Week 0 Recap & ACC Preview Part II

Good morning and welcome to 4th & Forever, Rand & Tate’s College Football Newsletter. Given we’ve been deprived of this great sport for the past 8 months, we cast no dispersion on anyone watching any morsel of football they can get their hands on. Hell, even though we don’t partake, we don’t even blame you for watching the Little League World Series, unless you’re betting on them, in which case let’s get you on the next flight to Kamchatka. That being said, you probably missed this ridiculous high school football game on Friday night on ESPN between #9 American Heritage (Plantation, Florida) and #17 Saint Joseph’s Prep (Philadelphia, PA). 5* Texas QB commit Dia Bell led Heritage all the way back from 28 down to beat Saint Joseph’s, which, yeah, we get it, don’t probably care. But you missed Saint Joseph’s punting with the game tied 28-28 with a minute to go, and the punter kicked it off his own teammate. Heritage recovered in plus territory and kicked a 42-yard field goal at the buzzer to win. Want to remember a guy? The aforementioned Dia Bell is the son of Phoenix Suns Raja Bell. Yeah, we’re all getting older, but it doesn’t matter because football is officially back. 

Week 0 Recap

As was ordained by God himself, Iowa State and Kansas State flew out to Dublin to get this season underway in the - Kansas State just fumbled - what was that? Anyway, the game got off to an interesting start as - Iowa State just fumbled - what the hell is going on, why do I keep getting interrupted? Alright so - Kansas State just fumbled again, they recovered but then they fumbled again - wtf???

It was a fumblefest in the pouring rain in Ireland on a field that looked like a torn ACL waiting to happen, which was unfortunate because it’s something we have no control over - we simply have to do this in Ireland every single year or the world will stop spinning. In all honesty, if you’re looking for breakdowns of what this means for the rest of the year, we don’t have a ton of that for you. Both teams looked competent, despite the fumbling. They played good defense, they ran the ball effectively and creatively, both quarterbacks had good moments in spite of the weather, and it came down to the wire. Iowa State did pick up a huge win, but there wasn’t much about Kansas State’s performance that was overly concerning.

Well, except for the fact that star running back Dylan Edwards muffed his first touch of the year, got up and jogged away, then suddenly had an ankle injury that he didn’t return from. We here at 4th & Forever would never accuse a player of faking an injury - we’d never even think of bringing something like that up. But here. He didn’t return after this. Good stuff. 

At least Kansas State’s quarterback’s father and brother didn’t spend their afternoon fighting each other in Irish puddles after the game - ahh wait what was that? Ahh okay - alright so Avery Johnson’s dad and brother did in fact fight each other after the game on a random Irish street, but that’s totally fine and normal. We have to do this in Ireland every single year or we’ll no longer have a sport. It was a weird, entertaining game that may or may not have playoff implications in a few months, and that’s all we can ask for.

The rest of the Saturday slate got even weirder. Dan Mullen, who once wore a Darth Vader outfit to a postgame press conference, kicked off his UNLV tenure by almost f*cking losing to FCS Idaho State. Western Kentucky handled Sam Houston while Kansas rolled through Fresno State. But the real action started in Honolulu, where a Hawai’i player kicked off his season by fair-catching a ball at the 1 yard line leading to a safety, a Stanford player was penalized for aura-farming, and a Hawai’i player caught a game-changing interception five yards behind the line of scrimmage to help them win the game, because this is Week 0 baby. The only problem with this game was that it didn’t happen in Ireland.

Did much of note happen during Week 0? No. Was it good football? No. But did I sit in front of my TV and watch all of it happen? Also no, I took my wife to dinner and then saw some friends. But was Week 0 the perfect encapsulation of the stupid absurdity of this sport in every way? Yes, and much of that happened in Ireland - the birthplace of American college football.

SEC Survivor Pool

Before we get to our ACC Preview, we wanted to highlight a competition our friend Jacob is running this fall - SEC Survivor Pool. The goal is to correctly pick one SEC team per week to win its game and be the last one standing. Both of us here at 4th & Forever have participated in recent years, and we’ve had a blast with it and can’t recommend it enough unless you pick Auburn to beat Cal in Week 2 like we definitely did not do last year. For more information on the rules and registration visit secsurvivor.com. Sign-ups and the $20 payment is due by August 28th so if you’re interested, make sure you hop in now because the pot is equivalent to winning a small lottery. 

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ACC Preview: Part II

If you missed Part 1 of our ACC preview, where we discussed Stanford (woof), Wake Forest, Cal, Boston College, Virginia, and Syracuse, you can catch up here.

Starting from the top, we’ve got Dabo’s Little Ole Clemson. After a few years of flopping around like a beached whale, this looks like the Clemson of the late teens. QB Cade Klubnik is back and finally looked like the 5* he was billed as, along with the best DL in college football, led by TJ Parker and Peter Woods, who will be 1st rounders. The receiving room has been conspicuously nonexistent in previous years, but that has changed with an infusion of 5* talent (and returning starters) in Antonio Williams, Tyler Brown, and Bryant Wesco Jr. Keep your eyes on 6’5 WR Tristan Smith who comes over from SE Missouri State. Clemson has taken like 4 transfers ever, so when they do, you should pay attention. Clemson has national championship-level talent but a lot will be asked of freshman RB Gideon Davidson to balance an offense that lost Phil Mafa to the NFL and Jay Green to an ACL late last year. Bonus keep your eyes on LB Sammy Brown. The hype around Woods & Parker is taking up all the oxygen on the defense, but he’s the reigning ACC Defensive Rookie of the Year and will challenge Pitt’s Kylie Louis and Texas’ Anthony Hill Jr. for best LB in the nation. 

Clemson’s presumed top challengers will be Miami and SMU, with a sprinkle of Georgia Tech and Louisville. Starting with Miami, who seemingly has everything figured out - NIL money, weather, roster construction - except a head coach who doesn’t crap his pants in the 4th quarter. Imagine a 5-year-old commanding the US Navy; that’s Miami football. QB Carson Beck comes in from Georgia, and all it took was $4.3 million and a few Lamborghinis! No clue who he’s going to throw to, but he has a fantastic RB tandem in Mark Fletcher Jr. and Jordan Lyle. SMU is returning QB Ken Jennings and must replace similar production at the skill positions, but like Miami, loaded up in the transfer portal thanks to their endless reservoir of oil & gas NIL money. However, they had a cake walk of an ACC schedule last year and now draw Miami, Clemson, and Louisville, so we’ll find out real fast if they were a flash in the pan. Brent Key has quickly turned Georgia Tech from a laughingstock into a power running machine that no one wants to face. QB Haynes King is back, and even though he’ll play in games where he literally can’t throw because of his shoulder, he’ll still beat the hell out of you for 40 minutes. The loss of WR Eric Singleton to Auburn hurts, but they’ll be just fine with FIU transfer Eric Rivers. Closing out the ACC contenders tier is Louisville who imports QB Miller Moss into Jeff Brohm’s score-a-bajillion-points offense and turn any average-looking white dude into a future New Orleans Saint. RB Isaac Brown is set to build on his ACC Offense Rookie of the Year campaign along with WR Caullin Lacy, who returns from missing almost all of last year due to injury. Add in WR Chris Bell and you’ve got the best skill position group in the conference short of Clemson. 

This next crop of teams is the ‘wouldn’t surprise anyone if they went 3-9 or went to the ACC championship’. We’ll start with Virginia Tech Hokies, who are currently coached by Brent Pry but that might not be the case in 2 months' time, given his sub-.500 record. You know who had a .581 winning percentage and got canned by the Hokies? Justin Fuente. Pry has the hottest seat in the conference. The good news is he gets QB Kyron Drones back after spurning some SEC schools & Miami to enter the portal but is a classic boom or bust player. The bad news is they have to play Vanderbilt and Old Dominion - both of whom they’ve lost to under Pry. Sticking with the theme of teams that can never live up to expectations, we reach the NC State Wolfpack part of the program. Yet again, they have a QB who no defensive coordinator wants to face in CJ Bailey who follows a lineage of Grayson McCall, Devin Leary, Ryan Finley, Mike Glennon, I can keep going. Justin Joly might be the best tight end in the country and their front 7 will be stout yet again. The potential bad news is they have to replace both coordinators after DC Tony Gibson went to be the head guy at Marshall and OC Robert Anae was canned. Oh, and they haven’t won 10+ games since Philip Rivers and they’re NC State. Another fanbase that’s getting fed up with their coach but this time from whiplash, is Pitt under Pat Narduzzi since the 2021 ACC Championship year with Kenny Pickett, they’ve gone 9-4, 3-9, and 7-6 but those 6 losses came in the last 6 games. It’s anyone’s guess what this rendition of Pitt will bring but it’s surely to be entertaining. OC whiz kid Cade Bell is still here as is QB Eli Holstein but the real players are LB Kyle Louis and RB Des Reid who have All-American potential. They’re a sleeper in the ACC this year; it just remains to be seen is that’s a sleeper for the doormat of the conference or a contender. 

Speaking of what the hell are we getting from them this year, let’s move onto Florida State. 13-0 and a Jordan Travis injury away from making the playoff to 2-10 last year which was so bad that head coach Mike Norvell has a $60 million buyout yet he’s on the hot seat. Thankfully, the Noles are staying humble and letting their play on the field do the talking. Here’s QB Thomas Castellanos who transferred from Boston College over the summer on their season opener against Alabama: "They don't have Nick Saban to save them…I just don't see them stopping me.” Castellanos then doubled down on his comments at ACC Media Days. A team that Florida State might want to model themselves after these days is Duke. Even after going 9-4, throwing for almost 3,000 yards and 26 TDs, Duke decided it was best to move on from QB Maalik Murphy and bring in Tulane transfer sophomore Darian Mensah. I don’t know if that says more about Murphy or Mensah, but probably the latter. Mensah will have a lot on his shoulders this season which is warranted given Duke is paying him $8 million over three years, which is SEC money being doled out by an ACC basketball school. Duke was 6-1 in one-score games last year so there’s some regression to the mean potential here, but Mensah is a clear upgrade at QB. And finally, the belle of the ball, er second runner up two years in a row we have Jordon Hudson and her North Carolina Tarheels. Alrightm listen. Everyone knows the offseason distractions and media storm Hudson and Bellichick caused so we don’t need to rehash that, but Belichick better f*cking win or else this is going to turn real ugly real quick which is not something UNC can afford given they’re paying this dude $10 million. Firing a 72-year-old Mack Brown and hiring a 73-year-old Bill Belichick when you’re going to be the #1 conference realignment target 5 years from now and haven’t done much of anything on the field since the 1990s is like going all in without even looking at your hand. Everyone will be tuning in to watch you, which is great; it’s just like Deion and Colorado, the only problem is Deion and Colorado won and that took a lot of heat off even if it simply resulted in mid-tier bowl appearances. Carolina aspires for bigger and brighter, and they need Belichick to show some ROI. It’ll be fascinating, and 4th & Forever will have much more on this topic very soon. 

Where in the World is Rand: Right Now & The Next Four Months

What started a few years ago as a humorous email to friends & family, my extensive & meticulously planned college football travel schedule has found a nice home in this newsletter the past few years. Consider it a Christmas card of sorts from yours truly. I couldn't care less what day of the week my birthday is or if St. Patrick’s Day falls on a Saturday, because my holidays come in late January and early February when conferences release their fall schedules and I can start to book flights, hotels, and request PTO. So let’s answer the question of ‘where are you this weekend’ because there’s a 95% chance it won’t be in Charlotte. 

Week 1: It’s Sunday night, and I’m currently typing this from the exit row (of course, I have status you peon) en route to San Francisco. Over the next four days, I’ll be in Sonoma, Sacramento, Lake Tahoe, and Mammoth Lakes for work. I’ll take a red eye home on Friday morning and drive to Winston-Salem in time for the Wake - Kennesaw State game on Friday night. On Saturday, I’ll have more screens in front of me than the NASA Command Center as I take in Corso’s last Gameday and all the CFB games that follow.

Week 2: Contrary to popular belief, I haven’t made every Wake home game in my life because life is all about balance, sacrifices, and whatever else the pastor says to the couple before he marries them. Granted, my Wake football sacrifices generally involve going to another football game, but not this time. Wake plays Western Carolina at 2pm and I’m just not feeling it, so it may be another lock myself in my apartment and fry my brain with 3+ screens running for 15 straight hours. Ah, who the hell am I kidding, the Week 2 schedule sucks, I live an hour away, and you only get 10 or so tailgating opportunities a year. See you in Winston.

Week 3: Whatever higher power you believe in, send them a thank you from me for scheduling the Wake-NC State game for a Thursday night on a weekend I’ll be attending two weddings in two different states. But before you do, save the prayer for another request I’ll have in a bit. 

Weeks 4 & 5: I’ve worked at my company for the last 5+ years, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I got an email in February informing me that I’ll be working Ryder Cup in late September. I think they’re catching on as to why I request PTO for November 10 months in advance. Luckily, Wake has a bye, and I’ll only miss the Georgia Tech game at home. Does Long Island even know what college football is?

Week 6: Instead of running the risk of starting World War III in the family group chat, I’m going to publicly say I’ll be in Chapel Hell for UNC-Clemson instead of Blacksburg for Wake-Virginia Tech. 

Week 7: I’ve written about it before and I’ll write about it again but my Dad and I have annual tradition of going to a different college football game every year. After years of discussion about renting an RV for Wake @ Ole Miss, that was shot once Wake cancelled the return trip to Oxford and scheduled a series with Oregon State. Nevertheless, the Fisher crew is resilient, and while Oxford is still on our list, we’re going to see Rutgers @ Washington on Friday night, dart up to Corvallis for the Wake game on Saturday afternoon, and if Indiana @ Oregon becomes a night game, we’ll hit Autzen too. See? Resilient. I can’t believe my sisters backed out of this trip after being promised we’d only go to one game and go wine tasting in the Willamette Valley the rest of the time. 

Week 8: As if three first-time visits to stadiums weren’t enough, I’ll knock one more off the list when I travel to Iowa City to see Penn State @ Iowa with my old roommate. Some people want to see the pyramids, others want to see the Acropolis; I want to see a punting masterclass from Kirk Ferentz before I die.

Week 9: Back to our regularly scheduled programming of a Wake home game, this time against SMU. 

Week 10: Wake’s in Tallahassee this weekend and while my dad and I made the voyage down to the armpit of Florida a few years ago to see Wake win, methinks that won’t be happening again this year. Therefore, I think I’ll be in Clemson with some family friends and watch the Tigers play Duke.  

Week 11: Back to our regularly scheduled programming of traveling to a Wake away game, this time in Charlottesville, VA. 

Week 12: Wake-UNC in Winston. Don’t need to say much else other than please God make this a noon kickoff so I can change into a tux in the parking lot and walk to Wait Chapel for a wedding that night. 

Week 13: I can cut and paste the Week 2 Western Carolina spiel here, but just sub in Delaware as Wake’s home opponent. I’ll be in Winston but if anyone has better suggestions, I’m all ears.

Week 14: There are rumblings of an entire Fisher Family trip to Durham to see Wake-Duke over Thanksgiving weekend. I’m willing to bet my dad and I will be the only Fishers in attendance once my mom and sisters realize how much warmer the lobby bar of the Washington Duke Inn is over the metal bleachers of Wallace Wade Stadium.

Reach out if you’ll be at any of the above games (or Georgia games with Tate), and you’ll hear from us again on Thursday with an extensive Week 1 preview. We made it. 

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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 two years collecting championship rings while traveling to watch the Dawgs. Rand went to known college football powerhouse, Wake Forest, and currently pays rent in Charlotte, but is rarely found there with all the work & CFB travel he does.