It’s Wednesday, so you know what that means… time for the blog that gives you the internet’s most ridiculous college football preview series- it’s #FakeNunes time. Can we keep finding ways to get #jokesandgarbage into a Syracuse Orange preview? You be the judge….
Now onto this week’s opponent
Opponent: Tennessee Volunteers
Location: Knoxville, TN
Students: 38,728 students who somehow don’t blame Peyton Manning for Arch going to Texas
The 2025 Fake Nunes Statistical Index (#FNSI)
We continue to look to innovate
our analytics model so we here’s what the lab cooked up for this season.
Rivalry Trophy
The FNSI staff won’t give up on their quest to bring back more tradition into today’s college game. Let’s see what they’ve got for this one
The Real Orange
This one seems very straightforward. Both schools claim the other doesn’t wear “real orange” so the winner should get to call their orange, the one true orange thanks to a bowl that gets painted in the winner’s color.
Jersey Boys
Fran Brown wants to reclaim the Garden State so let’s see how the Orange stack up against each opponent.
The Orange have 17 players from Jersey on this year’s squad and the Volunteers have one.
Advantage: Syracuse
Notable Alum
Bringing back this one as we love to drop, some knowledge every now and then to help our loyal readers possibly win a trivia night. After all we are the Syracuse blog that loves you back and we take that seriously.
Scott Kelly vs Eileen Collins
We’re heading right to space this week with an astronaut duel. Kelly is a NJ native who earned a grad degree at Tennessee. He piloted the Space Shuttle Discovery and had three trips on the International Space Station. Collins was the first woman to pilot the Space Shuttle.
Advantage: Push. The FNSI statistical model says this victory should be shared because piloting a Space Shuttle’s a pretty cool accomplishment
Punter vs Punter
This season we’re giving a little spotlight to the position which too often gets overlooked. Each week we’ll see which team’s punter has the most interesting backstory.
Jackson Ross played three years of professional Aussie Rules Football and can punt with both feet. Just one of those would have made his story interesting, but the only thing missing from his resume is a family connection to Kylie Minogue.
Advantage: Tennessee
Fran Brown Hat Tracker
Fran went 4-1 with the DART hat so will it come back for the season? Will he break out his new logo on the sidelines? Our fashion analytics group is eagerly awaiting.
The Official #FakeNunes Game Prediction
The Orange strike early as Demetres Samuel becomes the first non-MLS 17-year old to score in Mercedes Benz Stadium history. Tennessee is able to take advantage of a fumble and gets a long kickoff return score to pull ahead in the third quarter. It’s a 24-20 game in the 4th, but the Vols grind out a 17-play 87-yard drive to ice it. Orange fans feel encouraged by the game, but also discouraged that an upset was there for the taking.
Final Score: Tennessee 31, Syracuse 20
