The Transfer Portal is Open & The NCAA has New Ideas

Good morning and welcome to 4th & Forever, Rand & Tate’s College Football Newsletter. There’s only one game this weekend, so this may be a bit of a shorter Thursday read than you’ve gotten used to. Blame Rand. I’m not sure why, but let’s just blame Rand. That one game is, however, the Army-Navy game, which is always fun, while elsewhere players are entering the portal en masse, the NCAA is terrified about its future, and we’re interested to hear how much you like 4th & Forever. There’s plenty to discuss, so without further ado, let’s get to it!

4th & Forever Bowl Pick ‘Em Group

A reminder that our ESPN Bowl Pick ‘Em group is LIVE. If you’re waiting for our analysis on the Famous Toastery Bowl in Charlotte between Western Kentucky & Old Dominion before you make your picks, no fear because bowl previews start on Monday.

One entry per person and the buy-in is $10. Winner take all with second place getting their money back. You can Venmo @Rand-Fisher or @Tate-Smillie to enter. If you don’t have Venmo, we accept carrier pigeon or any other method that gets $10 in our pockets. If you can get $10 to us outside of Venmo, we can certainly get it back to you when you win the group. It’s a straight-up pick ‘em, no confidence points or picking the spread. The first bowl game kicks off on Saturday, December 16th at 11am so make sure all your picks are in by then.

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4th & Forever Reader Survey

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Transfer Portal

The transfer portal officially opened on Monday morning, and boy oh boy are players taking advantage of that fact. As of Wednesday morning, there were already over 1,100 players in the transfer portal, and there are sure to be tons more. While this may be a discussion better left for when these players start choosing their new homes, for now, let’s look at some of the big names that have entered so far.

The QBs are leading the show here. Oklahoma’s Dillon Gabriel will be looking for a new home after his two-year stint at Oklahoma, which followed his 3-year stint at UCF to begin his college career. Gabriel has been one of the country’s more consistent quarterbacks over the past few years, throwing for 125 touchdowns and only 26 interceptions in his career. Mississippi State, Oregon, and USC have reportedly emerged as front runners for Gabriel thus far. Watch out for the Ducks here. For Oklahoma, this opens the door for the Jackson Arnold era to get underway. Arnold was a consensus 5-star recruit in last year's class, and if Arch Manning's name were Bilbo Baggins, Arnold may have been the top quarterback in the class. We're interested to see if he can take Oklahoma to the next level in 2024.

UCLA 5-star freshman Dante Moore is already packing his bags and looking for a new home. If Arch Manning’s name were Bartholomew Brisbaine, Moore would’ve garnered a lot more attention in last year’s recruiting cycle, as coaches around the country are extremely high on his potential. Watch for Michigan here as Moore is from the Detroit area.

Ohio State starting QB Kyle McCord also put his hat in the ring after a mediocre year at a school whose quarterbacks are typically Heisman finalists. We’ll be interested to see where McCord ends up, but the more intriguing thing to watch will be what’s next for Ohio State at quarterback. Expect the Buckeyes to go after the biggest fish in the transfer portal pond over the next few weeks and possibly into the spring.

After putting up gaudy stats at Incarnate Word, Cam Ward spent the last two years at Washington State where he has flashed some incredible ability. Wherever he lands will immediately become more dangerous, and very fun to watch.

Duke quarterback Riley Leonard appears to be headed to Notre Dame any day now, while former Clemson QB DJ Uiagalelei is back in the portal after one year at Oregon State. Look out Deac fans, because the rumor is he may be coming back to ACC country.

Georgia backup quarterback and former 5-star recruit Brock Vandagriff officially entered the portal on Monday after an entire year of consensus opinion that he would be leaving UGA. He’s already committed to Kentucky, which has apparently been in the works for over a month now. What a time we’re living in in college football. Hopefully this signals a return for Carson Beck for the Dawgs.

Outside of the quarterbacks, 5-star Texas A&M defensive linemen Walter Nolen and LT Overton have entered the portal as well. Nolen was the consensus #1 player in the 2022 recruiting class and Overton will have his pick of the litter as well. Nolen appears to be down to Tennessee or Ole Miss, and reports out of Oxford suggest the Rebels might be in the lead here. But it seems pretty clear that whoever lands Nolen will have paid approximately one-bajillion dollars to do so.

We’ll keep you updated as more big names put their hat in the ring and more players officially find new homes.

The NCAA is… Being Proactive?

We didn’t think we’d ever be writing that headline, but the Dawgs lost a football game last week, so we guess anything is possible. On Tuesday, Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger reported that new NCAA President Charlie Baker sent a letter to all Division I members proposing very bold new changes to the college athletics model. Over the last few years, the NCAA has faced an increasing amount of pressure from courts around the US - which themselves have been pressured for years by employment-rights advocates, athletes, and former athletes - to alter its “amateurism” model, which has effectively been the NCAA’s loophole around having to make student-athletes employees or share revenue with them at all. Since the inception of the new NIL guidelines (and the court cases that led to them), it has become almost a foregone conclusion that, without the federal government stepping in to create uniform guidelines around NIL, things would spiral to the point where athletes would inevitably gain employment rights. That is something that everybody in college athletics, and obviously the NCAA, wants to avoid, and Baker’s proposal appears to be a last-ditch effort to stop that boulder from reaching the bottom of the employment hill.

Because the NCAA fought tooth and nail to avoid granting athletes NIL rights and had absolutely no plan to create or enforce guidelines around it once the Supreme Court told them it had to, schools currently can not be directly involved with NIL in any capacity, leaving third-party “collectives” to raise money to dish out to athletes. It’s an extremely dumb and unnecessary model because while you have reputable news outlets reporting that Player X is receiving Y amount of dollars to go to Z school, you have college coaches answering questions about NIL at press conferences saying “I literally don’t know what you’re talking about, I’m not involved in that at all,” which we all know is bullshit. Under former President and noted buffoon Mark Emmert, the NCAA spent the last few years essentially begging Congress to create federal guidelines around NIL so that there would be uniform rules that the NCAA could then enforce. If you’re wondering how the idea of asking the federal government to find common ground on an issue and quickly take action has gone, well, yeah… nothing’s happened.

So in steps Baker, who took over the NCAA in March. Baker’s approach seems to be less about asking Congress to act on creating federal NIL guidelines, and more about changing the entire structure of the athlete-compensation model in a way that may avoid the government looking at the current situation and saying “Oh, yeah, this is really dumb, you have to pay these kids wages now.” The proposals that Baker’s letter outlines would truly transform what college athletics looks like, and how compensation for athletes would be structured. There are many of them, but here is a short breakdown: First, this would be an opt-in situation for schools, and whoever opted into these new rules would become a part of its own subdivision (think FBS vs FCS as it currently stands). All schools who are a part of this new subdivision would be required to invest, for every athlete in all sports, a minimum of $30,000 per year into what Baker is calling an “enhanced educational trust fund.” I don’t know enough about legal semantics to understand why that’s what it would be called, but I’d just note that the words “wages” and “salary” are clearly omitted here. Secondly, Baker makes clear that there is no limit to how much a school can spend. That $30,000 per athlete is just a minimum, and beyond that, schools can decide how to divvy up any extra cash they want to hand out. But, very importantly, this structure would be in accordance with Title XI, and 50% of whatever amount a school offers its athletes will need to be allocated to its female athletes. This means that if a school decided it wanted to give out $20M per year to its football team for recruiting purposes, it would need to allocate another $20M (plus whatever amount it gives to the rest of its male athletes) amongst its female athletes. While we here at 4th & Forever are probably some of the biggest advocates for the advancement of female college athletics you know, this becomes a return-on-investment conundrum, as football and men’s basketball are typically the only revenue drivers for the vast majority of athletic departments. Is dishing out $20M+ per year to your gymnastics and field hockey teams a wise investment? Probably not.

To be clear, Baker’s proposals are just that - proposals. This is just the formal start of a conversation that will likely be had for the next couple of years, not weeks or months. The final iterations of what this type of structure would look like in final form could be a long way off from what Baker is proposing now. But for the first time in ages, the NCAA seems to be listening to the complaints of its member institutions, and acting on making things better. We’re skeptical of some of the components about how much this would really help athletes, what it could do to Olympic sports programs (hint: this would send them to the gulag), and if avoiding giving employment rights to these athletes is the smart or even moral thing to be doing. But at the very least, it’s refreshing to see the NCAA actually trying to do something to move forward in this new world of college sports.

Army - Navy

Army (5-6) vs. Navy (5-6): Army -3, O/U 27.5 - Saturday 3:00pm ET CBS in Foxborough, MA

Rand here, and I gotta say, I have been extremely lucky that I’ve been able to travel all over the country to college football games in my life. I don’t know how many games and stadiums I’ve been to, but as you can tell from the Where in the World Are We section, it’s a little more than a few. On occasion, I get asked what the best college football game I’ve been to is, and without hesitation, I always say Army-Navy because there is simply nothing like it, and I don’t care how cliche that sounds. As much as I’d like to list off 25 different Wake games, Army-Navy is in a league of its own and no matter how many games I get to in my life, nothing will top it.

I went to the 2009 game in Philadelphia with my dad (VMI), aunt, uncle (Marines), grandmother, and grandfather who served in the Navy. We got to the game 3 hours early to watch The March On and stayed until the bitter end after both teams sang their alma mater. Even though I think it was negative 20 degrees, the flyovers, prisoner exchange, and Drumline Battle are indescribable experiences. There’s a reason I didn’t even mention the actual football being played because frankly, it’s secondary to the pageantry around the stadium. Whether you’re a college football fan or not, make plans to go to Army-Navy at least once in your life.

As for the game at hand, both teams come in at 5-6 and will not be participating in a bowl. Army has wins over Air Force, Coastal Carolina, and UTSA while playing Boston College, Syracuse, and Troy tough. They’re led by QB Bryson Daily who leads the team in passing and rushing. LB Leo Lowin (75 tackles) and DB Quindrelin Hammonds (3 INTs) anchor a defense that only gives up 22 ppg. Navy comes in without a marquee victory, but close losses to Memphis, Air Force, and USF show they’re still a tough out. They’ve played four different QBs on the year and rely on FB Alex Tecza who has 724 rushing yards and 5 TDs. They have two linebackers with over 70 tackles and two DBs with 4 INTs each while giving up only…22 ppg. These two teams are carbon copies of each other by design and we can only hope this one is as exciting as last year’s double-overtime thriller.

Where in the World Are We?

RF: I’m at Art Basel in Miami for a work event all week and as my Dad opined in last year’s Christmas Card, “If you don’t know what that is, you don’t need to know. Apparently hanging out by the pool and drinking cocktails qualifies as work in some industries.” I’m not at liberty to confirm or deny these allegations but know I am actually working…sometimes.

TS: The only good thing about the Dawgs missing the College Football Playoff is that I no longer have to spend thousands of dollars to travel to New Orleans and Houston to watch us threepeat. Ahh who am I kidding, that sucks too. I’ll be at home in Atlanta trying to figure out what to do with my life now that the season is winding down. I’m thinking I’ll watch Oppenheimer on Saturday night. #BoredomSzn is back in a big way.

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.