Okay, so the Clay Travis Archive has been slow to roll out
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Clay Travis Archive. That's on me, I've been busy with the book, traveling, and Fox. But many of you know the site I started writing for. Deadly Hippos. There's a huge archive here. Enjoy.
(By the way, in the above photo, please note the man in flip-flops in the lower left. I take my bow.)Labels: Clay Travis Archive
Posted by Clay Travis at 7:19 AM
0 comments
Permalink
Digg this Post
Email this Post
Tennessee v. Florida 2005 (Clay's first ever viewer guide) part one 9-22-05
Friday, September 12, 2008
I've never done a timeline for viewing a sporting event before. As a prelude, let it be known that my Tennessee football fandom is quite established both by blood (my grandfather was a defensive lineman for UT in the 1930's and became one of the first in a long line of Volunteer football players not to graduate from the school) by years (the first football game I can vividly recall watching on television without supervision was UT-Miami from the Sugar Bowl in 1986 which I watched alone because my Dad was attending and the first game I ever attended was the following fall in 1986 when UT and UCLA tied) and by punishment (after Auburn stormed back to tie UT in the late 80's I was sent to my room for cursing and was told by my mother: "You will absolutely not be one of those UT fans who beats their wives when they lose."
After Florida scored 35 consecutive points in 1997, my senior year of high school, I let loose a torrent of cursing that led to my banishment from the house for a "timeout"). So it was with considerable chagrin that I embarked upon the chronicle of a game of this magnitude given my past history of emotionally unstable behavior.
There is a 99.9% chance that Tennessee fans who beat their wives after a loss would find this shirt stylish.
As a preliminary matter, I chronicled the games leading up to Tennessee-Florida (insert link). And for those who read, I apologize for not attaching this picture then. For those who did not read, the Apollo comedy club was the linchpin holding the CBS crowd together after South Carolina-Alabama but before Tennessee-Florida on CBS Caribbean.
For viewers of the Apollo comedy show, it ain't comedy unless M.C. Hammer's pants from 1988 are mentioned.
6:45 Select pregame attire after jumping in pool to cool off post-workout. Automatically reject "Muslims Are the Bomb" t-shirt and "So Many Christians So Few Lions" t-shirt in the event either Allah or Jesus are likely to actually be deciding this game.
Clay did not want to offend Allah or confuse him with Prince's unprounceable symbol.
Or Jesus either.
Somewhere Clay's Sunday School teacher is beaming as Jesus has been featured in two columns this week. Ultimately comes down to decision between Tennessee national championship shirt and Tennessee SEC champion shirt. Somehow SEC champion seems like the humbler of the choices. I decide both Allah and Jesus would approve.
6:52 Pregame meal of chicken fingers and Mountain Dew. Eating during a big game makes me sick.
7:53 Pregame telephone call from my friend Junaid. Discussion regarding our offensive philosophy and how we'll know whether the game is going in our favor. We agree that we'll be able to tell quite a bit based on the first few offensive series'. At this point I should reiterate that my cell phone does not work in my Virgin Islands condo and that I made that point abundantly clear to anyone who might want to reach me during the game.
7:56 My cell phone rings for the first time. I attempt to answer and can hear nothing at all. Scream, "Call me at home" while craning my neck to see if Omarion is still singing on the Apollo comedy show.
8:00 SEC on CBS music begins. This is spectacular music. Every time I hear this music I think I can run through a wall. Luckily, I do not act on this feeling.
8:02 First mention of Urban Meyer's spread offense. I stifle a gag.
Is it just me or is this the worst t-shirt ever made? Aren't those got milk ads forty years old by now?
8:08 Cinema verite opening to game is shocking to me on several levels. Among them, 1. that Verne can correctly pronounce ver-i-tay (remember Versailles, Kentucky is pronounced Ver-sales down south) 2. cinema verite is actually mentioned in regards to a football game 3. The Longest Yard is interspliced with footage of real games. (See Shaw's review of TLY here) Are you kidding me?
Utilizing The Longest Yard in a cinema verite opening is like slamming feces on canvas and selling it as a Jackson Pollack. 8:09 Verne says something about how Adam Sandler hasn't been the same since Happy Gilmore. I'm apoplectic. Somewhere, somehow, I pray that someone had Adam Sandler in the what's the most ludicrous thing Verne Lundquist will talk about during tonight's game contest.
8:10 What a coincidence, The Longest Yard is one of the sponsors for tonight's game. It's amazing how these things work out. This week for Florida-Kentucky I understand Verne is going to call the entire game in UnderArmour. 8:12 Opening kickoff. An overhyped Verne hollers, "Fumble" as loud as he can. In no way does anything occur that at all resembles a fumble. Todd Blackledge does his best to cover while Verne stutters an apology.
8:18 Chris Leak is sacked twice in the same minute. The second by Tennessee defensive back Jason Allen.
Chris Leak in happier times when the fat white men in his life weren't sitting on top of him.
8:21 Junaid's second call, "I'm feeling good," he states. Communication system fails. 
8:23 Junaid's third call, "I'm still feeling good," he states. We agree we both like the pace and tone of the game. "This is Volunteer football," I say.
8:35 University of Florida graduate the 27's first call to my cell phone ten seconds after Florida's first touchdown. "Spread offense." A pause, "Spread offense," he says again.
The 27. Once an all-state Florida football player, now a lawyer. How the mighty have fallen.
8:38 Erik Ainge enters the game at quarterback for UT. He immediately goes deep. Incomplete.
Every time UT loses and I start to feel sorry for Erik Ainge, I think, why are you feeling sorry for him, no matter which way the game comes out he's spending more time in sorority houses than you are.
8:40 My college roommate Cliff calls during a commercial break. He lives in San Francisco and has no interest in college football except in ridiculing the University of Tennessee. "The spread option offense is unstoppable," he says in his WWE wrestler voice. After a short pause, "Did you get my flight information?"
8:50 Sometimes on big games, I don't change the channel during commercial breaks. This is definitely a big game. So I'm still watching when the Homeland Security Ad comes on. Is this really the best way our tax dollars could be spent? On a little girl talking about terrorism.
8:51 Return from commercial break features two hot Florida undergrads wearing cowboy hats. They each hold up their fingers and say they are #1. At first I'm inclined to agree, but then I start thinking they looked way too comfortable on camera. I'm sure you catch my drift.
8:52 Television timeouts are bracketed by one play. Why does this happen? Can CBS not see this coming? Verne, come on, Verne.
8:54 Miller High Life runs a television commercial that must be at least five minutes thirteen seconds long. And all bad. It's a football game...if you want me to drink your beer show me almost naked girls. That's the deal. Don't break that agreement.
Why I love Miller Lite (and old men in cowboy hats). Wait...
8:58 Drug control commercial on second hand smoke with the slogan, "Don't pass gas." Third graders everywhere snicker...I want my tax refund and no more government commercials.
9:00 My wife Lara calls needing a phone number as UT breaks the huddle on third down. Is there anything more true than the fact that your wife only needs something when a key play is about to happen?
9:10 Tennessee touchdown. Bret Smith the touchdown maker...Bret Smith the touchdown maker...Bret Smith the touchdown maker. Tie ballgame.
Am I the only person who sees the picture and wonders what happened to the photographer?
9:13 Return from commercial break to see hot UT chicks in half-torn wife beaters. Ok, ok, who's with me, Florida girls in cowboy hats vs. UT chicks in wife-beater in a pudding wrestling match to decide the game.
I was going to use a picture of Blue from Old School as someone who would definitely be with me, but somehow this guy's picture came up on google image search for "old school blue." Somehow, I doubt he'd have a problem with the pudding wrestling.
9:21 Long pause for instant replay that reverses call giving the Vols the ball inside the Gator one. Junaid calls, "This is why I wasn't in favor of instant replay," he says. 9:27 Blocked kick. I hate kickers. 9:33 UT's third sack. 9:34 Jason Allen...Jason Allen...Jason Allen
Ok, ok. Every bit of it is true. I do have a nonsexual crush on Jason Allen.
9:39 Halftime. Gator fans demonstrate their idiocy by raining down boos on their team so loud even Verne hears them. This despite the fact that their team is in a 7-7tie with the #5 team in the country. Immediately go outside to pool area where my cell phone works and place calls to Cliff, Junaid, Weatherholt, and the 27. Discuss strategy and potential play calls in case Fulmer decides to call seeking suggestions.
Unlike most of my friends, Phil Fulmer always remembers to dial the home line and not the cell phone number during games. Save the best call for last, leaving this bon mot on the 27's answering machine, "The verdict is in, the spread offense doesn't work when the quarterback running the offense spreads his legs and reveals female genitalia."
Satisfied, I return for the second half. The second half diary will be published this Friday as it is far too long now to be only one column. Check back Friday for the conclusion. (And yes, I already realize in advance this column being continued was like the Different Strokes episode where we already knew that Arnold wasn't going to die but everyone was supposed to think he might).
The first thing Willis will do once he gets out of jail? Check out the second half of Clay's Tennessee-Florida game diary of course.
Posted by Clay Travis at 2:16 PM
0 comments
Permalink
Digg this Post
Email this Post
The DH Interview with Phillip Bouchard, Creator of Oregon Trail 9-20-05
On July 7, I wrote a column (click here) about my fifth grade experience traversing the computerized Oregon Trail. I expected this column would slowly recede into the depths of my column catalogue. Somehow, however, this column caught the eye of Philip Bouchard who was one of the impresarios in charge of the Oregon Trail design team way back in 1985. Exactly twenty years ago. If you remember the game and want to try your hand at playing it, click here for a free online version.
Shockingly, Mr. Bouchard contacted the site and expressed his appreciation to us for both the column and the fact that the game had remained so firmly entrenched in our memory. We exchanged a couple of emails and finally I resolved to conduct the first legitimate and entirely real interview in the history of deadlyhippos. In the past twenty years no one else has ever interviewed the creators of the 1985 Oregon Trail which as any reader of this site already knows was an absolute masterpiece. Without further ado, meet Philip Bouchard and have every question you could have ever wanted to know answered (or at least every question I wanted answered).
1. The game commences with the player asked to choose among three choices: Banker from Boston, Carpenter from Ohio. and Farmer from Illinois. Was there ever any discussion of including a Slave Owner from Mississippi?
I wanted to have 3 difficulty levels representing different amounts of initial resources. We tied this into the real world by connecting these levels to 3 different professions. This was also an opportunity to get kids to think about the fact that the emigrants came from different places and had different backgrounds.
Although we did not choose to address slavery issues with this product, a decade later I worked on another historical simulation game called Pony Express Rider, published by McGraw-Hill Home Interactive. In this product we addressed the slavery issue quite directly.
After The Oregon Trail, but before Pony Express Rider, I designed and programmed two other historical simulation games (both published by MECC) that also dealt squarely with ethnic relations – Lewis & Clark Stayed Home, and Dr. Livingstone, I Presume? In Lewis & Clark you explore the American West, interacting with dozens of different Native American communities. In Dr. Livingstone you explore Africa, interacting with dozens of different African ethnic groups.
To clarify: A slave owner from Mississippi was not considered as a potential fourth option.
2. Were you ever informed that some religious schools in the south insisted their students select Carpenter from Ohio because Jesus was a carpenter? Was it your intent to cloak the Carpenter from Ohio in religious symbolism?
I had never heard this before, and any religious symbolism in the product is purely accidental. But I was born and raised in the Deep South, so I witnessed on many occasions the deep attachment that many southerners have to their religious beliefs.
Clay's sunday school teacher Mrs. Crabtree would be pleased Jesus is so close to his heart...and column.
3. The general store proprietor’s name is Matt. This seems to be a rather modern name and my next door neighbor who was named Matt always bragged about this unfortunate conjunction. a. Was there a member of the design team named Matt who was being honored? b. Was it your intent to allow my next door neighbor to brag about sharing a name with the store proprietor?
I understand that Matt is short for Mathew, a name with a very long history. The son of the then-president of MECC was also named Matt, and our president was convinced that we named the store’s proprietor after his son. Please don’t let him know the real story – he would be so disappointed!
4. Matt's character has a pipe. If this game were designed today do you believe you would be required to remove the pipe from Matt's mouth? Did you feel any responsibility about the high rate of tobacco use among children of the 1980's?
If all those kids had taken up pipe smoking, then I would definitely feel guilty – but I think I’m in the clear! Honestly, if I were to design another Oregon Trail, I don’t think we would see Matt using any form of tobacco.
Even back then, any references to tobacco could be controversial. We got away with the pipe for Matt (which was the visual designer’s idea – not mine), but in Lewis & Clark I ran into a bigger controversy. The real Lewis & Clark took along tobacco as one of the items to trade with Native Americans. But I was told by the publisher to remove this trade item from the product.
5. How did your team settle on five as the requisite number of individuals attempting the trek on the Oregon Trail and were there any names that were disallowed from selection as choices? For instance are names like stinky, cooties, and gayey allowed?
I chose 5 as the number of individuals on your team strictly from the standpoint of game play, and not for any actual historical reasons. That’s one of the rare exceptions, because I made of point of weaving real history or geography into almost all of my other design decisions.
We talked about building a filter to disallow certain terms as keyboard input. This was a concern not only for the name input, but even more so for the gravestone epitaph. However, as we were designing this product to fit on a 2-sided Apple II floppy disk, we didn’t have the space to incorporate such a filter. This was just one of many features on our wish list that did not make it into the finished product.
The lack of a profanity filter came back to bite us. Some teachers began to complain that we had shipped a product with filthy language in it. When we asked where the filthy language had been encountered, the answer was always “the epitaph on the gravestone”. Some teachers were flabbergasted when I told them that the product ships with a blank gravestone – and that their own students had written the epitaph. However, we did have the foresight to include a teacher option to erase the epitaph – which these teachers found quite useful.
Pizza has never tasted the same again to poor Andy.
6. When you play the game which player do you select and which month do you start?
I like to start as the farmer – for the maximum challenge and the greatest opportunity to earn points. I start the journey in either March or April.
7. Since this game was set in 1848 and slavery was still legal was there ever any mention of slavery or slaves in the game design? In your opinion would making the journey with slaves have made the trip more or less difficult?
In all my research while I designed the game, I did not – to my current recollection – encounter any stories about emigrants traveling with slaves. So I imagine that it must have been a rare circumstance at best. We never considered including slavery in this product.
I later proposed doing a product based on the Underground Railroad, in which the player takes the role of an escaped slave fighting the odds to escape to Canada. I wanted to use the same underlying engine that I had built for Lewis & Clark. I never got the chance to design and build such a product, but MECC later created one using a different team. Interestingly, the product became highly controversial soon after its release, with parents actually staging protests against the product. MECC responded by pulling the product from the market.
Harriet Tubman was hated upon.
8. Even today food at .20 a pound is pretty complicated to figure out. Sometimes in my fifth grade class other kids would use calculators to figure out their purchases. I always believed this constituted cheating and refused to use a calculator. Can you confirm that these other kids were, in fact, cheating?
I applaud your determination to use pencil and paper and/or mental math to compute your purchases. You are certainly entitled to feel a little bit superior to your classmates that used calculators. But I have no problem with those who use calculators as a tool to aid their decision making. I believe that the important aspect is the decision making process, not how the computations are made.
9. In retrospect were bullets too cheap in this game and did children gain a false sense of security as to how easy it was to kill a buffalo?
Unfortunately, in real life it was all too easy to kill a buffalo with a rifle. In later decades hunters would kill vast numbers of buffalos and take only the tongues. So I wanted kids to feel a sense of shame for killing too much and then wasting the kill. That was one of the reasons for allowing the player to carry back no more than 200 pounds of meat. I wanted the kids to develop a sense of conservation while playing the game – to say “We should not shoot more meat than we can carry”. Our field testing showed that this lesson was indeed effective.
On the other hand, I wanted to force the player to master certain skills in order to be successful at hunting. Some other versions of The Oregon Trail made hunting too simple and too easy – in my opinion. In my version, you could move the hunter around the screen in 4 directions and fire the gun in 8 directions – using various keys on the keyboard. Furthermore, I put obstacles on the screen that the animals could run behind. So it requires some practice to master the hunting skills and be successful. Consequently, some new players – and most adults – complained that I had made hunting too difficult. But a visit to any school provided ample evidence that legions of kids – mostly boys – had completely mastered the hunting interface.
Finally, the false sense of security was a double-edged sword. After you get into the mountains, game animals become scare, and there aren’t any more buffalo to shoot. It’s easy to starve in the mountains, and each time you go fruitlessly looking for game, you waste of day of travel time.
10. If the game were designed today would children be allowed to shoot anything?
Yes, definitely. I say this despite the fact that I have always had a personal distaste for hunting. But from a historical perspective – and a game play perspective – I think that hunting is essential to this game.
11. What do you think of the Washington Bullets changing their name to the Washington Wizards?
That won’t get them anywhere on the Oregon Trail!
The likely success of Micheal Jordan and Mariah Carey on the Oregon Trail was not impacted by the change of team names.
12. Would the "Indians" in the game now be referred to as "Native Americans"?
Probably. That’s a tough question, because I’m torn between using the actual terminology of that era, and the accepted terminology of today.
No matter which way you scalp it, an indian by any other name is still an indian.
13. Can you confirm or deny the old wive's tail that if you killed 800 or more pounds worth of meat that the Indians would come and help you carry it back to your wagon?
I don’t know which old wives you have been talking to, but this information is false. Sorry to break the news to you like this! Perhaps you need to find some different old wives to hang out with.
One can never be sure about these things, but KWo seems quite certain that the old wive's tail about the indians and the buffalo actually descended from the old wife picture above.
14. There are many ways to die on the Oregon Trail. Were there any diseases or illnesses that you wanted to use but were not allowed to?
Interesting question! Actually, I think that all of our top choices – which were based on actual history – made it into the product.
15. Is it fair to say that on the spectrum of western representation in modern media, the Oregon Trail and the HBO series Deadwood are on opposite ends?
Well, they are certainly on the opposite ends of the language spectrum.
For example Matt the general store proprieter was never quoted as saying, "Fuck off you fucking fucker fucky," when asked the price of oxen yokes.
16. Has there ever been another computer game that has used the space bar more brilliantly?
I’m tempted to say “Of course not!” But in reality, the product of that era that I most admire for its interface design is The Factory, published by Sunburst. You can play the entire game using only 3 keys – left arrow, right arrow, and Return (or space bar).
17. Was the phrase "inadequate grass" that appears as the wagon rumbles west an inside joke?
I needed a single short phrase that could convey the idea that grass was hard to find, and when found it was skimpy in quantity and poor in quality. “Inadequate grass” seemed the ideal phrase at the time. But now that you point it out, I see that the phrase would have a different meaning in Haight-Ashbury.
18. Isn't the photo of the bathing beauty at Soda Springs a bit risque?
Hey, after traveling and surviving all this distance, you need a little reward!
19. Were there any words forbidden to be printed on the gravestone? If not, were you pained to read about my epitaph, "Too bad nerd?"
We didn’t have space on the disk for a profanity filter – so I’m delighted that “nerd” was the worst word that you encountered!
Philip Bouchard's lack of felt pain notwithstanding, fifth grade mockery has led a melancholy Clay to often take pause and weep. And take ridiculous photos of himself.
20. Did you ever receive any complaints from parents who were angry about any element of your game?
I mainly heard from teachers, not parents. Most teachers were delighted with the game. Other than the occasional complaint about profanity on the tombstone, the most common complaint was that some students needed more than one class period to complete the game, and our original release did not include a save-game option.
However, teachers did send up a howl when MECC at first refused to sell the new version in a school edition. There’s a story behind this. When I was given the mandate in 1984 to design a big new version of The Oregon Trail for release in 1985 – targeted to the home market – I told my supervisor, “I’m going to design this product so that it works equally well in the home and school markets.” He replied, “Don’t bother – we’re not going to sell this version to schools.” I answered, “Well, I’m going to do it anyway, because I find it hard to believe that this product will not be sold to schools.” So I did indeed design a product that I felt was equally suited to either market. But when teachers found out that the new version was not being sold to schools, they raised such a ruckus that MECC quickly changed its mind and released the new version to the school market. And of course it became a massive hit in the school market, even more so than in the home market.
Another complaint – although rare – was that the game was not sufficiently educational. I was once in the audience at an educational technology conference when another audience member stood up to say that you don’t learn anything from The Oregon Trail. Some members of the audience were offended by the comment. I was rather amused by it. In a very limited sense, he was right. In this game I don’t attempt to stuff a lot of factual memorization down the throats of the players. But I do encourage a lot of learning through experience. And I encourage additional learning by piquing the kids’ curiosity to seek information on their own about the history and geography covered in the product. In a well-organized school setting, the teacher will make effective use of the curiosity stirred up by the game. In my later historical simulations – when I had more disk space to work with – I attempted to provide richer learning environments where kids could seek answers to their questions without leaving the computer. But I never had another hit like The Oregon Trail! (My second biggest hit was Number Munchers, which is a very different kind of game.)
Number Munchers
21. Was there ever any consideration of a Trail of Tears game or was that considered too much of a downer?
The Trail of Tears fascinated me as a concept because I grew up in north Georgia within the former Cherokee territory. I was fascinated by the knowledge that the Cherokees were progressive and economically successful – blending the best of Western culture and their traditional culture. They had newspapers, factories, plantations, and other amenities. When Georgia tried to evict them, instead of going to war, they sued. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, and the Cherokee nation won the suit. But then President Andrew Jackson gave Georgia carte blanche to ignore the Supreme Court ruling and evict the Cherokees anyway.
However, I never came up with a satisfying concept for a game – and yes, it was too much of a downer.
22. Do you believe that kids today are bigger wusses than kids twenty years ago?
Statistics show that kids today are definitely bigger than 20 years ago, and the child obesity problem is clearly getting out of hand. And yeah, the level of wussiness has probably gone up too.
Wusses...every last one of them.
Posted by Clay Travis at 2:14 PM
0 comments
Permalink
Digg this Post
Email this Post
Musings on college football week two 9-19-05
1. There are approximately two people in the universe who know what Jefferson Pilot television zone the United States Virgin Islands are a part of, myself and the supervisor at ESPN.com. We discovered this when my purchase of the Vandy-Ole Miss game was blacked out despite numerous attempts to correct the situation and a forty-three minute telephone call.
By the time I realized that JP considers the U.S. Virgin Islands to be a part of Florida, it was already the second quarter. Evidently the 1500 miles of ocean between the two are inconsequential. Per JP, Micronesia is also a part of Texas.
2. Jefferson Pilot SEC broadcaster Dave Rowe is the most annoying broadcaster of college football on earth. His voice is grating, he makes no sense, is not very intelligent, and has the most expansive definition of touchdown-saving in the universe. Leaving aside the metaphysical truth that every tackle is by nature, touchdown-saving on some level, Dave Rowe utters this phrase: "Oh my, if (insert player's name here) doesn't make that tackle, (insert opposing player's name here) might still be running." Is this really possible? Has anyone since Forrest Gump ever scored a touchdown and kept running?
Dave Rowe's wet dream: A football player who keeps running.
3. So I "watched" the first half of the Vanderbilt-Ole Miss game on stat tracker. At exactly 1:52 eastern time with Vandy up 17-3 and driving I jotted down on a tablet: "Is Jay Cutler a Heisman candidate?" Without fail on the next stat tracker update, Vandy fumbled.
4. After a thirty minute search that featured three bars without the Vandy-Ole Miss game, I found a pirated feed in a sports bar located in the ruins of a old sugarcane plantation. It still has the windmill, but unfortunately has neither air-conditioning nor ceiling fans. It did, however, have the game and mosquitoes. I arrive in time to see Vandy go up 24-3. After allowing three touchdowns on plays in excess of 30 yards, Vandy scores again to seal the win. 3-0 and atop the SEC east. Sometimes the rapture arrives and no one even notices. I guess we were all sinners.
5. Take a college football sabbatical until a return home in time for the second halves of Notre Dame-Michigan State, Clemson-Miami, (the ABC regional game in the Virgin Islands this week for those keeping track) and Alabama-South Carolina. Rapidly eliminate the Alabama-South Carolina game as Alabama is delivering a spanking to Spurrier. Somewhere Monday, Spurrier is sitting in his South Carolina office repeating to himself over and over again, "Damn it, I'm Steve Spurrier and this is the SEC. Damn it, I'm Steve Spurrier and this is the SEC." Lou Holtz is wearing that silly grin of his in the studio at ESPN because he now knows that South Carolina is where old coaches go to fade away.
6. The Clemson television signal is lost as they line up to kick the tying field goal. Watch Notre Dame rally and then implode. Is there any fanbase more bipolar than Notre Dame's? Win two games and they start talking about the national championship, lose a game and they start worrying about bowl eligibility. Double overtime games at the same exact moment is pretty exhilarating especially when ABC manages to reclaim their signal. Miami safety Kenny Phillips ices the win with a pick of Clemson's ninth year quarterback Charlie Whitehurst. Phillips will be a top ten pick in the draft in three years. In the same three years Charlie Whitehurst will be telling stories about his nine years living at the Kappa Kappa Gamma house.
Whitehurst: "And then I told Sarah Beth, you know what would go even better with this beer, Laura Leigh."
7. My game diary of the UT-Florida game will be forthcoming later this week. But before that occurs, I have to ask, was the Apollo comedy show the one-hour bridge between SEC football games for anywhere else in the country? While I was in the kitchen I heard two jokes one about M.C. Hammer's pants. Dead silence. The other about Gladys Knight's credit card commercial. Dead silence again. I've watched the Apollo show before and usually the crowd laughs at anything. Seriously, who made this decision? Has anyone ever watched an SEC football game and then hung around during the hour between games to watch the Apollo? Ever? This might be the worst scheduling decision surrounding sports I've ever seen. Nice call CBS Caribbean. Wait...wait...wait, scratch that, Omarion is singing. Great call CBS.
Even the greek god Apollo was not amused at the M.C. Hammer joke from circa 1989.
8. I apologize to everyone for calling attention to the 31 point spread between Arkansas and USC. It should have been fifty. Arkansas humiliated the SEC by losing 70-17. How bad was it? USC had the ball for only 1:32 in the first quarter, but gained 246 yards on eight plays- four of them were touchdowns-for a 28-7 lead.
9. The answer to the above question is yes, Jay Cutler does deserve consideration for the Heisman if Vandy can beat either LSU, UT, or Florida this year and finishes with seven or greater victories. He needs a signature win over a top ten opponent. Vandy is 3-0 right now. Without Jay Cutler they are 0-3. No other single player has been the difference for three games for their team. Of course, Jay Cutler will never win the Heisman unless Vandy goes undefeated. Even still, he deserves some credit.
Check back later this week for my game diary of the UT-Florida game. It's almost as painful to watch as when Alice gave birth to Freddy Krueger's son in Nightmare on Elm Street 5.
A recovered "Alice" makes nice with a fan after having almost given birth to the scion of the devil.
Posted by Clay Travis at 1:02 PM
0 comments
Permalink
Digg this Post
Email this Post
Why does LSU coach Les Miles look so goofy in a baseball cap? College Football Week One 9-12-05
Some people spend their weekends in the Caribbean windsurfing, island-hopping, and drinking Cruzan Rum while checking out cruise-ship chicks in bikinis. Instead, I spent my weekend watching every college football game I could. During this time, I occasionally spoke aloud and predicted upcoming plays (see my call to no one else in my condo of an Iowa State interception return for a touchdown when Iowa's back-up quarterback dropped back to pass on third and long) [a], had one telephone conversation during which a friend shamelessly utilized Hurricane Katrina to justify an impending LSU loss, and finished two different types of chips I had never eaten before. By one in the morning on Sunday after the fifth game I had watched, I felt sort of like you do after the third jager-bomb or after you've stayed at a strip club for long enough to see every dancer come to the stage twice. Of course, this means that in one week. I'll do the exact same thing all over again. Here with numerical accompaniment was my Saturday.
1. Ok, so it was Thursday and it was the NFL. But exactly five minutes into the first NFL football game of the season, I received the first trash-talk telephone call from the 27. This was his first sentence. "Courtney Anderson." This was his second sentence, "Courtney Anderson." If you have any idea who Courtney Anderson is, you have fantasy football fever. In a bad way. For those lacking the fever, he's the tight end for the Oakland Raiders. And he scored the first touchdown of the NFL season. The 27 had picked him up earlier in the day for his woeful team in the Vanderbilt Law School/deadlyhippos league.
2. Saturday begins with College Gameday. I'm almost ready to elope with Nick Lachey. Now he's a roving reporter for the College Gameday guys. Is his life real? If he would just stop singing he would officially become the coolest guy of the 21st century. This time the singing doesn't bother me. Lachey sings Hail to the Victor from Ohio State's stadium. In a subsequent conversation with my friend Weatherholt, we consider the odds of Nick Lachey making it out of Columbus alive. [b] Regardless, my nonsexual crush continues to flicker.
3. Watch Michigan-Notre Dame. Consider writing entire column about how Michigan is like a hot chick at a party. She's wearing a tank-top with spaghetti straps replete with ample cleavage a skirt well-above the knee to reveal her perfect legs. Beautiful face with twinkling eyes. And then beer pong starts and she doesn't drink alcohol. And she won't play topless. Reconsider column idea much like Michiganders are beginning to reconsider head coach Lloyd Carr. This might mark the first time that Lloyd Carr/Michigan has ever been analogized to a hot chick at a party. Hopefully it will be the last.
In case you were wondering, Lloyd Carr is like a hot chick at the party who doesn't drink or play beer pong topless. He does, however, look great alongside Mickey.
4. Recurring question throughout the day, why is instant replay in college so confusing? No one understands when plays are going to get reviewed. Isn't this ridiculous? Why wouldn't college just piggy-back off all the work the NFL has already done here. Just give each coach a red flag or a buzzer and let them decide when to challenge calls. As is, some guy who hasn't had sex since 1942 is sitting inside a booth somewhere. For all we know he's using the replay cameras to look up cheerleader's skirts. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but still...
Hopefully the college instant replay guy was not tempted by either of these Michigan cheerleaders.
5. I watch Iowa-Iowa State. This is the regional game on ABC--the only person I know from Iowa is the same person who has the racist dog named Jack. Suprisingly, despite being from Iowa she is not featured in the telecast nor is her dog Jack. Iowa State wins in an upset and I make my spectacular prediction, aloud, to an empty room.
6. I watch Florida-South Carolina. Despite the fact that he has driven me to fits of incoherent rage, I still like Steve Spurrier. This might be the equivalent of male domestic abuse, i.e. when an opposing player or coach constantly does you wrong but you still come back for more.
Steve Spurrier= Clay's Ike Turner.
7. Halfway through the game Florida-South Carolina, I bail out to go watch The Forty Year Old Virgin. Realize there is a joke here about the instant replay guy but refuse to stoop so low. The entire movie felt odd to me, sort of like when you're stuck wearing an outfit you know you're going to get made fun of for wearing but you haven't gotten made fun of yet. I can't explain it, but the movie is worth seeing if you feel like watching an old guy try to lose his virginity. Personally, I'd rather just watch Jim Rome's television show and see it for real.
8. Return home in time for the start of the second quarter of Texas-Ohio State and kickoff of LSU-Arizona State. By halftime of the Texas-Ohio State game, I'm considering whether I would rather raise Vince Young's child or my own. After much contemplation, I think I would rather raise Vince Young's as they are more likely to be winners. [c]
9. Vanderbilt won at Arkansas 28-24. Are you kidding me? Vanderbilt is now 2-0. They haven't been 2-0 since back in 1989 when I was in third grade. I still remember that because my Nashville day care teacher and I had a conversation then about Vanderbilt being 2-0 right before they played Florida. My day care teacher said, "I saw where one of Florida's players was like, 'Yeah, we have to take Vanderbilt seriously.' and I was like, who are you kidding, it's Vanderbilt."
I concurred before I knew what concurred meant, "Yeah," I said, "Vandy sucks."
The day care teacher shook her head. "We don't say sucks, back to timeout."
She was right about Vandy, they still didn't have a winning record that year, but now that I'm grown I can says sucks whenever I want. Sucks for her.
10. Texas wins. Just a spectacular game. This is the third top 10 loss of the day for the Big 10.
11. Second football conversation of the day with my friend Weatherholt as LSU trails with only a few minutes remaining against Arizona State. Weatherholt is a notorious Pac-10 hater. He tries out his excuse as to how the SEC's LSU could lose, "I've already decided if LSU loses, I'm blaming it all on the effects of Hurricane Katrina." LSU scores to take the lead as we talk on the phone. Weatherholt abandons his Katrina argument.
12. Les Miles looks more ridiculous in a baseball cap than anyone I've ever seen on the sideline. He looks like he is wearing a cowboy hat. Now this might pass for kosher in Oklahoma, but down South the brim can't double as a rough approximation for your actual height. Note to Les, when someone could drop a football onto your head and you wouldn't even feel it, there might be too much air in your cap.
13. My friend Hinton from Vandy law emails me. Having been born on the border between Missouri and Arkansas he roots for both teams. He informs me that Missouri lost at home to New Mexico and reiterates the fact that Vandy beat Arkansas at Arkansas. Ouch. I think we may need to set up a suicide watch for him.
14. Why are there preseason polls that actually count? Five of the preseason top 10 have already lost and we're only in the second week of college football. This is like ranking the Miss USA girls before talent competition. Hey wait...
15. The end is nigh my friends, Vanderbilt has received a vote for the Top 25. Beau Bishop of CBS affiliate WCTV-TV in Tallahassee, Fla., ranked Vanderbilt No. 25 on his weekly Associated Press poll ballot. The last time Vanderbilt received a vote in the poll was on Sept. 26, 1999. In case you were wondering this was the night Jim Rome almost lost his virginity.
16. On the chips front, in an effort to keep my man boobs sustained I sampled two bags. Deep River Snacks have recently inundated the Virgin Islands with their kettle cooked chips. They're excellent. The Vince Young of kettle-cooked chips. The other bag was Sun Chips. Very tasty as well, but more like the Michigan of potato chips, looks good but not very filling.[d]
________________________________
a. Before, you ask, yes, I am aware of the dangers inherent in speaking aloud while one is alone. In the interests of full disclosure the wallpaper in my room also seems alive.
b. Nick Lachey did, in fact, survive. Unfortunately he sang...again. At the opening of the NFL season on Sunday.
c. I do not have any children so I am not a horrible person. Also, I do not know if Vince Young has any children. And I mean male children.
d. I'm confident that never before has the Michigan football team been analogized to both hot chicks and potato chips in the same column. In case you were wondering, my parents are very proud.
Posted by Clay Travis at 12:35 PM
0 comments
Permalink
Digg this Post
Email this Post
Georgia Tech wide receiver Calvin Johnson has the hottest mom in the history of college football 9-07-05
Georgia Tech player Calvin Johnson is among the most talented wide receivers in college football, but his mother Arica Johnson is without a doubt the most attractive mother in the history of college football. Granted the competition is not intense, but even still his mom was hot enough that I thought even Ron Franklin was going to comment on her during the course of the ESPN Saturday night broadcast.
A teammate restrains an angry Calvin Johnson from attacking Clay.
I was watching the game with Lara and we were both stunned. Arica Johnson was wearing her son's jersey which made us both think that she might be his girlfriend. But then she was positively identified as the mother. Before I get too far along in this column, here's the link to Calvin Johnson's page on the Georgia Tech football site.
Unfortunately, despite diligent google and yahoo searching no photos of Arica Johnson could be obtained. I'm asking that someone with better internet search skills help me to locate an online photo for posting. Despite this absence, in light of how attractive his mother is, I decided to post a handy guide for his Georgia Tech teammates about how to make fun of how hot his mother is at Calvin Johnson's expense. This list is posted despite ready acknowledgement on my own behalf that no one from Georgia Tech's football team will be checking out this site for the next two years. Without further ado here are fourteen easy ways to drive him insane:
1. Say absolutely nothing and insert her photo into a collage on the wall of your dorm room alongside Beyonce, Jessica Biel, Cameron Diaz, Jessica Alba, and Jamie Foxx (hey wait...). Wait until he notices and then claim she sent the photo to you without prompting.
2. Refer to her as Milf Johnson at every opportunity.
What'd you say about my momma?
3. Store the photo inside your NCAA Football 2006 cheat guide. Next time you are playing games suggest he check out the formations for one of your upcoming opponents in the guide. When he opens it have pictures of his mother taped to the pages. (This could likely lead to victory in the video game as well as Calvin Johnson is likely to become enraged.)
4. Always give her a hug in his presence. Wink over her shoulder and lick your lips while hugging. Roll your hips if you can do so discreetly. (Note, do not do this in the presence of her husband. He will kill you.)
5. Occasionally make Milf Johnson a snap count in practice and potentially in games. Ergo "Down set...hut..hut-hut...milf johnson."
6. No matter what outfit she is wearing insist it was chosen for your benefit and your benefit alone.
7. Ruminate upon what it would be like to be your friend Calvin Johnson's step-father. Insist that you would be referred to as Big Daddy and that on visits home CJ would have a strictly enforced bedtime and curfew.
8. Get one of the Georgia Tech nerds to redub the song, Stacey's Mom, replacing the Stacey in the title with Arica. Insist this song be played on every bus trip and lead the team in a sing-a-long.
9. Log onto E-Bay as soon as CJ enters the room. When he inquires as to what you are searching for, casually respond, "Some guys on the team said your mom's panties were for sale."
10. Print out a large face photo on cardboard. Attach a string until you have a suitable mask and go as Milf Johnson for Halloween.
11. Start drinking wine...ruminate often in his presence about how everything becomes finer with age.
12. Talk about how much you enjoy watching women eat popsickles in CJ's presence. Next time you see his mother offer her a popsickle. Repeat this offer each time you see her. If CJ reacts, roll your eyes and respond, "Come on now CJ, everybody loves a popsickle."
13. Start your own set of milf trading cards. Make the entire first set a collection of Arica Johnson action shots. When queried insist this is normal behavior for teammates.
14. After each touchdown insist that at least one member of the offense form his arms into a large "M" in honor of Milf Johnson. (As an example it should look something like a reversed sigma that black football players sign after touchdowns.)
I'm burned out on ideas but I have no doubt there are many more. Post your own ideas on our message board. And if perchance you are the perfect soul who has found an online photo of Arica Johnson, please provide us the link.
Posted by Clay Travis at 12:34 PM
0 comments
Permalink
Digg this Post
Email this Post
College Football Arrives 9-01-05
Remember the halycon days of yesteryear when the return of college football meant waking up early to drink beers at the tailgate, watching College Gameday on televisions set up in the back of trucks, hanging out with attractive girls who were impressed when you won (or lost) a beer shotgunning contest, and rooting on your team to a college national championship? Hopefully you do, because I don't. That's despite being born and raised a southerner and a University of Tennessee football fan on top of that. Instead of these days of excess and autumnal splendor, I spent most of my college Saturdays in Washington, D.C. praying that the Big East "game of the week" (an eternal and neverending oxymoron) wouldn't cancel out the SEC game of the week on CBS.
Upon graduation I traveled back home to attend law school at the least SEC-worthy of SEC schools, Vanderbilt. While here, I witnessed Vanderbilt consistently snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. At the same time, students from other SEC schools constantly arrived at Vandy's stadium and taunted the Vandy students because their schools were superior on the football field. Sometimes these taunting fits erupted into physical violence, but usually Vandy men were smart enough not to engage in arguments about football teams. This was for three primary reasons, 1. because the other guys were always bigger 2. because the other guys were always willing to kill if their teams were insulted 3. the other guys were right. I suspect this might be the hard and fast rule for determining if someone is actually a southern male or not. To whit, if someone says to you, "(Insert team name here) is a bunch of pussies and so are all their fans," and you do not contemplate some act of physical violence, then you are not a southern male. Smart southern males can be easily distinguished from this subset because they are the guys standing farther away from the conflict whispering jokes to their friends.
I say all this to reach this point, somehow, once you leave college, the success or failure of your college team becomes more important than it ever was when you were in college. I have several reasons why this is the case:
1. Because you work now.
That is all. This is the reason.
When you are in college, so your team lost, big deal. There will always be another game and now there are tons of other things to do. Somehow being in math for dummies with all the sorority girls on Monday assuages the pain of a football loss much more than being in an office working on TPS reports. And that's just on Monday. It doesn't even consider the parties going on Saturday night win or lose or sleeping into the afternoon start of NFL football games and waking up to look at the pictures of girls dancing on bars in skirts you took the night before on your digital camera. This is because for college kids football games are just a fringe benefit of their lives whereas for many southern football fans, college football games are their lives. If you doubt this at all, arrive at any SEC football stadium one hour before the start of the game. I guarantee you that the football stadium will be over half full. Arrive within one-half hour of kickoff and you are late...except for the student section where kids come strolling fresh from pregame parties. For working adults the loss festers because they have nothing else to look forward to during the week. Moreover they have to think about this loss during the long slog back to whatever hamlet they call home during the week.
Pretty soon these adult fans are on the message board calling for some coach to be fired or labeling a college kid's effort shameful with brave names like the Volinator or Bayougatorwrestler. I have no doubt that many college football fans care far more about winning or losing than the players do, but I suspect this is because if UT's quarterback doesn't win a game he can still play pick the sorority sleepover. Odds are the Volinator can't. (In fact, if we had two things on this website, 1. a readership and 2. female readers, I'd like to test a hypothesis, any woman who goes on a message board with a name like Dawgonehottie will immediately set the message board world into a tizzie. Seriously. The message board universe has zero women. You'd think most of these guys have never talked to a woman. In fact if anyone is interested in trying this, we can have our first deadlyhippos experiment and gauge reactions.)
But all this has been a long digression about the upcoming college football season. Even with all its excesses and misplaced priorities, there is no better sport in all the world than college football. Let's enjoy the ride.
Posted by Clay Travis at 12:18 PM
0 comments
Permalink
Digg this Post
Email this Post
Previous Posts
Archives
| |
Travis has become enamored of several objects, phrases or events which he frequenly references in the column. Among the most frequent:
'Bama Bangs - a term coined by Travis to refer to southern men's hairstyles that feature prominent bangs for no apparent reason. Brodie Croyle and John Parker Wilson are oft-cited violators of 'Bama Bangs rules.
Read More...
When Clay Travis, acclaimed author of Dixieland Delight, decided to spend the 2008 season up close and personal with UT football, he—and every other college football aficionado—thought he was in for a rollicking ride with one of the leading contenders for the national title. After all, when the Vols kicked off the season on September 1, the defending SEC East champions were ranked 18th in the country. As head coach Phillip Fulmer prepared for the game, he reflected upon a coaching career that included an astounding 147 victories, two SEC championships, and a national title. With 34 years at UT under his belt as both a player and coach, the Tennessee native had just signed a contract extension that projected to keep him at the university long enough to become the winningest coach in program history.
Read More...
There is no college ball more passionate and competitive than football in the Southeastern Conference, where seven of the twelve schools boast stadiums bigger than any in the NFL and 6.5 million fans hit the road every year to hoot and holler their teams to victory.
Read More...
The newly favored man is not really a man at all, but a hairless, effeminate, germ-fearing, non-meat-eating, exfoliating, wristband-wearing woman of the worst order. We as men are told that we must embrace the sacred feminine in ourselves, even if it doesn't actually exist, and become the very quintessence of woman, plus penises. This situation is untenable. This trend must stop.
Read More...
Clay Travis is the only former student manager in the history of college athletics to marry an NFL cheerleader. He managed to pull this off despite an irrational affinity for the television shows Dawson's Creek and My Super Sweet 16. While being raised in Nashville, Tenn., Travis developed a healthy obsession with college sports and Alyssa Milano. As a teenager his greatest accomplishment was taking a doo-rag wearing Luke Duke (balling as Tom Wopat) to the hole at the Nashville YMCA.
In the midst of a stellar legal career during which he specialized in rewarding the unjust and punishing the oppressed, Travis began writing for CBS Sports's SPiN section in September 2005...
Read More...
|
