2026 class. Lewis is without a doubt one of the best players in the country. In Tate’s opinion, he is the best high school quarterback he has ever seen, and he was only a Sophomore this past fall. To put it simply, Juju is an absolutely elite recruit. He is currently committed to play for Lincoln Riley at USC, but most people are confident that that is not where he will end up. Georgia is in the thick of this race, as was Alabama prior to Nick Saban’s retirement, but this recruitment may result in the biggest NIL deal in NIL history from some other school. We were already interested in following his recruitment, but now that Lewis will be signing with a school this coming December, it just got a whole lot more intriguing. Juju is that good.

How Bout Them Hoop Dawgs?

Seriously, how bout them f*cking Hoop Dawgs?!?!?! After starting the season 10-3 in out-of-conference play, the Dawgs went on the road to beat Missouri and then came back home to beat Arkansas to start 2-0 in SEC play. We then hosted #5 Tennessee, and while the Vols came back at the end to hand the Dawgs a devastating loss, Georgia was up by 10 with just over 5:00 to play in the game and looked damn good doing it. On Tuesday night, we went over to Columbia, SC (aka the armpit of the south) and pulled out a huge victory over South Carolina, who was 13-2 and a 7.5-point favorite in the game. We have played ourselves into serious NCAA Tournament territory, and if you haven’t tuned in much yet, now would be a very good time to do so.

Those who know me (Tate) know that my loving father gifted me (or cursed me?) with an unwavering love of UGA Basketball from a very young age. We have witnessed some good times, and lots and lots and lots of very, very bad times. We have only made three NCAA Tournament appearances since I was a conscious human being, but that hasn’t stopped my dad and I from renewing our season tickets and driving up to countless, countless games in Athens every year. Our failures as a program didn’t stop us from traveling to road games, including driving all the way to Tuscaloosa to watch a game where this happened. And it didn’t stop us from getting caught in a tornado outside of the Georgia Dome when I was 11 years old in an attempt to get tickets to watch the lowest-seed-in-the-SEC Georgia Bulldogs play in the SEC Tournament. 

Seriously, we damn near died trying to watch our beloved and terrible Georgia Bulldogs basketball team, so it is absolutely incredible that it finally looks like we have something real, something sustainable to look forward to with our program. Our last recruiting class was one of the best in school history. We are currently 13-4 and playing tough, resilient, smart basketball and have a real shot at getting to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 9 years. Our two best players are arguably Silas Demary Jr. and Blue Cain, two true freshmen who will be back next year to be joined by 5-star Asa Newell, the third-highest-ranked player we have ever signed. Our future is looking very bright at the moment, and I couldn’t be more excited. We head to Rupp Arena to take on #6 Kentucky this Saturday, and if this will be one of your first times tuning into the Hoop Dawgs this year, don’t be too discouraged by a road loss to a top-10 team, if we do lose. We’ve played ourselves into a position where Saturday’s game is just a free shot, a game we don’t absolutely have to win to have any semblance of hope, like has been the case for 90% of my life. It’s time to rally around the Hoop Dawgs - if not for your own love of the program, then for your ol’ pal Tate’s happiness.

Hope you have a great weekend and we will talk to you again on Monday.

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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 the last two 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.