Lane Kiffin Arrives: Commence Trashtalk Now; His Wife Is Hotter Than Your Coach's Wife
Friday, November 28, 2008
Say what you will, but our coach's wife is hotter than your coach's wife. To erase all doubt and bring Vol fans together in as early trash talk as possible, I've started a facebook group saying as much.
Welcome Layla Kiffin to Knoxville. Facebook trash-talk style. And, can there be any doubt who our beaver pelt trader of the week is? For the first time ever, a coach's wife takes the honors.
Look, I'm going to rally the troops and support Kiffin. But are we really handing the reins to a guy that's sexy because Al Davis hired him as a head coach? We all know Al Davis is batshit crazy. If he doesn't name Kiffin as his coach (after a bunch of other people passed on the job) is there any way he ends up being a serious candidate at UT? I really don't think so.
But, to be fair to Mike Hamilton, this is a swing for the fences hire. If Hamilton's timetable on hiring (mid-December at the latest) is accurate, Gruden is out. (Contrary to what I heard earlier.) That would leave Brian Kelly, Mike Leach, and Kiffin as viable choices. Of the three Kelly seems like a solid double; reliable and proven yet unlikely to strike anyone as a major gamble. Leach is a homerun hire in my opinion. I've written about this quite a bit. But Kiffin, given his lack of head coaching experience and recruiting expertise in the South, is a swing for the fences as well. This will either end really well or really badly. I see no middle ground. Lane Kiffin becomes Pete Carroll or he becomes Bill Callahan at Nebraska.
If Kiffin were brought in at UT, his boy wonder status would officially be up for grabs. He got a pass at Oakland (despite his 5-15 record in 1.25 seasons), but he won't get one at Tennessee. (Indeed by hiring him we're saying that we don't think he got a fair shake there.) Also, if Kiffin has early success at UT are we going to be worrying about him leaping at the next opportunity that arises in the NFL?
1. He has to be in his 40's at a maximum. Kiffin is just 33. The same age as Jesus when he was crucified. Hopefully that will be a coincidence if he's hired at UT. Clearly Kiffin could be at UT for a long time. Plus, and this could be a bonus, after the Raiders experience he may really value the job security that a place like UT can bring.
2. He has to have been a head coach at some level. Again, Al Davis is the proxy we're using here. And it seems to me that we're playing both sides of the coin here. First, we're considering Kiffin because Al Davis made him a head coach and second, we're saying that Al Davis ran him out of town too early and that he's still a good coach. So on the one hand we're accepting Davis's opinion based on the initial hire, but on the other hand we're rejecting his determination about Kiffin as a coach. Isn't this really arbitrary? We're self-selecting the opinion we like best.
3. Money can't be an option. It doesn't appear that money is a huge issue this time around. Especially since Kiffin doesn't have any buyout from his contract. We'll see on the details.
4. He has to a great recruiter (or convince you he can bring in a staff of great recruiters).
We know that Kiffin is a great recruiter. But he has Pete Carroll at USC to work with. Has the USC program really fallen off the planet at any point since Kiffin left? The answer is no. But, and this could be key, Kiffin is reported to be willing to bring in a staff of great recruiters to supplement his own hard work. So, at least in this respect, he should be capable.
5. He has to be demonstrably intelligent. You don't become a head coach in the NFL at 31 unless you're smart. I'm willing to accept this as a given.
6. He has to strike fear into the heart of our opponents.
Is Kiffin a game-changer? Will Alabama or Florida fans be quaking in their boots over his hire? That remains to be seen. I don't think anyone knows enough about Kiffin to be truly frightened by his results. Frightened by his potential...perhaps.
I guess my primary thought about this hire is that we're picking a really unproven guy as our head coach. We're replacing a coach with 151 wins with a guy who has won 5 games in his career. And lost 15. That's a seismic change and a seismic risk. We're swinging for the fences, but why do I get the feeling we're being seduced by the perception of Lane Kiffin more so than by the reality of what he's actually accomplished?
You know who Lane Kiffin looks the most like to me right now? Mike Shula. The scion of a prominent NFL connected headcoach who has a hot wife and takes over a major program more on potential and connections than tangible results. And that scares the hell out of me.
"True story, I spent one week of law school scheming to see whether the Burger King that was going out of business on 21st Avenue could be replaced by a Chik-fil-A franchise. I did all the research, printed off the franchise applications. I was really serious. Even though my net worth was $-50,000 at the time. I was going to be the first lawyer to be a chicken sandwich baron. (This was before Talbott Ottinger became a chicken finger lawyer-baron in Nashville with Otter's so it was a truly original idea). Then I realized three things: 1. chik-fil-a wouldn't give me a franchise because I didn't have the financial backing 2. you have to work there yourself for a few years 3. I'd have to explain to my parents that I'd gone to law school to become Nashville's chicken sandwich baron.
So instead I went to law school to make dick jokes for a living. Which they're much more proud of. This way everybody wins."
So now Talbott Ottinger, chicken finger lawyer-baron and me (and Chad Withrow) are partners in the great chicken finger war of 2008 and on. I know we're going to win because, and this is the complete truth, I only shill for things I actually like. And I love Otter's. I had a law school alumni party at my house the night before Vandy-Auburn and catered with Otter's because I knew everyone from out of town missed it.
As part of the new partnership, we'll be doing broadcasts from the restaurants in Nashville, setting up giveways, recording radio spots, and generally having a good time. So stay tuned for details; it's going to work out really well. I'm pumped that we've got a naming rights deal with a company whose product I actually use. (True story, we've debated whether Otter's sauce could ever be hooked up to an IV bag as a hangover recovery mechanism.) This is going to work out so much better than ClayNation Radio brought to you by Kotex.
Back to your regularly scheduled time-wasting as Thanksgiving break looms closer still. I'm gearing up for the Titans-Lions from Ford Field at 12:30 tomorrow.
So we have a discussion board on the front page of the site. It's linked here. The idea behind it was to allow y'all to occasionally interact. I get so many great emails that don't end up featured in the mailbag or whatnot for a variety of reasons. Often because I forget about them. Then, a month later, I go back and see I've starred something in google but it's far too late by then.
Anyway, the message board is designed as a way for you to talk with each other (you're all much smarter and funnier than the average message board crowd). Also, it seems to me that intelligent fans of different sports teams don't interact that often on message boards. The message board universe is balkanized. So I'd like to think we can have a different vibe than your general site. Occasionally I'll dip my toe in and post as well.
Here's a solid discussion that spiraled onto the ClayNation radio show and onto the message board. What are the rules for wearing a backward baseball cap? In particular how old can you bee and still do it. Enjoy. And golf claps for everyone who participated on the thread. Feel free to add on your opinion to the thread and we'll craft our own rules for the backward hat in the near future.
ChipHolland Junior Member posted 11-06-2008 06:29 AM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I just found the site. What a national treasure we have here. Anyway, on to the topic at hand. While at the UGA-UT game this year, I noticed an unusually disproportionate number of Tennessee fans wearing their hats backwards (also noticed on the home page of this website). Is there a reason behind this?
If there does turn out to be some sort of scientific theory behind my observations, I demand full credit, much like your discovery of Bama Bangs.
IP: Logged
ClayTravis Junior Member posted 11-11-2008 10:51 AM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- That's a great question. I've actually been debating this lately. When are you too old to wear the backwards hat? I'm coming up on 30 this April (so far my suggestion that my wife bring in a second woman for a birthday threesome has not been as well received as I would have hoped). As part of coming up on 30, I'm thinking that I have to give up the backwards hat. Trooper Taylor and Will Muschamp are both older than me but they do sporting related jobs that require them to interact with young men. Me, I write books about young men. Plus, I have a kid now. I'm going to throw this question into the general mailbag because it's so good. I'm interested in other opinions.
IP: Logged
TCUVol Junior Member posted 11-12-2008 02:24 PM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I just want to know where i can find hats with brims on the back and on the side. Also why do some like to wear a hat that is 4 sizes to big and keep the brim perfectly straight? IP: Logged
DEHIII Junior Member posted 11-13-2008 08:29 AM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Clay, It all depends on who you ask. However if you were to ask Dan Brooks, the defensive line coach for UT, he would say the limit is probably around age 70. He is 57 and still sports the backwards while coaching on the sideline.
So it appears Clay you can rock the headwear backwards for many more years to come.
Ward
IP: Logged
Angry Pirate Junior Member posted 11-13-2008 12:05 PM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I think it also depends on both the type of hat and what you are doing. For example, wearing a non-fitted hat backwards is not acceptable if you are balding, older than 24, or not a douchebag. Mesh hats are simply not meant to be worn backwards unless you are in Tee-ball and its those crappy ones that the local McDonalds bought for your team. Wearing a hat backwards is acceptable, regardless of age, during the following: (1) manual labor in which the bill of the hat could hamper your progress (working on a car, noodling, etc); (2) playing with babies and/or dogs; (3) coaching a contact sport; (4) anything that could ultimately lead to sexy time (if a UK fan, you can leave the hat on the entire time).
IP: Logged
ClayTravis Junior Member posted 11-13-2008 07:29 PM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Angry Pirate, those are gold. Especially the UK fan hat business. I think if you're a UK fan you're required to have sex in the Jeff Shepherd jersey at least once a year. No matter what. Good point too on the mesh hat angle. Those can never be worn backwards. I own a single mesh hat (it was free) and I wore it once and was ridiculed without mercy for the entire night.
Also, one of the regulars at my favorite bar always wears a mesh hat and he's actually known as mesh hat. So I can see the danger here.
IP: Logged
IrishSaint Junior Member posted 11-20-2008 12:52 PM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Backwards hats are ok at any age if worn duringn intense moments as mentioned above. The only time i would consider wearing a hat not directly straight forward or backward is when you are drunk! IP: Logged
DownUnder Junior Member posted 11-23-2008 12:08 AM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This topic of conversation came up today in my household. At 29yo, and with baby #1 on the way my wife suggested it was time to give it up. I bargained for at least the right to wear it until the baby was born, to be renegotiated at that point. To emphasise my authority I wore it today shopping for a pram. To emphasise their lack of respect for a man with a backwards cap (albeit supported by status as a BGID) the shop staff directed all focus on my wife, clearly indicating that the juvenile with her was not the brains behind the operation. Oh well. I still wore it.
As part of his status as the best medical malpractice attorney under 30 in the country, Tardio nows lives out of his suitcase. He's done depositions in California, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Alabama, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and probably other places. All in the past month. Now he's in Detroit.
Which is convenient because I'm also in Detroit. What better way to celebrate than by going gambling in the downtown Detroit casinos?
Honestly, there aren't any.
Especially not since Detroit is the only city I've ever been to where you have to pay for your own drinks while you're gambling. Honestly, it deserves the italics. I can't begin to explain who much this pisses me off.
Although, this will be the second time we've done it so far this year. Which is making me think that might mean we have a problem. In our defense last time we went we kept asking what time the casinos in Canada closed. (Which is a weak defense because it just meant we wanted to go to a new casino.) We asked 14 different people. Eventually we worked our way all the way up to the guy in charge of the MGM casino floor. You know what he said?
"I'm not sure."
Come on, do you have to lie to our faces? You don't know what time your prime competitors close?
So, anyway, if you're in Detroit and gambling two days before Thanksgiving on a Tuesday night, we'll be hard to miss.
Looking Into ESPN's Business Model to Explain Why They Have So Much Money
Occasionally I read a really good article about the business side of sports. Something that gives you a deeper understanding about why ESPN's competitive advantage is so strong in the world of sports programming. Last week or so I wrote about ESPN's monopoly of college football and how that made it less likely that ESPN would ever relinquish the rights to the lesser tier bowls that they'd acquired.
Now, Richard Sandomir (who does a really good job at the New York Times with his focus on sports media, business, and the like) breaks down some of the numbers behinds ESPN's power. Such as the fact that ESPN went $100 million higher than Fox's bid for the new BCS rights.
ESPN cannot ignore the deep recession’s impact on advertising. But its subscriber revenue gives it an extraordinary cushion. ESPN charges cable and satellite operators an average of $3.65 a month per subscriber, the most in television, according to SNL Kagan, a research organization. Multiply that by 98 million subscribers, over 12 months a year, and ESPN’s financial armor adds up to $4.3 billion.
That's staggering. Put simply, traditional competitors like CBS, NBC, and Fox have to rely on their bids producing enough advertising revenue to justify the amount they pay to televise the sporting events. Meanwhile ESPN has the cable charges combined with the advertising revenue they produce from the content.
It's a business model that has such market penetration that ESPN has effectively blocked out all their competitors. Increasingly, as noted by many critics in the wake of the BCS deal, this money has also allowed ESPN to gobble up all of the talented writers who might otherwise criticize a sports monopoly. Where does this all end? With every other sports department broken and defeated. That's where.
Don't believe me? ESPN's revenue alone is greater than CBS's entire market cap at the current market price. CBS's current president, Sean McManus, even acknowledges that it's likely CBS will not keep the entire NCAA Tournament much longer. Why? He with the biggest wallet is king. And right now no one can compete with ESPN.
Clamslammin', Mike Leach, Elin Grindemyr, pink dolphins, and weathermen?
Monday, November 24, 2008
Randy W. writes:
C'L-ay, just wanted to let you know that "Clamslamming" could quite possibly be the greatest word in the history of our country. I am making it a point to average at least 10 to 15 C-Slamming references per day. Preliminary Gallup polls are showing that it could end up being the greatest parlance regarding nailing a chick to hit American vernacular since "Gashbashing." Outstanding work my friend.
Furthermore, after watching that completely absurd (and by absurd, I mean awesome) video of Leach on claytravis.net, it got me thinking that we need to investigate this man's collegiate background. I was under the impression he went to BYU, but after watching his weather-casting abilities I am starting to think he might have done some graduate school work at Mississippi State. Let's try and figure out if there is any truth to this.
Today I went on Roundtable Radio with Lance and Ian down in Birmingham (If you're from Alabama and not listening to this show from 10-2 I seriously question what you're doing with your life). I'm on every Monday at around 12:30 central. Anyway, they asked me what I'd like to be referred to when they introduce me and I attempted to suggest Clamslammer in Chief. Alternatively I'd roll with Chief of Clamslammin'.
As for Mike Leach and his connection to Miss. State, can you imagine if they fired Croom and he came to Starkville? He could do the weather and coach football. In Southern parlance this would be like if Jesus came back to life and He was really good at duck calls.
The voters clearly do not read your blog. I too am shocked. I don't think many could argue against Elin Grindemyr being number one, or at least on this list. I looked for a fan club and she does not have one (in English). I think that along with BGID, apostrophes and UT coach hunting the readers can take up the cause to better support and promote Elin Grindemyr. The more she is out there, the more we get to see her. Of course my friends and I have google image searched her. My friend Benji seems to think that we find her so hot since she is never fully nude. He thinks it is more of a tease and that if she was nude, we would say it is just another naked woman. What do you think?
Thanks!
Great email. Someone needs to say it, Elin Grindemyr is the pink dolphin of hot internet women. Until this email I didn't even realize it. Think about it, Elin's image has been appropriated by a fan base she has never heard of, she toils in obscurity in Sweden (the equivalent of the pink dolphin being lost in the Amazon River). Worse she has to lose voting contests to cheap tramps like Karolina Kurkova. (By the way, is there any way Karolina Kurkova couldn't be hot. My theory that hot girls have hot names is still undefeated. Once her parents settled on that name she had to be hot.) Anyway, she's not as hot as Elin. So, as I've scientifically proven, this is exactly like the pink dolphin being overshadowed by the non-pink dolphin. Everyone on earth would love Elin Grindemyr if they only knew who Elin Grindemyr was. Hell, she could probably be elected Governor of Alabama.
Now, as for the lack of nudity, I'll admit this is alluring. Because if I see a new woman on broadcast television who is really hot, I immediately google image search to see if she's been naked. I did this for the chick on Pushing Daises, found her naked, and then stopped watching the show. I mean, it's still DVR'd but I always delete it. The other day I started wondering if I hadn't been able to find her naked whether I might have continued watching the show, thought that I might have, and this blew my mind so much I went shopping online for a pink dolphin for Fox.
Because even though you only have three days at work this week, you're bored. Enjoy.
Here's a preview of the introduction. I'm currently sitting in Oakland County while the snow is pouring down outside. It's cold, really cold.
Yesterday I landed in Detroit for Thanksgiving. Our first stop upon arriving was an Italian restaurant where my wife's grandmother was celebrating her 80th birthday. I'm standing at the bar watching the the Titans-Jets game on the television and occasionally a sports fan from Michigan wonders by to see what's on the television. Inevitably we'd end up in conversation. If you've ever wondered whether a city and state's teams serve as a reflection of the surrounding economic struggles, come to Michigan. Every dropped pass, every failed fourth down, every mistake is a further sign that the world around Michiganders has come undone. Ask a Michigander which part of the state they're from, they'll extend their hand in front of their face, and instead of pointing to the part of the state on their palm, they slowly extend their middle finger in your direction. These are the questions that the first five fans asked me during the second half of the Titans game:
1." Did they block the Lions game out again?" (I say I have no idea that I'm from Nashville and just landed in Michigan.) "Oh well, it doesn't matter. Fuck the Lions. I'd rather watch whoever else is playing anyway."
2." The Lions are up 17-0? Damn. Wonder how long it will take them to lose that lead?"
3. "Do you care if we change the channel for just a sec. to see what they're saying about the auto bailout?"
4. "You're from Tennessee? I wish Rodriguez would move to Tennessee and die."
5. "Did you know Ford had to buy the Thanksgiving game tickets this year because no one was buying them? They're selling them to employees for $30 each. I heard no one is buying them even though that's less than half what they actually cost. Boy, when I was a kid that Thanksgiving game was the best."
Just wondering if the legendary Dave Neal of F'n JP/LF/Raycom caught up with you at the Vandy game. Talked to him for awhile before the UT/UVA basketball game and he mentioned he was going to seek you out, but didn't want me to tip you off ahead of time.
No, I didn't see him. I might have cried if I did. I know this might come as a shock to y'all (and perhaps it's just the emotions of a collapsing season catching up with me) but I'm starting to think I'm going to miss JP/LF/Raycom. Why? Because suddenly I'm terrified that ESPN is going to put all of UT's games on ESPNU next year. And I don't get ESPNU.
The only thing more frustrating than shelling out $250 a month to Comcast (this is my bill each month, seriously) is shelling out $250 a month and still not being able to even pay even more money to get all the channels I want. Given that UT is definitely not going to be the top draw next season for television, we would have been on JP/LF/Raycom a ton. Worst case scenerio, I could watch those games. Now? I'm not so sure I'll be able to see the games at all.
So, yeah, this is irony. One of the many things I was thinking as I watched UT set back offensive football about five decades during the game against Vandy. Has our offense really gotten to the point where the Auburn passing performance is three-times as good as we can do against Vandy?
Anyway, now that I'm rereading this email, what if Dave Neal was going to blindside me with a folding chair or something? He didn't want me to know he was coming? Maybe I've buried the hatchet too soon? I'll reach out my hand to shake Dave Neal's hand and he'll come up Gladiator Emperor style and stab me? Et tu, Dave, et tu?
I watched our Vols on the network formerly known as JP (can’t remember wtf it’s called now, so that will have to do) on Saturday. Even though I could not make out each exact player on the field (looked like Tecmo Bowl graphics), I did clearly see Jonathan Crompton standing on the sidelines sans helmets. I was appalled. Crompton is BGID? It may be time to add some pre-requisites to that illustrious club.
I am Goatee, Kinda Getting it Done, but my dad has been BGID for over 30 years, so I have a deep respect for beards.
Crompton, BGID? Think about it.
I've been thinking about Jonathan Crompton entirely too much lately. Right now as part of my book, I have an interview with Jonathan Crompton's right arm included. It is, if I may be extremely presumptuous, the greatest interview ever with a right arm. But it also makes clear that I'm an asshole.
So does my other treatment of Crompton on the field in the book. At one point I blame him for Fox's college fund being negligible. So I've kind of come around on Crompton. Not as a quarterback but as someone who is trying as hard as he can and just isn't any good. We've all tried hard at something and sucked at it. Like me when it comes to skiing or having a threesome in college.
So now I'm wondering whether I can crticize the guy for going beard. Some of the guys on the football team are fans of Dixieland Delight and the column. I haven't talked to Crompton about the book because it's been easier to be disgusted by his play from afar, but now I'm wondering whether he might be growing out the beard expressly because he wants the BGID power. In other words, how ever small the percentage, he might be acting on my advice. Which, to be fair, is probably better than acting on Dave Clawson's advice. Plus, let's be clear, Crompton can't play worse with the beard than he did without the beard? Can he?
Which is sort of the position I've come to adopt, I'm not blaming Jonathan Crompton anymore for the offense sucking. Anyone who watched the Vandy game knows that the Clawfense has been a disaster. Our offense is less explosive than a girl's powder puff reject squad. At this point I think we could take Manning off the Colts, put him under center, and we'd still have to pray that he could throw for 100 yards.
But, next season, if Crompton comes out BGID and plays worse than he's already playing, then we'll have to reconsider things. Until then, I'm inclined to applaud the Crompton beard experience. At least he's not Pick Nick in practice. (I have it straight from several UT DB's that this is Nick Stephens' nickname on the team.)
All That and a Bag of Mail: Beaver Pelt Trader of the Week
Saturday, November 22, 2008
I'm going to unveil our apostrophe poll voters next week. Suffice it to say, I've been blown away by the responses. Our beaver pelt trader of the week is Kerry Collins. Sooner or later he had to get it. Honestly, I think Collins may be making a run for the beaver pelt trader of the year. He's got a grey beard, he's a country music songwriter, and his arm doubles as a howitzer.
By the way, the above picture will make sense later, but I like it because it appears that I'm coaching a game from Heaven.
On to All That and a Bag of Mail:
Bryan Trull writes:
I know you said Gruden at one time but I'm really hoping it's Mike Leach. You hit the nail on the head.......looking up at the ceiling fan for 10 years has made me dizzy. I'd rather get dizzy watching Leach's offense ring up points.
Do you think there's a chance we get him?
I'd take Leach over Gruden honestly. But Gruden would be my second choice. Kelly is probably my third choice. I think that Kelly is an intentional name being floated to distract from other names...like Leach.
Every week I watch Florida play it becomes clearer to me that we need an offensive system that can score points. Here's what we've scored against Florida the past four seasons, 7, 20, 20. and 6. That ain't cutting it. Defensively we've been good enough to win three of these games. Especially if you take out special teams points from teh defense.
We've given up 16, 21, and 23. (I'm tossing the 59 for sanity's sake.) That brings me to this, why not bring in Leach and keep John Bell Hood Chavis? I'm ready to give Chavis a battlefield promotion, a massive one, if he's paired with Leach. Because then I think we've got Leach on O and Chavis on D. Who does this remind me of? Lee and Stonewall in 1863. Provided our own troops don't shoot us (the modern day football equivalent of special teams mistakes), we'd be unstoppable.
Props to D'Zhana. Plain old Zhana is done for. Zero doubt.
Thomas writes:
I will be in Nashville this weekend with a large group of friends celebrating the demise of our buddy Tyler. He’s getting married next weekend. Who gets married on Thanksgiving weekend? Anyhow, we will be there Friday and Saturday night, but all of us are from West Tennessee, so we don’t really know of anything that we should absolutely check out while in Nashville b/c we usually just go to Beale St to get stupid. There will obviously be lots of drinking involved, and probably (even though I strongly advised against it based on your wisdom) a trip to the gentleman’s club. We plan on taking in the UT-Vandy game Saturday morning on TV and attending the Titans-Jets game Sunday. Other than that, we have nothing. That’s a lot of time to fill. Any suggestions would be much appreciated, as long as they make it to me before the trip is over!
I love the website. It definitely helps pass the time at work!
Okay, in general here's a recapitulation of my advice on visiting Nashville. I'd still suggest going out on Demonbreun street as your final destination. Go with Dan McGuiness and the Tin Roof. Prior to that I'd go with Paradise Park on Broadway and then The Stage or Robert's if you want a honky tonk atmosphere.
Enjoy.
Jonathan Ganz writes:
My brother-in-law claims to be a HUGE UF fan and that he absolutely is dying to see the SEC Championship game. To that end, he has gotten approval from his wife to come to Atlanta (with her, a UF grad) for the SEC title game; he has budgeted $400 for two tickets to the game; he has a free place to stay in Atlanta (my house); he lives within easy driving distance of Atlanta; and if he does not find tickets to the game on gameday for $400 or less, he can watch the game on TIVO in a properly equipped mancave with a large-screen HDTV and lots of beer.
However, he decided yesterday (more than 2.5 weeks before the game, i.e. when the market for tickets is still at its highest) that he’s not going to come because he doesn’t think he will find tickets for less than $400. (And as someone who has bought tickets on gameday at sporting events hundreds of times, there are always tickets to be found on gameday for less than what you see on StubHub, Craigslist and Ebay, which are total Seller’s Markets, economically speaking)
Can we take away his self-proclaimed title of being a HUGE UF fan for his failure to even attempt to find tickets on gameday in Atlanta? I think it’s a no-brainer that the answer is yes, but clearly that’s because I’m more of a true fan than my brother-in-law. What are your thoughts?
I'd have to consider what easy driving distance means for this. Also, who you root for. Because he could be using the cost as cover to avoid having to watch the game at your place. Now, if you're also a UF fan, his behavior is inexplicable and indefensible. There will come a time, mark a married man's words, when his wife will not be so cavalier about allowing him to travel for a big game. And he'll think back to this moment and realize that's when his life changed for the worse.
I'm always amazed by how many men (presumably with balls) aren't willing to head to a game without tickets. What's the worst case scenerio? You watch it on television like you would have without tickets. Yet most people treat arriving at a stadium without tickets like they've just been asked whether they want to charge Malvern Hill.
Anyway, I'm stripping him. (Figuratively, of course.)
Don writes:
Clay,
Do you actually practice law anymore? If so, can I hire you because you're a lawyer that doesn't suck?
I get the lawyer question a ton. Not generally from people who want me to represent them, mind you, but from people who want to know whether I still practice. The answer is yes. Selectively. (I'm like a legal hooker.)
I work through a very cool company. You'll see me here on the Counsel on Call website. True story, posing for these photos is the only time I've worn a suit in the past three years. Also, in the stadium photo, they had to crop my eyes open because I was squinting too much. The camera loves me.
Now I specialize in internal company investigations. A company gets a complaint about discrimination, sexual harassment, you name it and wants someone who is independent to come and interview everyone and then produce an in-house report. I'm your guy.
I can schedule these fairly flexibly and they're actually enjoyable. You basically streamline the litigation process into a day or two. You get the complete story, try and figure out who is lying or not lying, assess truthfulness.
So, yes, I can be hired for that. But if you need someone to draft a will or file a lawsuit that is going to take 3 years to unravel, I'm not your guy.
As an aside, I've always thought there's a market for a collection of lawyers with a website like, www.lawyerswhodontsuck.com You'd have interesting bios, favorite football game you've ever witnessed, things like that. Instead of bragging about some article you wrote (that no one read, not even your parents) for the South Georgia Law Review on escalator malpractice involving seeing eye dogs. Or something like this. Anyway, that's my legal dream. Aside from being hired and paid lots of money not to practice law. Which I think only happens for Senators.
In the meantime, Fox says hello. He's sitting on daddy's lap now and we're about to head out to Opry Mills to play with the sting rays. He's also ready to answer a mailbag question. Yep, Fox gets mailbag quetions now.
Amanda writes:
Fox is so cute! Darth Vader! I'm more interested in him than you. What does he like to do?
Sigh. Fox is already more beloved than I am. I knew it was going to happen. I just didn't think it would happen this fast.
Fox is very fond of two things: fountains and exit signs. The sight of either sends him into baby rigor mortis--feet extended as well as hands while bouncing. I have no idea where the exit sign infatuation comes from. But he's crying now so we have to bounce. He's not a big fan of daddy writing. But he did want it known that he thinks Kelly is a smokescreen.
I'm adding a 7th prong to the Clay Travis Criterion for the next UT football coach: he has to be willing to gush about fast food at his post-game press conference and when he does so we have to know he's being completely honest and real with us. Like Bruce Pearl did after the UT-Martin game.
"Chick-fil-A has an awesome chicken sandwich," UT Coach Bruce Pearl said. "I never had it until I got to Tennessee. Oh my gosh, I could eat there two or three times a week."
How is Bruce Pearl not the spokesperson for the company? Aside from the small Jewish vs. Christian conflict, he's perfect. Hey, they both love the Old Testament. That counts for something.
True story, I spent one week of law school scheming to see whether the Burger King that was going out of business on 21st Avenue could be replaced by a Chik-fil-A franchise. I did all the research, printed off the franchise applications. I was really serious. Even though my net worth was $-50,000 at the time. I was going to be the first lawyer to be a chicken sandwich baron. (This was before Talbott Ottinger became a chicken finger lawyer-baron in Nashville with Otter's so it was a truly original idea). Then I realized three things: 1. chik-fil-a wouldn't give me a franchise because I didn't have the financial backing 2. you have to work there yourself for a few years 3. I'd have to explain to my parents that I'd gone to law school to become Nashville's chicken sandwich baron.
So instead I went to law school to make dick jokes for a living. Which they're much more proud of. This way everybody wins.
Unless, of course, you want to go to a chick-fil-A and have someone tell you a dick joke when you order a chicken sandwich. Because that business plan is still open, my friends, still open.
Clay's Dick Joke Chicken Sandwich Shack--coming soon?
Goodell suspended Adam Jones indefinitely on Oct. 14, saying he'd put a timeframe on it after the cornerback missed at least four games. This decision means it will be a six-game suspension. Jones also missed the entire 2007 season. By the time he returns, he will have been suspended from 22 of a possible 28 games.
Pacman Jones is the worst man in the history of the NFL. At least according to Roger Goodell. Granted Jones is an idiot, but every time I think about this situation I picture Roger Goodell as the substitute teacher. The entire classroom is out of control, people are swinging from the chandeliers, Matt Jones is snorting cocaine off a spelling book, Leonard Little is drunk on cough syrup, Ray Lewis is stabbing a man while raping his wife at the same time, and Goodell's focused his attention on the kid with the ashthma inhaler. "Pacman, if you don't stop wrestling in the bathroom, then you're through. Finished."
Point being, I defy you to explain to me how Matt Jones can get arrested with crack-cocaine and play all year while Pacman has been suspended for two years for his incidents. Well over a year after the NFL's personal conduct policy was introduced there is still zero consistency. And it's still every bit as stupid as it has always been.
UT Eliminates Free Hot Dogs and Cokes At Basketball Games...Cites Economy
Even more implausibly, this is reported to save $80,000 a year. I want this accountant. Since when do you get to cite the concession stand cost as the amount you save?
"In the past, support staff were allowed to get a free hot dog and a soft drink during the games, which retailed about $7. Also each game was staffed with the same number of ushers, but UT says it will now depend on fan attendance."
Doesn't this cost include a substantial profit? Also, what does a coke and a hotdog legitimately cost UT? Let's say you and I went into business selling cokes and hotdogs outside of Thompson-Boling, don't you think we could sell a combo for $2 and still make a decent profit after a trip to stock-up at Wal-Mart? Or, even better, we could go to a retailer that pays their employees a living wage...like Costco.
But even taking these numbers at their face value, this means that UT is giving away 11,429 (rounding up) cokes and hot-dogs to their ushers. By my count there are 34 men's and women's home games (counting exhibitions). This means that support staff are consuming 336 hotdogs and cokes a game. Which, we're to believe, costs the university $2,352 per game.
God, this is too much math. Anyway, let's talk about whether Brian Williams will jump high enough to have both feet leave the floor at the same time this season. Or about whether the IRS is likely to quibble with the fact that I showed a loss of $4,568,948 during the writing of On Rocky Top this fall. On my itemization line, I'm writing Crompton, Jonathan.
Ten very legitimate and thought out email requests for CAR voting privilege have arrived in the last hour. But no women and, even sadder, no Asians.
Joshua Boggan writes:
Clay, I know you're not a big fan of the NFL, but let me bring to your attention one D'Qwell Jackson. Currently D'Qwell is leading the NFL in tackles with 77 with the Browns. Clearly, he is being powered to the top by not only the apostrophe, but the rare lack of a U after the Q. I like to think that people tackled by D'Qwell have been D'Q'd. Also, what do you think inspired the D'Qwell naming?
First, I am a big fan of the NFL. I just prefer college football. But I'm a Titans fan. Don't jump to conclusions. I'd take a bullet for Kerry Collins right now.
Nice catch on the absence of the u. I'm picturing elementary school kids in Cleveland raising their hands to object when their first grade teachers have the temerity to suggest that q is always followed by u. Since I'm nothing if not a diligent researcher I headed to the Browns homepage to read about D'Qwell and see if I could find any hints for the name.
My early hypothesis: his grandfather was a hunter and was paying homage to quail. But that seems to be a bit of a stretch. So, anyway, here's his bio. page. I always scroll down to the personal section because I don't care about football stats. What's frustrating about D'Qwell's page is that over 90% of his personal information is still football-related.
For instance, once you're in the NFL do you really need to brag about how many tackles you made in the Florida-Georgia high school all-star game? This is the rough equivalent of an attorney's bio featuring their 8th grade county spelling bee championship. You've made it D'Qwell, we don't need to hear about your SuperPrep status as a sophomore.
Anyway, best thing about D'Qwell's bio? The final line: "Married to Dr. Amira Baker-Jackson, who has a dental practice, Beautiful Smiles, in Westlake, OH."
Yep, he married a woman who kept her last name...with the hyphen! What are the odds they fought about this and she pointed to the apostrophe as the resason she should be able to keep it? The answer is high. Second, how great is the advertisement for his wife's dental practice?
Of course once I saw this thread I had to continue my investigation because I figured there was a decent chance she had a website for the dental practice with a picture of a beaming D'Qwell on the main page. Unfortunately, I couldn't find that. Instead, and this might be better, one of the Cleveland Bronwns preview articles began by talking about the dental practice!
"BEREA: D'Qwell Jackson's wife's dental practice, Beautiful Smiles in Westlake, is nearly a year old and about to expand to Cleveland's east side. But the Browns' inside linebacker didn't want to use his smile as an advertisement. ''Don't look at my teeth,'' Jackson said. ''She's working on mine.'' Amira Baker-Jackson and her sister Ronnie Baker, a dentist in Miami, have seven offices and are trying to start their own chain with their brother, Sharif, as manager."
So D'Qwell Jackson's wife, Amira Baker-Jackson, is poised to be a dental magnate. So much so that her dental practice is leading off profile pieces about her husband. Is it asking for too much for their first child to be named I'ncisor Baker-Jackson? I hope not.
Anyway, be sure and hit up Beautiful Smiles if you're a reader from Cleveland.
Gord writes:
Greetings Mr. Travis
I am writing in response to your “mild expression of disappointment” at the ongoing absence of a CFB playoff system. Allow me to introduce myself and butter you up before I express my disagreement with you on this subject.
Like you I am a lawyer. Unlike you, I am Canadian. Like you (I gather) I practice labour (that’s how we spell it in Canada) and employment law on the dark side - I note that what you describe as “punishing the oppressed” I describe to my friends as “squashing the working man”. Unlike you, I am not married to a former cheerleader – but my spouse is a pretty hot former synchronized swimmer. Like you, I swear like a fuckin sailor and far more than I should. Unlike you I have not fathered any children (but do have a step daughter). Like you I have an unhealthy obsession with CFB – primarily SEC and ACC (don’t laugh). Unlike you I do not like the Vols. Like you, I hate the Gators. Unlike you, I support the Seminoles. Thus, applying the maxim that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, I choose to overlook your support for the Vols and focus on our mutual hatred of all things Gator. Like you I am a big fan of Kige Ramsey and hate Jim Rome. Unlike you I have a goatee (but it is a damn fine goatee if I do say so myself and I hope you will not hold that against me given our mutual hatred of the Gators).
Bottom line – I really like your style and enjoy reading your work – Dixieland Delight is heading my way for Christmas and I look forward to the insider’s account of Mr. Fulmer’s demise. And in all seriousness, I loved your interview with Kige and your account of the visit to the headquarters of YouTube Sports. I can tell that you really “get him” in the same way I do. It actually somewhat annoys me that some of the loons that comment on Deadspin say such nasty things about him. You gotta’ believe that at least 95% of those fuckers LIKE Jim Rome.
The comments made by “John” largely articulate my views on the subject and I hope you will read them. I do not think the Wiz truly responded to any of the points made by John. That is fine I suppose but what bothers me (relatively speaking – although I am a self-described obsessive CFB fan, I can’t say these arguments *truly* “bother” me) is the attitude from proponents of a playoff, that *opponents* of a playoff are fucking morons and/or not “true” CFB fans – that appears to be the opinion of The Wiz. I assure you that I am not a fucking moron and am a true CFB fan – as is “John”.
At the end of the day I am writing because I was somewhat troubled by the manner in which you closed your piece at Deadspin today as possibly indicating that same attitude. “Fuck all of you” could be interpreted as “Fuck all of you who are opposed to a playoff”. I *think* you meant, “Fuck all of them” with “them” being the college presidents and BCS - and therefore am not taking it too personally. J But it is open to multiple interpretations (now you really know I am a lawyer too, right?).
Ultimately, my point in writing is that there are cogent, intelligent arguments to be made on both sides of this issue and I do not think it advances either side’s argument to simply dismiss out of hand the *cogent and intelligent* arguments on the opposing side. Just wanted to make that point.
Continue the great work and I hope the Vols book is a big hit for you.
Cheers
This is a great email. Let me first point out that my eloquent concluding sentence of, "Fuck all of you," was addressed to ESPN's corporate honchos and the college presidents who claim to care about the education of their students but consistently make decisions based purely upon economics. An additional fuck you for good measure once more directed at both of them for allowing ESPN to now control 29 of the 34 bowl games. No one seems upset about this because most sports writers are not very smart and don't realize that monopolies don't voluntarily relinquish their monopolies. Ask Commodore Vanderbilt. Ergo, ESPN, as an all-devouring corporate behemoth, is going to protect the value of all of their non-BCS games at the expense of an eventual playoff. Just you wait. Not to mention the fact that we're going to have to put up with one of those running clocks for the BCS Title Game for 8 months.
I also understand that some college football fans don't favor a playoff. And that, like your link, their primary point is that a playoff devalues an already exciting regular season. Generally their argument boils down to something along the lines of we already have a playoff set up and it's the regular season. Or some such. To me that argument doesn't fly because I live in SEC country. No matter how the season ends down here the regular season is going to be seismically important. I'm not going to recapitulate all the reasons I've nailed down before in columns in favor of a playoff but here are three additional points that don't get talked about much in regards to a playoff.
1. I fundamentally disagree that a playoff would decrease the interest among fans. In fact, I think it expands it to a massive degree. If you had an 8 team playoff, 25-30 teams would enter the final month of the season believing they had a legitimate chance for a national championship--to make that playoff group. That if things broke their way or they won the games they needed to their season wasn't over. Right now we have what, 7-8 teams that are hoping they can get into the top 2? Not only would you care about your own team you'd care about how a lot of other teams did.
Demonstration? How many college football fans truly care what's going to happen in Utah-BYU? Hardly any. But if Utah was guaranteed a spot in the playoffs if they won but there'd be a spot open if they lost? Everyone would be watching. Right now we have 5 BCS Games. And the Title Game devours the other 4. As well it should, the others mean nothing. In fact, the other 33 bowl games mean less than the one title game. Anyway, I'm not saying you have to away with the bowls, if you disagree and think they're worth something the teams that don't make the playoff could still play bowl games. But I think the bowl games are the car companies of the 21st century, antiquated relics that are being propped up because they've gotten so big no one is willing to kick them to the curb.
2. Lose twice in September and there's no point to the rest of your season. Every week matters, my ass. Maybe I'm particularly sensitive to this as a Tennessee fan, but if we lose to Florida and another team in September, our season is over. Lose twice at any point in a good conference (this is still 10-2!) and there's nothing to play for the rest of the way other than pride. (LSU is the only exception to this in the past 50 years. A fact Cajuns should thank God for every night. Especially after the vast majority of them passed on the SEC Championship Game in the wake of the Arkansas loss because they thought their season was over.) See, the key to a truly enjoyable season and sport, in my mind, is keeping fans believing that their team can win a championship for as long as possible. College football eliminates almost every team by the end of the first month. That really sucks. Yeah, every game matters, for about 15 teams that haven't already lost twice by October 10.
3. An 8 team playoff represents a very small proportion of the 120 or so teams competing for the overall championsship in FBS football. (Personally I'd favor a 16 team playoff, but that's neither here nor there.) In fact, that would be a smaller percentage of playoff teams than any sport in America (6.6% of the overall teams would advance.) Non playoff proponents point to the NCAA Tournament as if it's a bad thing because the democracy of a tournament devalues the regular season. (An argument that completely ignores that historically you have to be seeded as one of the top 4 teams in a region to win.) But 65 teams advance to the NCAA Tourney. Out of about 320 top tier teams. That's 20% of college basketball. Proportionally college football would just allow a third of those teams to advance. So getting to the college football playoff would be 3x as difficult as getting to the NCAA Tournament.
Taking it further, 12 out of 32 NFL teams go to the playoffs. 16 out of 32 in the NBA, and 8 out of 30 in baseball (corrected, nod to commenters). My point is that college football would still have the most difficult playoff to reach in all of American sports. Which woud still mean that college football had the most important regular season in team sports. Only you'd get the added benefit of a playoff that expands the field of fan rooting interest. Finally, with a 12 game season, the idea that a college football team would ever truly be able to take a game off is impossible for me to comprehend. It would be really hard to make the playoffs, extremely hard. Nothing would be devalued, everything would be enhanced. College football would still be the Elin Grindemyr of sports.
Anyway, I'm going to look around online for my BCS column a while back where I spent thousands of words on things. The above three points are just three things that I don't think get discussed very often. Good email. And I don't hate college football fans who don't favor a playoff. I just think you're misguided souls. Like girls who have anal sex instead of regular sex to preserve their virginity.
Introducing The First ClayNation Apostrophe Ranking (CAR) Voters
My apologies for being late on this. You'll recall that a short while ago I put out a call for voters. I've gotten quite a few responses from people requesting voting privileges. There will be 10 of us. I went ahead and awarded the reader who suggested the poll, Joshua, a vote. Plus, Gordon Fletcher got a spot in the rankings based on his apostrophe research of late. Tardio has since asked for and received a vote. (Sometimes proximity is its own reward). Plus me. So we had 4 of our initial 10 spots taken. Now we bring you two more of our winning candidates. Just four more remain. Do you have what it takes? Email me and find out. Until then meet your two newest members. (Apologies for not mentioning this again since the last email posting. And for taking so long to respond.)
This is meet your voters week. Up first, Patrick Neuner, who sent the following email to gain voting rights:
Clay -
I would like to take part in the voting for the ClayNation Apostrophe Ranking Poll. As a loyal reader and apostrophized name enthusiast, I feel I would make an ideal candidate. While I did dig up the sleeper of the 2009 recruiting class, Bar'kevious Mingo, I would remain an objective voter, and I am fully willing to admit that Ja'Larry Bird is much better name than that of my boy, Bar'k. Also, before every Thursday night ESPN game, I scour the rosters of both teams looking for unusual names (apostrophized or otherwise), and I pick the winner of the game based on whichever team contains more unique names. As a result, I feel very well-versed in the art of finding people with unusual names and ranking them based on how unique/clever/badass those names are.
In addition, I am in the midst of applying to law school, and, given my underwhelming LSAT score, I feel that if I were to include my participation with ClayNation on my apps., many admissions committees would be willing to grant me acceptance, or at least not reject me as quickly.
Finally, I feel like Mitch Martin's coworker in Old School when he's trying to convince Mitch to let him in the fraternity. He sums up my position pretty nicely: "I need this, ok? My wife, my job, my kids, everyday is exactly the same. Oh, I go golfing on Sundays, but I hate golf. Don't blackball me, Mitch, please." (Note: I don't have a wife or kids, but you get the idea.)
Next to advance to illustrious poll voting standing was Tom Felice:
C'lay,
I fully believe I bring it all to the table when it comes to being an apostrophe judge. Being a college student in NYC, I bring a different point of view than a lot of your readers. I read DDT, even when a few pages fell out. I always bring up La-a when my friends discuss crazy names. I have previously sent you material, and you have even used some of it. I hope to be able to guide the readership towards the best apostrophe.
Yours in Beard, T'om
Are you next? You need to be. Remember than a name divided against itself cannot stand (without the apostrophe). I'm thinking we need women (fingers crossed for Elin Grindemyr) and an Asian to make sure our rankings are fully accurate. Women because they have a greater facility with the English language and Asian people because they spell so well.
ClayNation Radio Tonight From 7-9; Mailbag Invite to Bonaroo
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Our guest will be someone. Chad Withrow is taking care of it. I trust him implicitly because women call our show all the time trying to date him. Such is life. Listen live here. As always feel free to call us at 615-737-1045. Now I'm off to the dentist. Where, as soon as they put me under the mask, I'm going to be dreaming of Elin Grindemyr.
Nick the UK fan writes:
Hey C'lay I just bought your DDT book today. I wanted to know your thoughts on Roo and if you are interested in going. It'd be awesome if you went to Roo with my friends and I. You should also go to any big game at Rupp so you can understand what it means to be a Kentucky Basketball fan in this great state. I always use Verne Lundquist exuberence about SEC football to show how we feel about basketball. Anyway we'd love to have you as a guest at Bonnaroo. Thanks for reading my rambling email.
Once you are married it gets harder and harder to justify going away for a weekend to get drunk with friends. It's impossible to justify going away with people you've never met before. And this was even before we had Fox. So I'll have to decline.
One of the best things about writing the column and eventually the book these past several years has been the amount of emails like this I get. Invitations from people I don't even know to do cool things. Inevitably I feel bad no matter how I respond. If I show up, I feel like I can't live up to the expectations and if I don't show up I feel like a jerk.
Right now I'm sort of what sex was before any of us had ever had sex.
Rereading that analogy it sounds like I've compared meeting me to losing your virginity. Which wasn't my intent. Anyway, it didn't come off as cocky as my best man Ian did when we were in college. He once tried to convince a girl to have sex with him and she said, "I'm not a virgin, that line doesn't work on me." To which he responded, "I consider all women virgins until they've had sex with me." On the spot that was pretty golden. Cocky, arrogant and incredibly conceited...yes, but still, golden.
The key point to take away from all of this is that ESPN/ABC will now televise 29 of the 34 college bowl games. 29!
Putting that into context here are the five bowl games along with their networks that ESPN/ABC won't televise.
NFL Network: Texas Bowl Insight Bowl
CBS: Sun Bowl Gator Bowl
Fox: Cotton Bowl
That's it.
How many monopolies do you know that voluntarily stop being monopolies? Yeah, didn't think so. See, ESPN is now in bed with the bowl system to a greater degree than any sports programming entity in the history of sports. Do you think they're going to push for the BCS to end now? Not hardly hombres, not hardly.
(By the way, I chose the above picture for its metaphorical value. In this telling Tim Tebow represents the college presidents and the fat guy he's holding up represents the ESPN bowl package. Note that the fat man would ordinarily not be able to be this far off the ground but with the support of Tebow he can stay off the ground forever. I know, that's deep, really deep.)
This is hysterical but filled with ample written curse words. (The language is all in German so it's only text curses.) Be forewarned. Yesterday we talked with Stonewall about the win. Now Hitler reacts.
VMI Beats Kentucky at Rupp: Stonewall Jackson Quietly Nods
Monday, November 17, 2008
Kentucky gave up 111 in a loss to the school were Stonewall Jackson worked as a professor prior to the Civil War. Luckily, I was able to contact Stonewall by seance and get his take on the upset. For purposes of this interview it's important to note that by "interview" what I mean is "monologue by Stonewall."
Stonewall Jackson:
In the year of our Lord two thousand and eight, the mighty Keydets of VMI did rain down their furious anger upon the metallic hoops and hardwood floors of the infidels in Kentucky. Our flank attacks on their perimeter could not be stopped. We breached their defense by splitting our forces and by virtue of our long range bombs from outside their defensive perimeters. Then we sat down in our breastworks and pounded them. Pounded those infernal heathens!
Notwithstanding their allegiance to the Union at the expense of their Southern brethren, it was incredibly gratifying to see such exemplary young men stage their most impressive performance since the Battle of New Market. I've always known that the best Southern gentlemen would justly triumph over fake Southerners who are more interested in racing horses than farming, reading the Bible, and winning football games.
I'd give my left arm to these men if it wasn't already buried in Chancellorsville.
It's enough to make an old General long for the days of clamslammin' in the Shenendoah Valley of 1862. Some people believed I sucked lemons and always rode with one hand held high in the saddle because I was eccentric. That was never the case. It was because the ladies of the Valley preferred the melodic scent of my lemon-sweetened breath. And that my fingers, bearing the graceful winter's air might stir their passions racing along their pantaloons. My lemon-scent is much better than the whiskey-flavored scent of Billy G. I've known drunken incompetents, and let me tell you, Billy G. is a drunken incompetent. He reminds me of Braxton Bragg without the cuddly nature.
Even Little Sorrel, still buried with his earthly remains at VMI, could not ignore the victory. He clop-clopped through Heaven today and said (horses can speak in Heaven), "Let's see what the bastard Traveller has to say about that. Fuck Washington and Lee." Oh my, Little Sorrel can be quite the talker.
(Pauses to contemplatively suck lemon.)
I always knew, like my homie Patrick Cleburne said (I understand he's now called the Stonewall of the West), we should have armed the Negroes.
"He kind of sounded depressed and said, 'I heard Coach Leach is interviewing for the job.' I didn't know how to respond to it. I was like yeah, I heard about it. I said that would be bittersweet. He said, 'What do you mean?' I said I'll be happy as hell but it sucks for you. So we laughed about that."
Odds Jones's buddy said what do you mean because he'd never heard the term bittersweet before? I'm going with 100%.
Scandal: Hot Alabama Internet Girl Not Actually From Alabama...America
Sunday, November 16, 2008
(Some of these images are a bit risque. I mean, they're up on youtube so they couldn't be featured on clamslammin.net or anything, but they're a bit risque. The somber music, however, is perfect. You can almost picture the videographer tearfully masturbating as he puts this footage together.)
On Friday afternoon reader Brian Parker emailed the following:
Hot girl's name= Elin Grindemyr. It's quite an odd name for a hot girl. Seems like it would fit a grandmother better.
As you can see from the video(I immediately conducted diligent internet searches on Elin), it appears that the Alabama bikini bottoms have been photo-shopped on. And here I thought you could trust Alabama fans on the internets. For shame 'Bama, for shame.
Elin has been named the hottest girl in Sweden (which so far as honors and exclusivity go is tantamount to being named the SEC quarterback who has the most sex--I'm looking at you Stephen Garcia--only much hotter).
Amazingly, the tribute video I linked above has only been watched 4,000 times. Proving that youtube is not an efficient marketplace. For comparison's sake me discussing the Mike Vick legal situation has been watched 91,000 times, me being interviewed by Kige Ramsey has been watched 7,000 times, and me making it rain with my dad has been watched 25,000 times.
Yeah, I know, 5x as many people have watched the above as watched the Elin video. How much do you think it would cost to have Elin pose giving the ClayNation hand sign? Because I'm about to start a fundraiser.
Below I offer you an interview with Elin. In Swedish. Or whatever they speak in Sweden. Personally, I've always thought they speak hot. As my friend CHad once told you, "Go into a McDonald's in Sweden and you'll want to marry the girl who takes your order." New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman used to have as part of his globalization theory the credo that no two countries with a McDonald's had ever gone to war.
The ClayNation McDonald's Canon would be this: "If you want to marry the chick who takes your Big Mac order, then you should move to the country." Honestly, wouldn't this be a great way to assess relative hotness of countries? States? The McDonald's chick factor? I'm convinced it would.
Anyway, Elin could speak in any language. She translates pretty well.
Tip of the beaver pelt to Brian Parker for exposing the fraud and proving that it's not just SEC girls we can identify within two hours of any post going up.
All That and a Bag of Mail: Beaver Pelt Trader of the Week
Friday, November 14, 2008
Our beaver pelt trader of the week is the Arizona State men's and women's track team. Who managed to get President Bush to rock the shocker for an official photo. I'm sure Laura was impressed. I received the nomination from two of you, Chris and the below emailer. Tip of th beaver pelt to both of you.
Jacob Johnson writes:
Clay,
I was sitting in a Torts lecture this morning thinking about how much I love the law, and hate Ryan Perrilloux when I came across this gem. It's great to see that George W. is still shocking the world. I now will go back to throwing up while thinking of four interceptions to the Gumps.
Geaux Tigers,
P.S. It has come to light, despite the bammer's proclamation of the deceased as deranged, swamp-living LSU fans, that the shooting earlier this week coming after the football game was actually between two Alabama fans. What are the odds that this arose from an argument over the holiness of Saban v. Bear?
I don't know but even 'Bama fans are freaked out by the Nick Saban and Bear Bryant picture where you can see through the Bear, right? You know, where Saban is leaning on the goalpost. This is one of the all-time weird fan paintings I've ever seen. And there are a ton of weird fan paintings out there. Don't believe me? Look at this.
Doug writes:
The girl in the Alabama panties on your website may be the hottest creature on earth. If you have an unusually high number of hits on your site today, it's me going back numerous times to look at the picture. I'm beginning to feel dirty.
I agree. Last night my friend KWo called to tell me that he also thought she was the best looking girl in the universe. So, here's a challenge, how is it that we can identify everyone else associated with the SEC, but I post a picture of a half-naked chick who is the best looking girl in the universe and no one has any idea who she is?
I'm starting to think maybe she isn't real.
Kirk writes:
OK, I had a brief infatuation with Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings. However, I would not, based on that infatuation, have her join my law practice. So, putting your infatuation aside, how do you handle:
7 years of 7-6, 7-5, 8-4, 9-5, 8-5, 8-4, 9-3, 8-5 and 9-4 overall and 4-4ish records in conference. All while in one the most fertile recruiting grounds in the nation.
Yes, this year is good, yes the upset of Texas on the last play with time expiring was exciting, but...so what, it's one year and one upset.
A brief infatuation with Anita Hill? This reminds me of the time my friend Neville confessed to occasionally pleasuring himself while thinking about Claire Huxtable. It's almost hard for me to get past that first sentence.
I think Leach's record has to be looked at within the context of the Texas Tech job. Put Tech in the SEC and who do they compare to? Ole Miss. So he's basically been to 8 consecutive bowls at Ole Miss. Plus, he's won 5 of his last 6 bowl games. Also, where does Texas Tech rank in the hierarchy of Texas college football schools? At least historically. Clearly Texas and Texas A&M are higher. What about TCU, Houston, Baylor, SMU? I'm not familiar enough with the latter four programs. But I think you can make a strong case that historically Tech is no better than the 5th best program in Texas.
For instance, compare Leach's numbers with David Cutcliffe's at Ole Miss.
1999 Ole Miss 8–4 4-4 3rd (West) W[11] Independence 2000 Ole Miss 7-5 4-4 3rd (West) L Music City 2001 Ole Miss 7–4 4–4 5th (West) 2002 Ole Miss 7-6 3-5[12] 4th (West) W Independence 2003 Ole Miss 10-3 7-1[12] T-1st (West) W Cotton 14 13 2004 Ole Miss 4-7 3-5
Leach has done better. I think we'd all agree that Cutcliffe is a hell of a coach. So I think you have to compare how someone does at a particular school as opposed to going with straight wins and losses. Plus, I've move beyond infatuation when it comes to Mike Leach. Yesterday I decided I'm watching Oklahoma-Texas Tech without wearing any pants. That's normal, right?
Brad writes:
Couldn't agree with you more regarding David Pollack missing numerous opportunities to experience the pure joy of premarital sex while at Georgia (every girl I knew at UGA would've blown him in the middle of a bar if given the chance) -- but I couldn't help but wonder if your choice of words....
I think he owes it to other SEC men to have so much sex with so many hot girls that he can barely walk some mornings.
....was some sort of allusion to the fact that Pollack fractured his spine in his rookie year with the Bengals. Or maybe that's just how my fucked-up mind works. Whoops (shrug)
Anyway, keep up the good work.
Unintentional. But if you made an argument that karma is in favor of men having sex with as many attractive women as they possibly can, and that Pollack stomped karma in the face by saving himself while living in Athens, then I think the injury could be connected in that regard.
Or you could argue that with more sex his spine would have been stronger.
Actually, spine jokes are kind of hard to pull off. Let's move along.
Still looking for some Beaver-Pelt Trading Love for Paul Johnson,
ps. I guess beating UNC would have probably helped.
Odds that several men over 27 read this article and thought to themselves, "Damn, I knew I should have gone to Mi Pueblo. That's where all the hot underage chicks go now."
I'm thinking about this because last night I went out with Tardio for a Thursday night. (He and KWo are currently flying to Vegas for a bachelor party at the Palms while I'm staying home to go to the zoo with Fox and Lara. Swell.) Anyway, we went to McFadden's and got wristbands to prove we were old enough to drink. Tardio swears he isn't taking his wristband off for a month. His quote: "If they give you a wristband, you know it's a good place." Honestly, Tardio needs his own book deal.
Ben Dumas writes:
Clay,
First off, I’m a big fan of your work! Second, I’m a Texas Tech grad living in SEC country. I’ll be honest and impartial enough to say that Tennessee is a bigger and greater job than Texas Tech, I won’t bother you with details about why Texas Tech is a better job than people down here give it credit for, or how he has better players than people realize.
Let’s just get down to brass tacks, you guys are coming after my coach… how much ya payin? How bad do you guys want him? With bonuses, he’ll make around $2 million, you gotta think Tech will match any offer Tennessee gives him up to about $3 million? Does Tennessee offer more than that, even for a coach who still technically hasn’t won anything? If Tech does match any offer, does he leave anyway? Right now, he’s built his team to be on or near the same level as Oklahoma and Texas, why would he trade that to be on the same level as Georgia and Florida?
One last thing, if you guys want him bad enough, there’s nothing we can do to stop you, but keep your greedy mitts off of him until our dream season is over!
I think we can go over $3 million if we need to. So if we set on Leach as our top coaching candidate I don't think money will be the issue. I think it will come down to whether or not Leach is interested in making the move. You say he's got Tech on par with Oklahoma and Texas (which the results certainly suggest, at least this year), but then say why would he trade that to be on the same level as Georgia and Florida? I think the answer is easy, money. Plus, Leach may realize that he's never going to be able to consistently match Oklahoma and Texas at Texas Tech. Even in the roughest years of Fulmer's tenure, the Vols have been to the SEC Championship Game every three years this decade (2001, 2004, and 2007).
As a pirate he may feel like he's in a sword fight with a fork. At Tennessee he'd have a bigger sword.
Plus, and I think this is key, Tennessee's just a bigger national platform. I get the sense that Leach is ready to be a star on the national scene. Can he maintain that status that in Lubbock? I don't know. But I do know he can do it in Knoxville.
I'd be more nervous about Leach leaving if he wasn't already in a tough division. I know the SEC is tough, but is it tougher to be at the helm of the all-time winningest program in the SEC East or at the fourth or fifth best all-time program in the Big 12 South?
Anyway, appreciate the email, and I do feel for Tech fans if we end up coming after Leach. Vol fans have been through this several times already with Bruce Pearl. There's just some part of us that still isn't convinced we're fortunate enough to have Pearl. We're like the overprotective boyfriend who has out kicked his coverage.
Some of you will recall that after this video ran I posted a hypothetical scene where this guy (who I said was named Hastings) had to deal with his wife being upset and cutting him off from sex. Well, now the real LSU fan responsible for shooting the bird at the camera during the Georgia game has sent me an email. Proving, yet again, that if you're an SEC fan and you're mentioned on the ClayNation site, we'll all know who you are eventually. Yep, there's about one degree of separation between every SEC fan and all of us. Anyway, Jason M. emailed me yesterday to explain the story behind the nationally televised bird. I feel like Paul Harvey, "and now you know the rest of the story."
Here we go:
This is actually the first time I responded to any comment on the net about the unhappy LSU Fan shooting the bird. Most of the comments are trash talk but in your case I felt that I had to respond. The write up under the video was priceless. I almost for a second, believed that you actually knew me. My wife is a physician and was at work with all of her co-workers watching the game in the ER when her idiotic husband decided to market himself nationally on t.v. She wasn't exactly happy and she did cut me off.
My mother is a Catholic school principal who was watching the game at home with her boss who is the priest of that school. Needless to say, she wasn't the happiest camper being that she had previously suspended students at her school for doing the same thing on myspace. (Which came back to bite her in the ass when her 30 year old son decided to display his affection in front of the nation. Another funny thing is that my brother's name is Rusty and he was sitting a few seats down from me along with my dad.
I haven't responded to anyone on this issue nor have given my name to anyone being that I'm a graduate of this school and was truely embarressed and didn't want to bring any attention to my profession and my wifes.
On the other hand, I was upset with the outcome of the game but it wasn't the reason for the finger. Our season tickets are three rows up from the ground so when someone is standing in front of us, we can't see anything on the field. The CBS cameraman had been sitting there the whole game blocking our view with his equipment and he actually fell asleep on his camera leaving the arm hanging in our face for over an hour so I took it upon myself to shoot him the bird. I thought he would see it and then move his equipment but as we all have noticed CBS decides to go live on that exact camera at that exact moment. I didn't know I was on tv until about 30 min. afterward when I recieved 86 text messages from random people that I had met throughout my lifetime who had seen me nationally.
Your assumptions were actually very good, laughed my ass off, the best part was Hastings, HaHAHA - I guess I do look like a Hastings.
Anyway, I thought I had to make an effort and reply and give you the true storey since you made one with great humor. Nice website!!
Unhappy LSU Fan
How superb is this entire email? Especially the wife and mom. Good to know that Hastings/Jason M. has a good sense of humor.
I think we should inaugurate a new ClayNation segment where I post a picture or video of a fan and we attempt to narrate his life, what he's thinking, you name it. We'll give an award for whoever gets the closest. I'll hold off until y'all send me a good picture or video link. But get your hypothetical skills running.
One of my friends posted this picture on the internet that he took for our 8th grade photography class at Martin Luther King Magnet. After Deadspin posted the picture of me with Tebow I google-image searched to see what other images of me were out there. This one came up.
I was 13 and thought I was going to be losing my virginity in the next couple of years. You can see the optimistic tilt in my chin and also the curious haircut that my friend Ian's mom had recently given me. Ian's mom gave the same haircut to her two sons and also to my friend Doug and me. I have no idea how every haircut ended up looking the exact same but I remember the morning after I got it done, I walked into the front lobby of Martin Luther King and Lauren Scott (their mom was a French professor and gave her son a girl's name in America) said, while rocking the exact same haircut, "That's a great haircut."
There was no irony to his statement.
Anyway, this is one of those pictures you see and realize that you really had no chance at losing your virginity at a young age. Looking at this picture now, I'm surprised I'm not still a virgin.
It also confirms my theory that 13 and 14 year old boys are the dorkiest creatures ever put on the planet. Except you think you're so incredibly cool. Is there a larger disconnect between what you think about yourself and what you actually look like to the rest of humanity? (Jamie Foxx excepted).
Anyway, keep your hands to yourselves ladies, keep your hands to yourselves.
Kerry "the Crooning Cannon" Collins Writes Country Songs
This just went up from me over at Deadspin. Kerry Collins has written a country song. And it's a doozy of a song, "It's Not Hard to Be Happy When I'm Looking at You." He dedicated it to Vince Young.
Credit to good buddy Tardio for reading the celebrity write-up columns in the Nashville Tennessean and finding this. Seriously, you have to have an IQ that wouldn't allow you to be executed in America to enjoy the Tennessean, but thankfully Tardio reads it so I don't have to. Although he does point out that now that they've raised the price for the paper to .75 cents he's having second thoughts. Of course he reads the Tennessean because, "I need something crappy that I can finish during lunch." This should become the Tennessean's new advertising slogan.
After I responded to Ben Pierman's hate mail earlier this week, I emailed him the link. It immediately became the number one result on Google for his name. I even felt a little bad. The next day he wrote back a one word email response,
"Uncle."
Which was so funny and perfect that we've now buried the hatchet. It's hard for me to stay mad at fellow SEC lawyers for long. Plus, let's be clear, I'm a lover not a fighter.
Buoyed by my new friends at the AG's office can now run wild in Georgia and know that I can't be prosecuted. This will be helpful when I take a machete to the SEC Championship Game and decapitate Alabama and Florida fans to see whether or not their heads remain living.
It's for science people, for science.
(By the way, I chose this image of Lincoln because like my bearded homie AL, I truly bear malice toward none. Except Urban Meyer. I hate that bastard.)
Mailbag: PepCo Employees Are Lame, SEC Championship Game, Decapitated Heads
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Mike McKenzie writes:
I'm a UF alum who hasn't gone to an SEC CG since I was a student there (I say it like I've missed several when in fact, I only missed 2006), in your opinion, what is my best bet in terms of finding tickets at a reasonable price? Your advice would be appreciated.
I've been getting this question quite a bit. Not the least from my UT friend Junaid who is now dating, wait for it, an Alabama grad. She's made him agree to go to the SEC Championship Game and watch Alabama and Florida play. This is one of the cruelest things I've ever heard.
Last night, during the ClayNation radio show, I went on stubhub and the cheapest tickets were $350 each. This confirmed what I already thought: This will be the toughest SEC Championship Game ticket ever.
I've been the past two years and got in both times for face value or less. LSU brought hardly anyone in 2007 and Arkansas-Florida wasn't particularly difficult to get into either. But Alabama-Florida? First, there aren't going to be many corporate honchos trying to unload their tickets because they don't have interest. This is a legit Final Four-level game for football. Second, Alabama fans haven't been to the SEC Championship Game since 1999 and most live within a short drive. Plus, and this is key, each team's fanbase has almost a month to prepare for the trip. There's no last minute decision to be made.
I'd still suggest showing up on the day of the game without tickets because, frankly, $350 is just too much to pay.
But you have to show up looking for no more than two together. If you have three people or four people, and you want to sit together then you probably need to buy in advance. 3 is the worst possible number because lots of scalpers won't split up their set of four to sell to three people.
Chris Columber writes:
Clay, I read your book, “Dixieland Delight” and in addition to enjoying it very much, I was also quite perplexed by your questioning the possibility of staying aware after being beheaded. Well, after reading some of GorillaMask.net tonight, I discovered an article that might interest you:
Check out article #1, “The Living Severed Head”. Seems there is evidence that you can possible stay aware after being decapitated. Amazing huh?
Keep up the good work. I enjoy your articles and website. As another lifelong Tennessee fan (season tickets section YY7, row 25, seats 7 & 8, come up and visit sometime), I am suffering along with you. However, I have been at Neyland for losses to Rutgers, Army, Duke, North Texas State and numerous others. I was in Memphis for that God-awful loss to Tiger High. Worst of all time for me was the 2001 SEC Championship loss to LSU. I vividly remember walking back to the parking lot, knowing confirming my flight and hotel to Los Angeles for the Rose Bowl was not necessary.
For those of you who read Dixieland Delight and remember that I got into an argument with my wife about this very thing, a few months ago she came to me and said, "I think you're right about the head thing."
It's still one of my proudest moments.
We've got some more hate mail. This time from James Lennox who is a Virginia Tech fan and clearly masturbates while thinking about Frank Beamer's goiter.
A) Nutt’s girls are not nearly as hot as you seem to think they are. One is fat and other looks like Tempest Bledsoe on steroids
I don't think I said they were amazingly hot anywhere, but anytime a guy takes shots at moderately attractive girls, I think he's obligated to prove that his girlfriend or wife is hotter than the women he's making fun of. I'll be waiting for your George Costanza-like magazine model picture torn out of Cosmo to arrive in the mail. That or the email where James Lennox explains that the stupid bitches won't talk to him because they're all "lame." Right.
B) What is with your obsession with football players getting laid? Were you like Al Franken and married the only chick you’ve ever slept with or something? I just find it odd you care so much about other people’s adventures in… um… “clambanging”
First, an apology for using the term clambanging. It was supposed to be clamslammin. I actually spent Saturday night trying to pull up clamslammin.com on my Blackberry. I'd never heard the term prior to Saturday and I'm toying with the idea of including this in my bio for On Rocky Top. Something like, "Clay Travis can be reached on the internet at claytravis.net or at clamslammin.com." I just think that would be genius.
As for my "obsession" with sex when it comes to college football, I resent that you think I'm only interested in sex as its connected to football. That's just one place, I'm obsessed with sex. Look, I don't wish I'd have played college football and won a championship, I wish I'd had as much sex as the best college football player had.
I still hold a grudge with David Pollack because he didn't believe in sex before marriage. He went to Georgia for God's sake. I think he owes it to other SEC men to have so much sex with so many hot girls that he can barely walk some mornings. Maybe that's just me. But I'm sure it isn't.
As for my personal sex life (isn't it sort of interesting that you ask about my sex life while pointing out that I make jokes about college football players' sex life), I hung up the proverbial spikes at the age of 25 after going to GW and dominating short Jewish guys from New Jersey and Long Island. Thanks to their hair-gelled lameness I did quite well with GW girls. So I don't have any regrets about my past conquests. But thanks for asking.
C) Everyone in the country is going to root for the Big 12 winner to defeat Florida in the title game. We’re all pretty tired of S-E-C fans banging their chests and murdering people
Well, then, everyone in the country is going to be very sad then the morning after the BCS Title game. Except for SEC fans. If you're tired of SEC fans banging their chests and murdering people, then you should move to Canada. Or stay at Virginia Tech and worry about your own students not killing other students on campus instead of what we do down here. (Incidentally, as several readers have pointed out over the past several months, the person who emailed me this is obsessed with my response. He's edited my wikipedia page like 50 times to try and misleadingly create a "controversy." Interestingly, thanks to reader sleuths, we now know exactly where he works, have cataloged every edit he's made during the workday, and I'm going to let the readership decide whether this loser should be reported to his boss and probably fired or not come next week. He's probably the only person who will see this. Hello!)
D) The ACC is 3-3 against the SEC. Seriously, your conference is so top-heavy and terrible it’s going to have a losing record against the freaking ACC after Vanderbilt finishes it’s season 5-7 with a loss at Wake Forest
I don't buy the top-heavy argument when it comes to college football. Why not? Because basically you've just described the perfect girl, big up top, and small down low. Also, because you're wrong. A league isn't top heavy if two of the teams are among the four best in the country. That's just plain heavy. Especially when LSU and Georgia are better than any single ACC team as well. Or do you not remember the last time the tough little Hokies came down to SEC country?
The SEC may be 3-3 against the ACC, I don't particularly care because the wins aren't against good teams. Off the top of my head Vandy has lost and Ole Miss has lost. Although, your brilliant statistical analysis that gets the ACC to 4-3(which includes two Vandy losses among your 4 projected ACC wins), doesn't include Florida's waxing of FSU. So at worst the leagues will be even. And the good SEC teams will have trounced the best ACC teams.
Better question, are there any two ACC teams that you could combine and beat Florida, Alabama, or Georgia with? I'm not asking for whichever bullshit losing team emerges from the ACC to compete with the top SEC teams, I'm asking if you combined the ACC Coastal and the ACC Atlantic Division champs into one team, would they be able to beat any of the top three in the SEC? Or the top 4 if you throw in LSU? The answer, you sweet Hokie loser, is no.
E) I watched Tennessee lose to the running poop that is Wyoming on College Game Plan just to watch some rednecks dressed in puke orange cry. Great times!
Dude, you're a Virginia Tech fan, couldn't you just put in the tape from the East Carolina game and see the same thing? Or take a camera to tailgates and tell people their daughter is marrying Marcus Vick? But only after Mike Vick gives her herpes.
F) Alabama would be the 4th best team in the Big 12 South.
I love this because this is when the gerbils in James Lennox's poor, feeble mind stopped running. He turns into a fan of another conference to make his points. Lame, Lennox, lame.
My response to this statement is the hot Alabama girl pictured up above. (I'm using her again because I'm as much in love with her as I am with Mike Leach.) I hope John Parker Wilson is clamslammin her as we speak. If so, godspeed JPW, godspeed.
If that doesn’t summarize Kentucky basketball fandom in just one glance, I don’t know what could. Rumor has it that the poor little cat was run over by a drunk-driving Billy Gillespie. Or maybe I made that up.
True or false, Billy G. texted a photo of the dead cats to his 8th grade recruits and the phrase, "Lol Catzzzzzz, deez Nutzzzz," was included?
True.
Honestly, the more I look at this picture the more I enjoy it. Although, to be fair, the wildcat really needs to be wearing a Jeff Shepherd jersey to completely work for me.
I would have given anything to go shopping for the right jersey with this guy. Like, imagine if I'd suggested he put a pink Wildcat jersey on the dead wildcat as opposed to a blue one? He would have pegged me for an idiot from the get-go, right?
Only $1k? Make it happen Wildcats, make it happen.
Georgia/UF Girl Meets Bathroom Door at Cocktail Party
Admit it, you've always kind of wondered what girls do when they go to the bathroom at football games. Hell, you've also kind of wondered how clean the bathroom is at football games. Now, you can know.
Rick posted this video over at Deadspin and identified this girl as a Georgia fan but close textual analysis of this video leads me to believe that she's a Gator fan in Georgia shoes because she lost her actual ones. Plus, she's not a sorority sister and the filmer is her legitimate big sister.
Anyway, for about forty-five seconds this video is worth nothing. Then she takes on a bathroom stall. And not takes on in the way you're thinking of...pervert.
Update: Proving that there is nothing that galvanizes the ClayNation readership like drunk girls in proximity to SEC football, two of you have already written in to identify the girl in question and provide further details.
First came Paul who writes:
Hey Clay
Some background on chick running into bathroom stall video...this happened 3 or 4 yrs ago at florida georgia. I dated her sorority sister...She was a DZ at UF named leah whom everyone called, "Leah falls down" because video circulated most of the student body.
BGID
Then came Josh with even more details:
Her name is Leah Logue, UF alum...The incident was at The Landing a few years ago for the Florida/Georgia game. My friend was trying to get with her like 4 years ago, but she always got too hammered and he wasn't feeling it.
He also sent a link to her facebook profile. So, of course, I was obligated to send her a friend request. I'll keep you updated.
This proves that y'all are pretty on the ball when it comes to girls and the SEC. Now somebody find out who the Alabama girl in the bikini bottoms is. Pronto!
Former Texas Tech QB Sonny Cumbie Our Guest On ClayNation Radio
For those of you who listened, you don't need this recap, but I know the 7-9 central hour doesn't fit everyone's schedule. So here goes with a bit of a recap from what Cumbie said during our interview.
As background Cumbie was the quarterback under Leach at Texas Tech for one season, 2004. During that year he passed for 4,700 yards and led Tech to an upset of Cal in the bowl game during which he threw for 520 yards. Here is his wikipedia bio.
In particular Chad Withrow and I were interested in exploring and, potentially, exploding some of the myths surrounding Leach. As a former player who now works in the local media we believed that Cumbie represented the perfect nexus to provide both a player and media experience. Here were my takeaways from Cumbie's comments on Leach.
1. Cumbie has no doubt Leach's offense would work in the SEC. There shouldn't be any doubt it would work based on the Leach offense in Lexington for two seasons or after watching it against Texas and Oklahoma, but Cumbie says he has no doubts it will work here.
2. The media and fans in Lubbock love Leach. This is despite the fact that Lubbock is a very West Texas-centric town and that Leach came in and replaced a West Texas boy, and Lubbock native, in Spike Dykes. Leach is eccentric but respectful, and Cumbie doesn't think he'd have trouble in a different setting.
3. As a head coach, Cumbie has seen Leach evolve as it comes to defense. Leach doesn't supervise each set or play (he allows his coordinators to do that) but he is very involved in the defensive philosophy and has come to understand that his offense can't work standing alone.
4. Lubbock isn't that small of a town, over 200,000 people live there. In fact the city of Knoxville has less city residents than Lubbock does. I know many Tennessee fans have been concerned that Leach hasn't been sufficiently exposed to a large-town atmosphere. I got news for you, Knoxville ain't a large town atmosphere either. Granted UT has many more rabid fans than Texas Tech, but to act like Leach has been coaching in the middle of nowhere, like Fayetteville, Arkansas, is ludicrous.
5. Leach is very involved in recruiting and is particularly good at talking with recruits. Cumbie pointed out that Leach can talk about anything under the sun and has been, of late, swamped with offensive players who want to come to his school and be involved in his system. As Cumbie put it, "Fifth string wide receivers catch more balls here than first string guys do at most places."
6. Leach's offense is flexible enough to take advantage of what the quarterback does well. Cumbie said that Leach molds the offense around his signal caller but that intelligence is a must.
7. When he arrived at Texas Tech Leach inherited an old-school power football team. Many of the players were uncertain about Leach's philosophies. But he won them over by proving the results. Given we currently have an offense that has only scored more than 14 points once in six SEC games, I think our guys would come around as well.
Basically, after talking with Cumbie, I think you can be for or against the hire of Mike Leach. (As I've said before, I want him). But I don't think you can argue that the offense wouldn't work in the SEC, that Leach's personality is too abrasive to cut it in the South, that Leach doesn't understand defenses, or that the players would rebel against him. You'll have to find your reasons elsewhere.
As always, call in, at 615-737-1045 listen live here. I'll be explaining my love affair for Mike Leach, we'll talk Vandy-Kentucky, Florida-Alabama, and try to decipher the Big 12 mess. Also, I'll dance in store bought panties. But that's only in the studio.
Also, as promised, here is Fox as Darth Vader. Admit it, you're scared, very scared.
What do you make of the LSU / Alabama fan murder on Saturday after the game? At what point would you rely on a quasi-functioning member of society - regardless of consumption - stepping in and saying "Hey, man - Just let it go. You don't ACTUALLY smell like corndogs. There's no need to go over to his house. But if you really need to fight someone, leave the gun at home."
Was the tipping point the LSU fan being reminded of his corndog aroma? Or was it a dig at Les Miles (Saban will always be better)? Did that send him hurtling into some poor decision making (add alcohol, some guns, crazy women)? How many of your sports loving friends can summon a larger firearm in mere moments after being threatened with one? Are these questions you'd never begin to ask yourself? Me either.
This is why grown men shouldn't fight unless they're going to war or their wife or girlfriend or child has just been assaulted. Here's the deal, we all care more than we should about what happens in college football games. That's what makes the SEC the best conference in sports, but it also makes us more willing to get in a fight. If you're over the age of 28 and you've been in a fight in the past year, you need to seriously reexamine your life. Something is going horribly wrong.
My theories on why fans fight to the death:
1. Both people are so dumb no one can win the argument. I've long believed that having a dumb person and a smart person argue is the best possible argument. Because the smart person thinks they won the argument and the dumb person thinks they won. Their minds are so far apart that they can't even penetrate the idiocy or brilliance of each other. So smart people and dumb people don't fight very often. Each believes that they've won the verbal combat.
Generally two smart people don't fight because they realize they have too much to lose. (The same theory proves why it's so much safer to sit in good seats on the road for sporting events than in bad seats. Presumably people who can afford good seats have something to lose and hence behave better. Now this isn't a fail-safe but it's a good, rough barometer. I'm already nervous about my trip to Titans-Lions on Thanksgiving in Detroit. My father-in-law is notoriously cheap so we'll be surrounded by laid-off factory workers from Dearborn who have to come watch the Lions get destroyed by the Titans. Prediction: someone in the bad seats will try and pick a fight with me.)
But two dumb people have nothing to lose and the lunacy of their insults to one another actually stings. "Your gay," hurts them more than it hurts you or me. Sooner or later you got to shoot a man if he says your gay.
2. The poorer you are the bigger a deal geography is to you. Your state and your city is all you know and you hold to both of them dearly. Did you ever give your cellphone number to someone and they were shocked because your area code was different than theirs? There are still an awful lot of people who don't have friends or family that live more than 20 miles from them. This is why Cricket phones still exist. If you don't have friends or family from other regions then it's likely you have a really provincial outlook on your own team. This means the very idea that other fans exist and care as much about their teams is a bit shocking to you. So you're angrier when you get confronted by opposing fans. Note that these murders (I can't believe I'm typing this) don't happen near major metropolitan areas. It's not because people in Nashville, Atlanta, Birmingham, Memphis, or New Orleans don't care as much about their teams, it's just that we've already been exposed to lots of other fan bases.
Geography is still a huge deal to many Southerners. Clearly, with my embrace of Pan-Southernism, I'm one of them. But, on the positive side, my geographic region encompasses the entire South. So I'd only be willing to kill people from outside the South who beat my team. But maybe that's just me. It's why I'm typing this from a hunting lodge outside Cody, Wyoming. I'm loading my rifle as we speak. The moment one of those rascals in the 1980's brown W sweater appears, bam, he's dead.
3. It's the economy stupid. People are more on edge about their teams when they don't know where their next paycheck is coming from. Remember when the Pistons brawled with the Pacers in Detroit. That very day the lead story was the largest lay-offs in General Motors history. You think this was a coincidence? It wasn't. But no one really wrote about this because most people who write about sports for a living aren't very smart. Or at least if they are smart they aren't interested in looking past the easy cliche.
My point at that time was that you wouldn't see a riot like this in a Southern town. Why? Because people weren't angry about their standard of living declining. The brawl in the palace was a manifestation of that anger. Same thing now with Alabama and LSU. Both teams are outrageously successful.
4. Owning a gun and being dumb is a bad combination. I don't own a gun. Not because I wasn't raised shooting guns (I'm Southern I was shooting by the time I was 5) but just because I know that statistically I'm much more likely to have my son get that gun and hurt himself than I am to protect him with the gun. My point isn't that guns are bad or that people with guns are idiots, but just that they compound idiotic decisions.
Say this Alabama fan doesn't own a gun and goes hunting the LSU fan with a knife. Do you know how hard it is to kill someone face-to-face with a knife? Of course not. I do, I was in 'Nam. I bayoneted 15 charlies one Friday. People don't like to kill other people face-to-face unless they're crazy. It's the same reason the bayonet was so rarely used in hand-to-hand combat in the Civil War. It humanizes death. Guns dehumanize death. In the South we have more people with guns than anywhere else. We also have more murders per capita. That's not a coincidence.
5. Defending the honor of Les Miles is getting harder and harder. Does anyone else think Les Miles and LSU are on the verge of a epically fast decline? 5-3 in the SEC this season at best--two fifty point blowout losses. I just really feel like we're headed for a downturn in a hurry. This will lead to more murders. Only next year it will be LSU fans killing Alabama fans. Unless that already happened this year. No one can seem to decide who was a fan of who in this incident. Which is the ultimate irony. You die for your team and no one knows who your team is.
We've heard a lot of talk about some folks wishing Steve Spurrier had come to coach the Vols awhile ago or wanting him to now. Basically, what they’re saying is that they want the Spurrier who introduced innovation to the SEC and changed the league forever. You don't want Spurrier, you want what Spurrier did back then. Mike Leach is now what Spurrier was then: a guy challenging the system and winning because he’s thinking differently than everyone else.
I'm already giddy at the idea of the Volunteer Navy turning into a collection of pirate ships. Together we can loot and pillage the SEC and take their finest women and drape them in orange finery. This is our destiny, we cannot look back now. We need Mike Leach in orange.
Some of you have written wanting to know why there has been a dearth of email from people who hate me in the mailbag of late. The reason is because I rarely get any hate mail anymore. Yep, pretty much everyone loves me. But in the past couple of days I've gotten a few angry emails.
First up, I got an email from some guy named Ben Pierman who is evidently an assistant attorney general from the state of Georgia. I know this because he had the good sense to email me from his state of Georgia email address. Clearly the taxpayers of Georgia are getting their money's worth. He was upset with what he perceived as my Ole Miss bashing. Here is his email:
"In later years the fact that Hailey and Hanna Nutt's dad went to Gainesville and won with this Ole Miss team is going to seem even more remarkable than it does now.”
Hey Clay, just because the Vols suck, why do you have to take cheap shots at Ole Miss? Last I checked we were light years ahead of UT in wins and general direction of our respective programs. I hope Smokey gets tired of your ratty beard and bites your taint.
PS- “Dixieland Delight” was contrived and boring. You’re not Bill Simmons-please stop trying.
Sincerely, Ben Pierman
Ben,
Generally I like Ole Miss fans because they aren't losers like yourself. (By the way if you ever wonder whether a lawyer is a loser, if you google them and they don't come up on the first page of results and they have a name that's relatively unique like Ben Pierman, then they're losers). Clearly, you're the Ole Miss fan exception.
First, I fail to see how this is "hating" on Ole Miss. I haven't confirmed this but I'm pretty sure that 90% of Ole Miss fans still sit around and say, "How the hell did we beat Florida this year?" They have to. They're intelligent fans. Florida is much better than you are. Like everyone else in the SEC I still find it amazing that Florida lost that game.
Second, Ole Miss is light years ahead of Tennessee? This is laughable, right? Ole Miss has never won an SEC division title (you lost the tiebreak to LSU in 2003, I'm not counting it) and hasn't won an outright SEC title since, wait for it, 1963. Awesome, high five, the Kennedy assassination is so contemporary. Plus, you're bragging about a 5-4 record. 5-4! Even with their worst football season since 1890, Ole Miss is just two wins ahead of Tennessee this year. If you're an assistant attorney general of Georgia (fix my parking tickets, bitch) this is "light years" of separation.
Finally, Ben Pierman is entitled to his opinion of my book. Although, to be fair, I'm not sure what could be contrived about it. The book is artificial? Nope, went to all the games, enjoyed them, wrote about them. No one else has ever done this. I don't object to criticism, but I do ask it to make sense. More than likely Ben Pierman isn't that smart (witness his employer) and wanted to have another adjective to use other than "boring." So he went with one that didn't fit but seemed like it should. As for the Bill Simmons line, I've read three or four columns of his in my life so I'm not sure what the point is here. If you want to insult me say the book isn't as good as humor writers who I've read and admire: Mark Twain or Tony Kornheiser or Bill Bryson. Say all of these men would have written a better book about a roadtrip in the SEC. That's fair. But don't focus on the only writer you know who is funny and claim that they own a certain arena all for themselves. Bill Simmons isn't the first person to wed sports with humor, you're just too dumb to know anyone else who has done it before him. Regardless, feel free to repeat your critique to the tens of thousands of people who have read the book and enjoyed it. We'll see whose opinion wins out in the marketplace of ideas. (Hint, it ain't yours.)
Personally, I'm already looking forward to heading down to Oxford next year for another book signing at Square Books (one of the best bookstores in the South). I just hope my Tennessee team can manage to traverse the light years of difference between them and Ole Miss in time for next year's game. I'm sure doing another signing in his own backyard won't impress Ben Pierman. Nor will it impress him that Dixieland Delight was one of the bestsellers at Square Books last year. Nor will it impress him when On Rocky Top is a bestseller in 2009. Nope, he'll be too busy making misguided attempts to defend the honor of Ole Miss football from his state computer and state email address.
Well played, Bennie, well played. At least now your name will show up on google, you tool.
To the remainder of Ole Miss fans who I respect and enjoy, at least we know who is included in the 15% of your fan base who sucks.
I've made my decision. We need Mike Leach now. Consider this my endorsement as a decently intelligent fan. I've been pouring over our candidate list and I'm convinced Leach is the right man for the job. In fact, during Texas Tech-Oklahoma State this conviction became clear as day. I'm already planning on watching Texas Tech-Oklahoma without wearing any pants. Yep, I've got it bad.
But Mike Leach won't let me order a salad, so I'm fine.
I don't even care what he does for the rest of the season (losing to Oklahoma probably helps our chances), the Vols should hire him away. He fits all my criteria except for being a proven national recruiter. He's 47, smart, has been a successful head coach, has even been an immensely successful coordinator at Kentucky and Oklahoma, will strike fear into the hearts of our opponents. I think recruiting will take care of itself. In 7 years Leach has brought good enough players to Lubbock to legitimately contend for a national championship. Lubbock! The fifth or sixth best college program in Texas. Are you telling me that Leach with a good staff couldn't bring top recruits to the largest stadium in the best conference in America?
Plus, and this is key for me, he'll bring the fun back to UT football.
Admit it, you've not really enjoyed the past several years of UT football like you should have. It's okay, we're all confessing here. Because, deep down, you've always feared that we were on the verge of doing something stupid. Making a mistake that would leave you staring up at the ceiling all night long and trying to figure out why you cared as much as you do. Often these thoughts have been brought on by how bad our offense is. Since 2002 (minus two years with David Cutcliffe) our offense has been a trainwreck. It's time to change that in one feel swoop. Mike Leach will do it.
I've been paying pretty good attention to Mike Leach's teams since I read this New York Times article back in 2005. He's quirky, he's weird, he's smart, and he's everything we need. I'm sold. Let's make it happen. Otherwise, I'm going to have to talk about Wyoming, and I never want to talk about Wyoming again. Unless we're referencing it as Mike Leach's birthplace.
Remember how you felt when you watched Steve Spurrier and Florida? This is how I feel when I watch Mike Leach and Texas Tech. Let there be no doubt, he should be our guy.
(Note: This isn't to stay I wouldn't be happy with Gruden or Butch Davis, just that I think Leach is the best choice.)
You guessed it... A-a is pronounced...Adasha. The latest award for originality in naming comes via reader Mike Reynolds who reports:
I have an aunt in speech pathology and she has a student named. A—a. “A dash a”
No shit.
That's the greatest use of, "No shit," in an email that I've ever seen. Succinct and to the point. So the pronunciation of dash is officially a trend. Wouldn't it be great to test the IQ's of people who use the dash in names and then spell it out loud? It would be even better if all the parents tested off the IQ charts. Up there with Einstein, Thomas Jefferson and Chelsea Handler. Maybe pronouncing the dash is like the electoral college, you have to have an advanced degree to really understand it.
Speaking of which, congrats to Obama. He's our co-beaver pelt trader of the week alongside A--a. I think he's going to do a great job as President, I really do. How can he not? He's already come out against the BCS.
Nick Kroes writes:
Hey Clay,
I know you normally focus on SEC football but since you're the college football writer at Deadspin at all, I thought I'd pose you this question. What would a "mid major" have to do to have a shot at the national championship team?
I'm a Boise State fan and am trying to figure out if there's a greater moment to aspire to than the 2006 Fiesta Bowl. Unless they move to a BCS conference (unlikely) or move to the Mountain West and that conference makes a play for automatic BCS bid, is there any chance? Even if they started ranked in the preseason top 25, would the voters let it happen?
Loved Dixieland Delight and even though I hate UT, looking forward to your next book.
Sadly, no. I think for Boise State (or Utah for that matter) to ever advance to the BCS Title game they'd have to go undefeated and in order to snag a spot every major college champ in the Big 12, SEC, ACC, and Pac-10 would have to have 2 losses. (An undefeated non-BCS team might be able to slide in over a Big East team with one loss.) That's a joke. The college football system is unfair and unAmerican. I wrote a column last year for CBS saying that the only fan answer to the BCS was to boycott the advertisers who support the BCS Bowls on Fox. CBS elected not to publish it (one of about five columns they shot down over the past three years.) I'm going to dust that off and get it up on here soon. I think that's the only way to actually make a change, hit them in their pocketbooks. Either that or let Obama open up a congressional investigation into the anti-trust aspects of the BCS.
Vince writes:
Clay- from your latest mailbag:
"Brian McGee writes: What is with the tiny sweat bands that players are wearing around their elbows? I mean does this string of cloth really do all that much? I've also noticed them around the knees as well. I thought it was really funny to see that our quarterback, Nick Stephens, as well as our kicker and holder were wearing them over their underarmour. I guess there are some things I'll never get; this and the fact that players like to wear what is equivalent to pantyhose on their head.
You know how every now and then you hear a question that you didn't even know you actually had? This is one of them. I have no idea what those things do. Although I have a strong suspicion that they're just supposed to make the muscles bulge more and look intimidating. Because they can't actually restrict any sweat. That would be impossible for them to manage as they're worn and constructed. As for over the underarmour, this makes even less sense. I'm going to ask about this on the sideline tomorrow. Maybe I'll even wear some. They remind me of the bands the Ultimate Warrior used to wear. So they can't be all bad."
i'm guessing very few of your readers regularly read the New York Times. but i may be able to help you out:
Most do not wear the bands to practice, signaling the vanity of their use. All admit that they wear the bands only because they think it looks good, which would be the only plausible reason.
“There is absolutely no benefit from a performance standpoint or a medical standpoint,” said Ralph Reiff, a certified athletic trainer and director of St. Vincent Sports Performance in Indianapolis. He has seen the upper-arm bands become popular on football players from the N.F.L. down to middle school. “It’s purely a fashion statement.”
On the New York Times front, I'm currently feuding with them because they won't deliver to my zip code in Nashville. I live downtown. I can see three other zip codes from my second floor porch. They deliver to each of these but not to me. At the Southern Festival of Books the New York Times actually had a booth. I give the guy my credit card, he assures me they deliver, and it's now been four weeks and nothing has arrived on my doorstep. So I'm pissed at the NYT. You would be too if you lived in Nashville and had to read the Tennessean. Everyone wants to talk about the decline of print media, justifiably, but I'm a 29 year old who lives in a major American city and wants to consume their product and they won't let me. Bastards.
Posting this has nothing to do with the fact that I've been an Activision shareholder for the past five years. But it does remind me that some rich guy dumped Heidi Klum and then she ended up with Seal. Remember they had the uncertainty over whether or not the baby was going to be his or the rich guy's? Point being, can you imagine who this rich guy is dating now?
Also, am I the only person who thinks they can predict how hot a girl is based on her name? With a name like Heidi Klum, you're bound to be hot. That's why I'm glad I have a son. We were going with Eve Travis if we'd had a daughter. I'd have been done for.
All That and a Bag of Mail: BGID Meets 'Bama Bangs
My worlds have collided. Courtesy of reader Julie Hacker came the above picture.
Here was her email:
Hey Clay! I’m a big fan of yours and enjoy everything you write. Wanted to share this fantastic combo of Bama Bangs and BGID. Spotted at the Crow’s Nest last night. Clearly he is thrilled with my need to take a photo. Enjoy and have a good weekend!
Honestly, I don't know what to say. I mean, of course, in theory, I knew that the beard could be combined with 'Bama Bangs. There's nothing to stop it, but it's like matter and anti-matter colliding on this guy's face. The beard says, "You want to sleep with me right now," but the 'Bama Bangs say, "After a nice cuddle and spooning." Except in Alabama where this guy is officially a walking sex machine. Seriously, he should be illegal. If you're married, have a faithful wife, and live in Alabama and your wife has ever seen this man, you're raising his children. We need to know who this guy is. (Note: There is a 100% chance this is what Brodie Croyle looks like right now. With his latest injury he's like Vince after Medellin bombed. Sitting somewhere in the backwoods of Alabama, bangs grown, and rocking the unkempt beard. Just hope your wife doesn't ever see him either.)
For those of you who didn't click on the link, Kentucky has offered a scholarship to a football player named, and I'm not making this up, Tai-ler Jones. He's a 2010 wide receiver from Gainesville, Georgia. I have no idea why he needs the dash. But I know I'm not alone in praying that his name be pronounced Taidashler.
Jordan Richardson writes:
Clay, I'm not sure why LSU has such a strong connection with making it rain, but here is a link to their "first ever Rainmakers Gala." There is even a list of rainmakers in the article. Adam Jones is not on the list.
My God, that photo gallery is gold. Here's a sample.
Odds that guy in the lower left corner with the white beard just followed up the red head's, "Boy, this is a long night," statement by saying, "That's what she said." Also, why is the guy on the right dancing with a computer mouse? Does this make it rain faster? Is this a new move I haven't learned yet? Finally, top right with the mustache, he likes to pee on women. You see that too, right? It's not just me.
More mailbag later today. Including our beaver pelt trader of the week. Until then, amuse yourselves with John Parker Wilson's cell phone number being released to LSU fans. I've written about it here.
Why I'd want Mike Leach? He'd Make Football Fun Again
Thursday, November 6, 2008
If I had to hire someone to be the next head coach of Tennessee that I think would best fit my own personality, I'd hire Mike Leach. Why? Because Leach makes football fun. He's also a fellow lawyer who gave up the practice of law pretty soon after graduation. In fact, Leach turned down lucrative job offers (even while having a wife and child) to accept a $7,000 coaching salary. Michael Lewis (of Moneyball fame) wrote a tremendous profile piece on Leach for the New York Times Play Magazine. The article came out in December of 2005 and I remember reading it that week. It's extraordinary. You're doing yourself a disservice if you don't read it here.
Leach is what Spurrier was fifteen years ago, smart, brash, weird, and always entertaining. How long has it been since you watched a UT football game and were really entertained? By that I mean sat back on your couch and rubbed your hands together with glee because you had no clue what was going to happen next but you knew it was going to be good? 2001. Probably....maybe. Basically I think Leach would make us all feel like Bruce Pearl makes us feel now, slightly giddy, a bit drunk, ready to laugh and scream at any moment, but most importantly, ready to have a good time.
I was reminded of this article by Jeremy Davenport who emailed the following: Some of my favorite quotes from this article:
-So one goal is to throw as many different things at a defense as he can, to see what it finds most disturbing. Another goal is to create as much confusion as possible for the defense while keeping things as simple as possible for the offense. -there's a ton of touchdowns to be had. -The Texas Tech offense is not just an offense; it's a mood: optimism. It is designed to maximize the possibility of something good happening rather than to minimize the possibility of something bad happening. -When Leach recruits high-school players, he is forced to compromise on most talents, but he insists on speed. -Field position is simply a thing to improve.
You just get the feeling from this article the guy understands something no one else does. He adjusts his game plan to what is happening during the game, he gets more out of less-talented players, and he’s not tied to college football’s ‘conventional wisdom.’ If anyone can take the reigns from Urban Meyer and the spread option and bring the next great offense to the SEC, it’s him. He’s the Spurrier of the 21st century. Let’s get behind him and make it happen.
Damn, it's nice to be filthy rich. How about a 10,000 square foot house in Knoxville? Sounds pretty nice. Enjoy the pictures. I promise, looking at pictures of another man's house doesn't make you gay. It doesn't help, but it doesn't make you gay.
In honor of our new President, I present you with a rejected New York Times Op-Ed Piece. I'm 0-3 on submitting things to them. This is the most recent. Since the election was a big deal (regardless of how you voted), time to learn about Mutually Assured Facebook Destruction. ...
If you're under 30 there's something on your Facebook page that would probably disqualify you from being elected President. Aside, that is, from the Constitutionally mandated age of 35. That's because Facebook profiles would be fertile territory in an age when the politics of personal destruction remain a fixture of our electoral politics. From what your profile says, to what friends write on your wall, from your pictures to the groups you join, inevitably something you've done is offensive to someone, something, or some interest group. In an age of tepid themes and political blandness, Facebook and other social networking sites of their ilk are a digital thumb in the electoral eye—a vibrant, diverse, and motley collection of supported causes, off-color photos, and off-color language; all of which provide a more vivid portrait of their tens of millions of users than have ever existed in a public arena before. Chances are a future President of the United States will log onto Facebook in the time it takes you to read this newspaper.
In doing so he or she will inevitably be connected to something, someone, or some place that you or I may find offensive. His or her profile will provide evidence of a personal failing that could provide fertile ground for a political attack ad of the future. Only it won't. Why? Because I believe the flourishing nature and very ubiquity of digital profiles in an internet age is already providing a roadmap to the end of the politics of personal destruction. I call it Mutually Assured Facebook Destruction. ("MAFD") It's the digital age's own evolution of the Cold War nuclear arms theory. Like its predecessor the theory is simple, a personal attack in a world where everyone has a readily accessible digital past will destroy both sides. You'll keep your mouth shut and the other side will too.
Already minor Facebook scandals have flared in the past two election cycles—from Rudolph Guiliani's daughter belonging to a group that supported Obama for president to Tennessee's Republican Senator, Bob Corker, downplaying pictures of his college-age daughter kissing another girl after the images circulated online. If you're a parent you've probably worried about what your children make available of their private lives online for fear of how it might impact their future, if you're past the age to be interested in online social networking you're concerned about the breakdown of private life in the modern era. Both are wasted concerns. The genie's profile is out of the bottle.
But so too, among the younger electoral age, is the value of personal attack based upon these profiles. It's not just that the two combating candidates will both have something to lose in exposing their own online pasts, it's that voters of the future are going to shrug their shoulders at any evidence of these failings. Everyone's failures, successes, triumphs and travails will have been visible for a very long time. The politics of the past half-century have been about pretending to be better than you actually are, the politics of the future will be about not hiding from who you are or what you've been. Why? Because you won't be able to. Google will know, Facebook will know, anyone with a search bar will know what you've already done, both good and bad.
Rather than being terrifying in its scope, this breadth of knowledge is ultimately liberating to the individual and society as a whole. If everyone's flaws are readily apparent in the digital world, indeed if we're often providing them ourselves, then we can focus on what really divides us in the political arena, not lame attempts to personally attack past actions or associations, but true differences of thought, opinion, and belief.
As we come down the home stretch of yet another election that has focused, all too often on both sides, on the personal associations and connections of the candidates, it's refreshing to know that the internet age is going to bring the politics of personal destruction to an end. It's not that in the future, we won't all be pictured with our own personal William Ayers. It's just that Mutually Assured Facebook Destruction will ensure that no one ever pays attention to them. There will be so much personal information available that its very ubiquity will have, ironically, made it worthless as a source of attack. So the next time you find out that your underage son or daughter has put up pictures featuring underage drinking in a pimps and hos themed college party, give them a call and say, "I always knew you were going to be President one day."
I've gotten emails like this one below since the news broke yesterday.
Jim writes:
Clay, what do you think we should be looking for in a new coach? Got a checklist or anything.
BGID?
I don't think anyone has a full beard that's a legit candidate. If that were the case I'd throw all of my support behind them. I'm working through this criteria as a fan. I'd like to think a somewhat intelligent fan, but a fan nonetheless. Here's my roster of things that have to be fulfilled. We'll also be talking about this tonight on the ClayNation radio show at 104.5 the Zone from 7-9 central. Feel free to call or email your additional criteria that you find important. In fact, please do call us at 615-737-1045. Or, at the very least, feel free to listen live on your computers by clicking here (that's if you're outside the Nashville region).
In no particular order.
1. He has to be in his 40's at a maximum. No one talks about Nick Saban being 57 but I think that's significant. Did you even know Saban was only one year younger than Fulmer? I bet hardly anyone did. It's significant because, for better or worse, I don't think anyone can coach well into their 60's and be successful in the SEC. I just don't. You can call this ageism if you want to, but the key point is you want someone who can go at least ten years at your school and still be in their 50's at the most. Choosing a coach is hard, I think you have to narrow the field as best you can. This would be one of my ways. So anyone 50 or older is off. This means Cutcliffe is tossed, Jim Grobe, any other guy who is over 50.
2. He has to have been a head coach at some level. Toss Muschamp, toss Doug Marrone (aka the Vols own Ron Zook), toss Gus Malzahn, toss Charlie Strong, toss Trooper Taylor (god I can't believe I have to include his name, are you really serious Jeremy?). I know coordinators have turned into successes in this league, but I think we're above that. I truly do. Georgia took a flier on Richt after a former head coach didn't pan out (Jim Donnan) and after a young internal assistant (Ray Goff) never could turn the corner. The Croom experiment at Mississipi State appears to be neutral at best. Mike Shula bombed. Name another coordinator in the past decade who has been hired in the SEC and set your world afire. Put plainly, we don't have to and shouldn't make a reach with this hire. We're conducting our first legit search since the 1960's and have had two coaches in 31 years.
3. Money can't be an option that keeps us from getting the guy we want. Why can't the University set up a website to solicit small dollar donations like Barack Obama has done to fund his presidential campaign? There are tons of Vol fans out there who don't give money to the university because they don't have lots of money to spare. Why not set up a website to solicit donations solely to fund the new coaches salary? What's more, why not limit donations from fans through this website to, say, $100? If 100,000 Vol fans donate an average of $10 through the site that's $1,000,000. Put up a ticker at the top of the screen to show the donations coming in. Are you telling me that Tennessee football fans wouldn't raise this amount of money in a month for the right coach? Probably three or four times this amount. Plus, it's a uniting and rallying event, shows the university is in touch with its suppoters, puts the average fan on somewhat equal footing with the fat cats, and gives everyone something to do while we sit around waiting for the next hire. Put up the website and I guarantee you money for the next hire would be no option.
4. He has to be a great recruiter (or convince you that he can bring in a staff of great recruiters.) Phil Fulmer is tireless with recruiting. Ten minutes after the Alabama loss Fulmer was already trying to persuade Tajh Boyd and the other visitors in the locker room to come to Tennessee. Who do we know is a great recruiter as a head coach? Tim Brewster at Minnesota (based on one class so far) and Butch Davis at North Carolina and...that's really sort of it. Mike Leach has done a hell of a job coaching but I don't recall Texas Tech regularly storming the top 25 of recruiting rankings. Same with Chris Petersen out at Boise State (and Hawkins falling flat on his face at Colorado has to make you nervous about that as well.) Maybe I'm wrong.
Lane Kiffin? He's recruited at USC. Their recruiting hasn't fallen off much since he left. Plus, he did that as an offensive coordinator. I'm leery on Kiffin because I don't think he'd be on our short list if he hadn't been named the Oakland Raiders coach. And Al Davis is batshit crazy. So why are we using that job as a filtering device? Point being if Kiffin was the OC at USC right now, would we really think it was worth firing a national championship winning coach to bring him in? Don't think so.
5. He has to be demonstrably intelligent. If I could I'd request an IQ test. Or SAT scores. Name a person who you think is dumb and has won an SEC Championship in the past decade (okay, excluding Les Miles). The point is, you have to hire a smart guy now. Brains matter in this day and age. This is almost impossible to quantify but Mike Hamilton is smart. I trust he can make this call. To me intelligence is seismic.
6. He has to strike fear into the heart of our opponents. I think this is the most important part of the list. Look, perception is reality for the first two years of any coaching situation. Point being, does Nick Saban get his guys to buy in so quickly if he's been an OC at USC prior to arriving at Alabama? I don't think so. College kids believe the hype. And believing is the first battle (of course thanks to G.I. Joe we recall that knowing is half the battle as well). More importantly, perhaps, recruits believe the hype. Who on our potential list would make other teams in the SEC give pause? I'll tell you: Jon Gruden, Butch Davis and Mike Leach. That's it, that's the list. (And of course you could throw Bill Cowher in here as well if you're willing to but I haven't heard anything at all about him from anyone. Of course this might mean nothing.) Otherwise, I don't see the point in running Fulmer out of town. The next coach has to a name hire of half the fanbase is going to want him fired before he starts. Name the wrong guy and we're staring a Ron Zook to Florida situation right in our faces. You only need to ask Alabama how long a decade of joke coaches can screw up a team.
So to reiterate, from my perspective, our next coach has to fulfill five criteria to be worthy of replacing Fulmer: in his 40's at a maximum, with head coaching experience, a great recruiter, demonstrably smart, and striking fear into the heart of our opponent. Fulfill those five and money won't be an option. Guaranteed. Just get up the website. Pronto. I've got my contribution ready to submit.
By the way, the above picture is me at the Nashville sports picnic meeting Johnny Majors. Hopefully, if we nail the above criteria, our next coach will be around when my 9 month old son Fox is old enough to get his own picture autographed.
I was in Columbia. So my friend Keven decided to dress up as me for Halloween. I'd be lying if I said receiving this picture didn't make my week. Going to a party dressed as one of your friends is incredibly underrated.
Couple of things worth noting about this costume:
1. Keven says when he was buying this UT button-down at Wal-Mart a UT woman behind him in line, tapped him on the shoulder and said, "That's a really great looking shirt."
2. Only guys had any idea who he was. Which was Keven's goal because he loves penis and balls. By which I mean he's homosexual. (Not really, just bi-curious.)
3. One hot girl stopped him outside the Tin Roof, said, "Oh my God, I know exactly who you are." She ran over to him and said, "You're a real estate agent."
4. Admit it ladies, the reason you didn't approach Keven was because even dressing up as me emotes so much raw sexual power that you were intidimated. That's okay. I have it on good authority that four women who danced near Keven in the Clay Travis costume are now pregnant. What's more, their fetuses already have fully grown beards.
For the first time since the end of the Alabama-Tennessee game back in 1990, I cried watching a Tennessee-related event. I was 11 in 1990. For the past 18 years I've watched Tennessee football without any tears, but yesterday I cried. And I suspect I was not alone.
I couldn't help thinking that as a fanbase we were Brutus and Fulmer was an unsuspecting Caesar.
More than anything else this struck me as a divorce where an older man goes searching for a new wife. After a long time our program decided we needed someone sexier, someone with more verve. We have the money to pay for that spark. Only, and as one who isn't divorced I'm not an expert, at some point don't you end up facing the same challenges with the new hire? One day she's not going to want to have sex because she has a headache or she's going to be blaming you for making a mess in the house or your complete collection of Saved By the Bell DVDs are going to turn up missing. Worst of all, she might just be after you for money and already be looking to go somewhere else. We've traded loyalty for a bit of passion. But as good ole Benjamin Franklin once said, passion never rules wisely. I guess what I'm saying is, things aren't going to change much. Do you think our next coach is going to win at Gainesville or Tuscaloosa next season? The season after? Yeah, I didn't think so.
But now we're on to a new day and here are several things I'm wondering about in no particular order.
1. Has the SEC become too popular for its own good? I'm not a NASCAR person but I've heard the grumbling that the television networks killed some of the enthusiasm and fun that existed in that sport. Will the same be true for the SEC? Already we're bringing in mercenaries to coach our football teams. In some corners, that's good, it means that the rest of the country has finally realized what we've known all along, that the SEC plays the paramount brand of football in the country. But does it also mean that assholes like Urban Meyer, Bobby Petrino, and Nick Saban represent the future of our conference? Guys born outside the South who make a living down here? I'm afraid so. If that's the case does part of the unique flavor that has made us all love SEC football so much begin to fade? I'm afraid it might.
2. Will there ever be another head coach at UT from inside the state? For several years I've been in the camp that said they didn't care where our next coach was from so long as he won. In particular part I've been stuck on this analogy, "If any large Tennesssee-based corporation said they were hiring a new CEO but they said that their CEO had to come from Tennessee, how would we respond? We'd think it was ludicrous." I've told this story countless times to countless numbers of people. You may have heard me say it as well. Well, now I'm wondering if I might be wrong about this. The premise of my hypothetical is based upon the idea that college football is basically a large corporation. I know this is mostly true. But does acknowledging this fact make football less fun?
I went to the Monday Night game between the Titans and Colts last week and all I could think throughout the game was: This experience is inferior to UT-Mississippi State. It's hard for me to get past how ludicrous it is to get worked up over what happens to pro athletes. I root for the Titans but I don't feel the passion in the same way. One reason is because the NFL is such a business. The timeouts and ads and everything else about the NFL is so choreographed. So clearly a production. So clearly a business. UT football has never felt like this to me. But will it in the future if the business angle of collegiate sports continues to predominate? I'm not sure. But I'm worried. So now I'm not sure if this is the right question to be asking. Maybe, after all, being provincial in our hiring list helps make us who we are as Vol fans.
3. Mike Hamilton has to have a good coach lined up in pocket to make this decision now. He's too smart to do this to Fulmer and hire some of the guys on the Volquest list. Part of that reason is because there's no real comparison in recent SEC history to UT forcing Fulmer out. No SEC school has run off a national championship winner like we just did. To do this requires a great heaping of balls. Balls that fill up a whole athletic department. So I believe that Hamilton already knows who he'll hire. To do otherwise would be tantamount to career suicide. His own career suicide. For example, can you imagine if we pushed Fulmer out and ended up with someone like Volquest top 11 "candidate" Doug Marrone? Or that black guy who coaches Buffalo? The fan base would be united again. United in hating the decision and our new coach. Nope, this is going to be a big name.
4. I love how quickly some are to discount UT's chances with a big-name coach. This is a job that hasn't had a true search since the 1960's. That's insane. Plus, money is not a real issue. So I'm not willing to dismiss anyone as out of hand. Put it this way, if you'd told anyone in September of last season that Bobby Petrino was going to leave his NFL coaching job in the middle of the season to take over as head coach of Arkansas, would you have ever believed it? Of course not. So keep your eyes peeled on this decision.
Appreciate all the emails and I'll get to them later today or tomorrow in the mailbag.
1. If this doesn't make you sad you aren't a Vol fan. You can agree or disagree about whether this needed to happen, but even still, I'm sad. Since 1992--when I was only 13-- to this fall now that I'm grown and have a child of my own, Fulmer has been on the sidelines for my team. What's more, I'm 29 and this will be the first coaching search for UT football that I've ever been alive for. That's special. You only have to look down to Alabama to see how special that is. I hope that whoever we hire is here for 10 years or more. Did you realize that there have only been 20 head coaches in UT football history?
2. I never would have believed that the story for my book was going to end up taking this turn. Never. I was convinced that we would contend for an SEC Title. Even after the Florida loss I still felt this was possible. Now there's a chance that we'll lose more games than any UT team ever has. Unbelievable.
3. As a fan, this season has been brutal. And I've seen an awful lot of talk about this team quitting. They haven't quit. Trust me. If you'd been in the locker room before the South Carolina game, you'd have seen Ellix Wilson give the most astounding player speech I've ever witnessed. The team has never been more fired up all season. Things just haven't worked out. In fact, they've fallen apart. But the guys haven't stopped playing as hard as they can.
4. Love him or not, Fulmer is a good guy. A good guy in a sea of bad ones. I hope that whoever we bring in next understands why Tennessee football is a unique and special place.
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...
