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Welcome at Lake Higgins live.

It is Tuesday night, December 28th, the Year of Our Lord, 2021.

We are not high atop downtown Nashville, Tennessee. No, we are in Miami. And of course, by Miami, I mean nearby Fort Lauderdale. That's where our CBS Sports HQ studios are. That's where I am. Look, the last time we were in this building, Travis Hunter cost chaos when he decommitted from Florida State. He went to Jackson State. So look, I don't know what's going to happen tonight. Anything could happen between now and the time we go off the air. We haven't been live in about a week. That's because we've been building up to this. We are, as I said, in South Florida for the remainder of the week. We have got full previews and predictions for the college football playoff tonight. I got Bama Cincinnati coming up momentarily. I got Georgia, Michigan. There are so many different

angles that I feel like we could do an entire telethon on right now, just talking about those games. But also, there's a lot going on with the transfer portal right now. We've been talking about it a lot on Lake Cake. I don't just want to give you another transfer portal update of here's a new kid in the portal. Here's where we think he's going to go. Tonight, what I really want to do is I want to talk wholesale about the portal. We'll talk about some specifics, but there are some things happening right now that I think a lot of folks are freaked out about, and in the end it's going to be okay. It's not the way that we wanted at the moment. I don't think anyone's really overly happy with the way the transfer portal looks, even transfer portal advocates, of which I was one and still am one. There's just a better way to go about it.

That doesn't mean we have to jump in and fix everything in our best imaginative way possible.

So we'll discuss that. I've got, I think, four more added best bets tonight. We're going to do

what we rarely ever do on late kick live, and that is

a few Q&A questions. I put the call out on Twitter earlier today. Got a few Q&A questions,

so we're going to get to that too. Very important, crucially important week that you are following

on Twitter and Instagram at Late Kick Josh. I don't know how much, I'm just going to use the word

copious. Copious amounts of added coverage will be coming your way in that Instagram story. Now, if you were tuned in last week when I was on vacation, you saw some felonious activity. This week, I don't know that we're going to commit any felonies down here. I do know that we're going to have a whole lot of fun. A lot of our guys are down here. Obviously, a lot of the national media apparatus is down here.

A few casuals.

A lot of good folks, too.

So we're going to have a whole lot of fun. A lot of our guys are down here. Obviously, a lot of the national media apparatus is down here. A few casuals. A lot of good folks, too.

So we're going to try and intermingle with the folks that we know are one of us. And there are several down here. So let's dive into this. Boy, I mean, we could go forever tonight. But in the interest of actually getting people around here home at a decent hour we're not going to.

Let's dive in, though.

Alabama versus Cincinnati.

It's the first game. It's 3.30 Eastern time. This Friday, New Year's Eve, Bama, there it is, a 13 and a half-point favorite right now. It fluctuates. It's been 14. It's been 13 and a half, but man, let's dive into this because I want you to do me a favor.

I was thinking about this earlier today as I was in standstill traffic on 9.95. I want you to go back to August with me. Just play pretend for a second. And I'm going to tell you something. I'm going to say, close your eyes so you're not distracted. And so there you close your eyes. I can't. I got to be responsible. We're on air. It's like being behind the wheel of a car. But close your eyes. It's August.

And I'm going to tell you there's going to be a team this year that's going to stumble all over itself during the regular season. It's going to lose a game. It's going to be right on the brink of losing multiple other games. So they're going to sputter and sputter and sputter, but boom, they're going to click. They're going to catch fire at just the right time. In a conference championship game, they're going to lock up the number one seed. And then all of a sudden it's going to feel like they're shot out of a cannon in the playoff. However, they are still going to have that chip on the shoulder, us against the world, total underdog mentality. You would have thought I was

talking about Clemson. You would have thought to yourself, oh, guess Davo and Clemson are going to get

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