Why is Shamu Dead? Conference Championship Preview

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Good morning and welcome back to 4th & Forever, Rand & Tate’s College Football Newsletter. With all the Lake Kiffin drama, National Early Signing Day, the coaching carousel, Crumbl Cookie Gate in Happy Valley, the transfer portal, bowl game selections, and a potential war with Venezuela, you might forget we actually have important football this weekend. It’s the last real weekend of college football, or maybe that was last weekend, we can’t keep up other. We’ve got bangers, blowouts, and Duke(s), so let’s get right to it.

Group of 5 Conference Championships

We’ve got four games on Friday night, and all involve the G5 conferences - sans the MAC, who play on Saturday at noon, but patience you must have, my young Padawan. Kicking us off is #25 James Madison hosting Troy. The Dukes lost their coach, Bob Chesney, to UCLA but have already filled his replacement in the form of former Florida man Billy Napier. Penn State probably should’ve hired Chensey, but a nice consolation prize would be Matt Campbell of Iowa State, who is like the 12th bachelorette to get a rose on the first episode, but still, a solid hire if it comes to fruition. Anyways, for the game at hand. James Madison is going to murder the Trojans here. If Duke wins the ACC, there’s a decent chance JMU slips into the playoff, but guessing what the committee will do is like predicting what mood your sister is going to be in at any given moment. Not speaking from personal experience, of course. 

Also at 7 pm on Friday, Kennesaw State travels to Jacksonville State for the CUSA championship. Both teams put up a ton of points, but are a clash of styles. The Owls throw it around and get their numerous playmakers in space while Jacksonville State makes the service academies jealous of their running prowess. Fun matchup, lots of points, great office Christmas party bar watching while you talk to the receptionist Sharon about how much of an asshole your boss is when they’re drunk. 

In the American, we’ve got #24 North Texas going to #20 Tulane to face the Green Wave in the Bayou. The stakes are pretty simple here: win and you’re in the playoff. Lose, and your coach is on to greener pastures while your dream season clunks into the Fenway Bowl against a middling ACC team or the Birmingham Bowl against LSU or some other SEC team that gave up on their season back in September. Both coaches have already been poached, but have been afforded the opportunity to coach their teams in this game and through the playoff. Eric Morris of North Texas is off to Oklahoma State, while Florida won the Jon Sumrall sweepstakes after definitely not being late-night booty called after getting spurned by Lane Kiffin. If you haven’t watched North Texas QB Drew Mestamaker yet, here’s your chance. He’s probably going to Oklahoma State with his coaches but he will command $3 mil+ if he enters the portal. 

To close out tonight, we’ve got a battle on the Smurf Turf between UNLV and Boise State for the Mountain West crown. Boise State punked the Rebs a few weeks ago, 56-31, but they’re just lucky to be here thanks to the MWC deciding conference championship tiebreakers via advanced analytics. Picturing a bunch of old white dudes deciding the best football team by writing quantum physics formulas on a window like they’re in A Beautiful Mind is a hilarious sight, but pour one out for the New Mexico Lobos, who should actually be here over Boise. 

At noon on Saturday in Ford Field, we’ve got Miami (OH) and Western Michigan vying for the MAC Championship. Western Michigan is here for the first time since 2016, when PJ Fleck and WR Corey Davis were running amok. For you NFL ball-knowers out there, be on the lookout for Western Michigan DE Nadame Tucker who is T-1 nationally in TFLs, 2nd in sacks, and T-5 in forced fumbles. This game probably won’t have a lot of points, but it will probably be more entertaining than the Texas Tech-BYU game at the same time. 

Power 4 Conference Championships

At noon on Saturday, we’ve got a rematch of #11 BYU v #4 Texas Tech in JerryWorld, and of all of the big Power 4 matchups, this one is easily the most lopsided. You may not have paid too much attention to the Red Raiders up to this point, but we highly recommend you watch this team closely tomorrow because these guys are freaks. Defensive linemen David Bailey, Romello Height, and Lee Hunter might all be first-team All-American selections, and this Tech defense as a whole has rounded into an absolute beast of a unit that will make them serious national title contenders just by the fact that any team in the country is going to struggle to score on them. BYU, on the other hand, is starting a true freshman at QB who wears number 47 and entirely relies on his run game to be effective. As we (correctly) predicted the first time these teams matched up, if BYU couldn’t run the ball, they were absolutely f*cked. As it turned out, BYU could not run the ball, and they were absolutely f*cked in Lubbock a few weeks ago. 

While we don’t expect anything to change there, we will leave room for the possibility of this game getting weird in a way that allows BYU to be in striking distance late. Texas Tech’s potential downfall will lie at the feet of QB Behren Morton, who, after battling like 38 different injuries during his Tech career, is basically the weakness of the team at this point. Tech is not likely to score a ton of points against a very disciplined and solid BYU defense in the first place, and in a low-scoring game, a couple of Tech turnovers might be all it takes to keep BYU in it. But that is not what we are expecting - we are expecting the Red Raiders to make an announcement about what they are on a national stage and roll into the College Football Playoff with a resounding win and a first-round bye. These guys are really good.

The marquee matchup of the day is #2 Indiana v #1 Ohio State in Indy. It’s for all the marbles. And by that, we mean seeding in the playoffs! Woo! But seriously, if it’s close the winner will likely be the #1 seed and the loser will be the #4 seed, both with byes. And if not, the loser will get a home game against a G5 school (or Duke), beat the hell of out of them, and then the real fun begins. Actually though, this is a fascinating game in a championship game we’re not accustomed to seeing one. Aside from Oregon-Penn State last year, what was your favorite Big Ten Championship memory? Was it when Michigan beat Iowa 26-0 or 42-3? Or when Ohio State beat Wisconsin 59-0? There have been some close games, sure, but it pales in comparison to the SEC, Big 12, or even ACC championship game memories.

Whether it’s a blowout or a close game, the narratives coming out of this game will be effervescent. Hell yeah, I just used that word. If Ohio State wins comfortably, then we can go ahead and plan on crowning them national champions…again. If Indiana wins convincingly or close, we’re going to anticipate and drool over a wide-open playoff race because we (and I mean everyone, not just us) still won’t believe in the Hoosiers. “Oh well Ohio State just cares about beating Michigan, they didn’t want to be there.” blah blah blah. And maybe that’s true. But this game is all about Indiana and how they stack up. Yes, they went on the road and dominated an Oregon team but CFB is so caught in its way in helmet watching that excuses flow unless it’s an expected result. We’re guilty of it, and so are you. The thing to watch here is the health of Ohio State’s WR tandem in Jeremiah Smith and Carnell Tate. Both played against Michigan and caught touchdowns, but were limited. Indiana CBs D’Angelo Ponds and Louis Moore are both first-team All-Big Ten. Hell, the only thing you need to know about the status of this game is that on the recently announced All-Big Ten teams, Ohio State has 13 players on the first or second teams, and Indiana has 12.

At the same time as the above, in a ‘you need to take your little brother with you’ game, is the ACC Championship between Duke and #17 Virginia. We opined last weekend that Duke essentially needed Halley’s Comet to hit Shamu to make the ACC Championship, and guess what, Shamu is dead. Duke has the best QB in the conference in Darian Mensah, and a breakout star blah blah blah (it’s RB Nate Shepard, btw), but no one actually cares about this matchup, do they? The only compelling reason to watch this game is to see if Duke wins and then the playoff ramifications. Will they make the playoffs as a five-loss team over JMU? Will the G5 get two teams into the playoff? Your guess is as good as mine with what the committee will do should Duke win but needless to say, America is rooting for carnage here and who better to play villain than the Duke Blue Devils. 

Georgia and the SEC Championship

#3 Georgia (11-1) @ #9 Alabama (10-2): UGA -2.5, O/U 48.5 - Saturday 4:00pm ET ABC

It’s been quite the week for Dawgs fans as our squad has been gearing up to face the Alabama Crimson Tide at Mercedes-Benz Stadium - a situation that has all of us very calm, excited, and confident! We got out of that stadium with a W over Georgia Tech last week in a game that our coaching staff very clearly wanted to get the hell out of as soon as possible, in large part because our starting center, Drew Bobo, went down and is now out for the season. Gunner did not look confident or relaxed in the pocket from the jump and the offense just never got in a rhythm, but we can touch on all of that here shortly. Outside of the major injury, there was not much that I’m taking out of that Tech game - it was pretty clear that we knew they weren’t going to score on us and once we were up by two scores, it was very apparent that the staff just wanted us to get the hell out of there. A true Kirby special that really just has no bearing on what we’ll look like moving forward.

The rest of this week for Dawg Nation was, in large part, consumed by the recruiting world with National Signing Day on Wednesday. As we all know by now, the #1 QB in the country, Jared Curtis, flipped his commitment from UGA to Vanderbilt at the last minute - and in a manner that apparently pissed Kirby off to a degree we haven’t quite seen before. It was the second time Curtis has decommitted from Georgia - he committed to the Dawgs as a junior, decommitted, recommitted this summer, and then pulled this move while apparently telling the Georgia staff the whole time that he was going to sign with us despite three weeks of rumors saying he may head to Vandy. Anyway, for as much noise as this created in the recruiting world, I literally could not care less. Gunner will be back next year, backed up by very talented guys in Ryan Puglisi and Ryan Montgomery, and we have a commitment from the #1 QB in the 2028 class, Jayden Wade, who will likely reclassify into next year’s 2027 class. We’re in as good a spot as we could be at the QB position, and that’s before even mentioning that we can just pay some transfer portal kid a few million to come for a year if we really need to. We’re fine, but Curtis just created a new Enemy #1 for Dawgs fans, taking that crown from Dylan Raiola before Raiola had time to cover it in syrup and eat it.

Anyway, that has all led us to tomorrow. Ya know, the SEC Championship Game against Alabama? The Dawgs really have a chance to get this monkey off of their backs here, and while we’re once again favored to win, I’ll be damned if I spend another second writing about how I think we’re going to beat this team - especially in this building. Our quarterback looked uncomfortable last week, our very good starting center is out, and Alabama owns us to a degree that defies all laws of logic and probability. We’re all on the same page here.

…..BUT…. This time could be different. Alabama has looked incredibly shaky in recent weeks, with Ty Simpson turning in a few clunkers, Ryan Williams disappearing off the face of the earth, and a continued inability to run the football with any consistency. And now the Tide are being hit with the injury and illness bug, too - star defensive lineman LT Overton, who made the play that really finalized their victory over us in September, is out with pneumonia (which we very much hope he recovers from, quickly). On Thursday, Kalen DeBoer said that fellow defensive lineman Kelby Collins will also be out with an illness. Could the flu be going around the Bama locker room the way it was allegedly going around the UGA locker room before the 2021 SEC Championship? This is on top of RB Jam Miller, who is the only reason Bama has any semblance of a run game, is banged up and questionable for tomorrow’s game - and on top of rumors that Ty Simpson himself is not entirely 100%.

All of this has me (don’t say it Tate) somewhat confident (don’t do it to yourself man) that we can pull this off tomorrow (DAMMIT TATE). DeBoer’s Bama teams have come out firing with tremendous first-half success against us, but in both the 2024 and 2025 contests, Kirby and Schumann have completely shut them down with halftime adjustments. This time, we’ve already played them once in the same season, and our two teams have been on opposite trajectories for a month now. This is really a free shot for us, given that we’ll likely still have a first-round bye (or at the very worst, a first-round home game against a G5 team) with a loss. If there’s a time for us to change the narrative on this matchup and get this monkey off of our back, it’s now. But I’ll believe it when I see it.

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OnlyRans

Last Week: 7-6 // Season Record: 61-66 (48%)

Bing Bong! Kid is on a four-week heater. Did I have some ugly misses last week? Absolutely. Do I give a shit? Absolutely not. In the words of our lord and savior, Jake Dickert, “We’ll never apologize for winning.”

Sun Belt James Madison -23.5 v Troy: This might be the lock of the day as the Dukes need style points to get into the playoff and pray to the Father of the Constitution himself that other Duke beats Thomas Jefferson. Dukes at home. Dukes at night. I just like saying Dukes. Also, did you know James Madison was 5”4 and oversaw the Louisiana Purchase? Suck it, France. 

CUSA Jacksonville State +2.5 v Kennesaw State: All four of Jacksonville State’s losses have come on the road. This game is played in their home stadium, where they’ve also beaten Kennesaw State by 9 earlier this season. They’ve got a stout offensive line and the nation's leading rusher in RB Cam Cook. I’ll take the Gamecocks as home underdogs. 

American North Texas -2.5 v Tulane and Over 66.5: North Texas hasn’t been held under 50 points once since October 10th, and that was against the ball hogs of Navy. This is going to be a shootout, but North Texas has too much firepower.

Mountain West Boise State -4.5 v UNLV: Sigh…I want UNLV here so bad, but this game is in Boise, and they just feel inevitable. They’ve been here before (many times) and UNLV got smoked by them last time on this exact field. 

Big 12 Texas Tech -12.5 v BYU: Last time these two played, it was 29-7 Texas Tech at home. TTU couldn’t convert in the red zone, BYU couldn't move the ball and scored a garbage-time touchdown. Even though I firmly believe it’s hard to beat the same team twice, my betting picks are exempt from such theology, and Texas Tech rolls in their home state. 

MAC Western Michigan -1.5 v Miami (OH) and Under 43.5: Western Michigan lost to Miami (OH) on the road by 9 points back in October, but they’ve got the superior run offense, one of the best defensive players in college football (DE Nadame Tucker), come in on a 4 game win streak, and will have the crowd advantage. Broncos win this rock fight. 

SEC Alabama +2.5 v Georgia: Am I picking Alabama simply to spite some Georgia fans who have sent me Caleb Wilson and Drake Maye gifs in the past 72 hours? Maybe. But I’m also cognizant of the fact Kirby is 1-7 against Bama. You brought this upon yourself, Sam & Billy!

Big Ten Ohio State -4 v Indiana: This game is going to come down to Ohio State WRs v Indiana’s secondary because…duh. Advantage Ohio State and advantage the team that has a 125-year head start on being relevant. Boiler Up! I mean Go Bucks.

ACC Duke +4 v Virginia and Under 57.5: Holding my nose and picking Duke here because I think it’s really hard to beat the same team twice in such quick succession. Virginia has been playing with fire all year, and Duke is an enigma, so I’ll take the underdog in a “no clue what’s going to happen here” game. However, given that both teams have seen each other already, I think damn near 60 points is way too many here unless Duke decides not to play defense again.

Pro tip: Don’t listen to a word Tate says unless he’s trailing me. 

Tate’s Great Picks

Week 12: 3-6 // Season Record: 36-50 (42%)

I suck at this, okay? Shut up about it.

ACC Virginia -4 v Virginia and Over 57.5: Rand is an absolute buffoon. Duke lost to f****** UCONN and cannot stop a nosebleed. This game was 31-3 Virginia headed into the 4th quarter like 20 days ago. Welcome to the College Football Playoff, Hoos.

CUSA Kennesaw State -2.5 v Jacksonville State: Hootie Hooooooooo.

Sun Belt James Madison -23.5 v Troy: I’m with Rand. JMU needs to look borderline remarkable in a big spot on national TV, given their playoff situation, they’re already way better than Troy, and those Alabama boys are going to be playing in some cold, cold weather. JMU by 30.

American North Texas -2.5 v Tulane and Over 66.5: I’m riding with Rand - lots of points, but the better QB in Drew Mestemaker gets it done in the end.

Mountain West UNLV +4.5 vs Boise State: Fading Rand here - while Boise seems to be figuring things out in recent weeks, I’ll take Dan Mullen’s squad putting up some points and keeping this thing close, at the very least.

MAC Western Michigan -1.5 v Miami (OH): Whatever man.

Big 12 Texas Tech -12.5 v BYU: Mega ultra super duper HAMMER TIME. BYU cannot hang with this team in any way. Texas Tech’s defensive line is the best in the country and BYU cannot move the ball on offense without being able to run the ball effectively. Lock of the day.

Big Ten Indiana +4 vs Ohio State: This is the first halfway decent team Ohio State has played in three months, and Indiana is an absolute wagon. The unbelievably talented OSU offense will score their share of points, but this Hoosier squad has the line of scrimmage talent to actually hold up with the Buckeyes. Indiana pulls off the upset in Indy.

SEC Georgia -2.5 v Alabama: What, you don’t agree? What on planet earth would lead you to believe that the Dawgs won’t win this game? UGA 42 - Alabama 13.

Texts of the Week: Wake Forest Edition

It was a roller coaster of a week for the Deacs across football and basketball. The good news is they signed their highest-ranked football recruiting class ever and extended Jake Dickert, which is something some very wise and handsome writer called for last week. The bad news is they lost to Duke thanks to a defensive collapse and four turnovers in a game that should be labeled NSFW for both teams. Three days later, in the SEC/ACC basketball challenge, the Deacs shot 0-100,000 and let a middling Oklahoma team beat them by 22 on their home court. Here are some excerpts from various Wake group chats.

“Going on 1 NCAA Tournament appearance (barely) in 16 years, but thank god we’re building The Grounds(™)!”

“What a fucking joke.”

“One of the worst halves of basketball I can remember”

“Holy shit this is an ass game”

“We cannot let this Duke team into the ACC title game…they are not good.” Got bad news for you, bucko

“I think I might be cheering for the UNC dumpster fire today just to see them go 5-7 and make a bowl due to APR….It would be very funny for Belichick to have to keep coaching this season…We all know he wants it to be over so bad.”

“I legitimately believe we are the most tortured fanbase of all time…Even athletic departments like NC State who stink for decades rip off a miracle final 4 run every now and then” 

“I would counter with South Carolina. Higher expectations, bigger program, high level of fan support, basically no success ever in anything.” Can’t argue with you there, chief, but they do have a recent Final Four run too. 

“Poor [name redacted] is a die hard Wake Forest, South Carolina, Carolina Panthers, Chris Paul, and Charlotte Hornets fan. Guys getting hit land sea and air.”

“I asked ChatGPT the most tortured college fan bases and State was #1, Wake was not in the top 10. And I said “What about Wake Forest?” to which it said “wake is absolutely in the conversation. I’d say they’re the most overlooked tortured fan base in the country” which just was a dagger. We don’t even get appreciated for our suffering.”

“God this was depressing to read through.” Same…same. 

On that note, have a great weekend, everyone! Our annual Bowl Challenge is loading…

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