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Tim Tebow Is The Best College Player of Our Lives: Mailbag Arrives

Thursday, January 8, 2009

As a prelude, apologies for my collapse in the Tennessee-Gonzaga livechat yesterday. Comcast chose halftime of the Vols game to shut down. Just as I was diving into my spumoni ice cream. Bastards. In conjunction with the internet dying, the Vols collapse to Gonzaga, and Fox beginning to cry from his crib, the hour and change from 9-10:20 at my house was not a happy time. For all of you who came by and hung out, it was good, wiping away my tears, while it lasted.

On to all that and a bag of mail.

Neville writes:

Let me be the first to take this opportunity to remind you all just how wrong Clay Travis was about Urban Meyer and Tim Tebow. During this week of pageantry and hoopla surrounding the Gators 2nd championship game in 3 years I am reminded of all the time Mr. Travis wasted on picking apart in nauseating minutia the problems he foresaw for both Tebow and Urban. If I were a lesser man I would go through the carefully chronicled annals of ClayNation and cut and paste all the doomsday predictions we heard over the years.

I will not do so. It is enough to say that Clay Travis was as wrong about those two men as any man could me. The breadth and depth of his wrongness cannot be measured. And it cannot be understated. That Travis of '04-'06 should be taken out back and spanked.

Enjoy the game everyone. I will be watching it alone, in either my parents new basement with the 120 inch screen, or in a Roanoke movie theater wearing 3D glasses.

Neville is my good friend and the guy who is not named Tim Tebow or Clay Travis in the above picture. When I read this email I feel like I'm on the wrong side of history. One of those Know Nothing congressman who got elected on the tide of anti-immigration sentiment and then got defeated and sent back to bumfuck Ohio on the next election cycle. Anyway, I was never anti-Tim Tebow, I was anti-the Tim Tebow love fest before he played for Florida. I don't believe you can talk trash about recruits. That's a firm line I draw.

Once I saw Tebow on the field, I was pretty convinced. In fact, once I saw Tebow throwing lasers as he warmed up for the Florida-South Carolina game in 2006 I was blown away. Up to that point I hadn't seen Tebow throw the ball very much so I thought there was still a legitimate question about his abilities at quarterback. After that I knew he had a cannon. By the way, has anybody else gone back and watched the Two-A-Days when Tim Tebow's team played? Did anyone else in the SEC know what hell Tebow was going to rain down on the rest of the SEC? Could you have even watched if you'd known?

Tebow is the greatest college football player I've ever seen. Bar none. There I said it.

As for Urban Meyer, I still think the verdict is out on him. He's clearly a good coach, but I don't think we can foist the mantle of great coach on him until he wins an SEC Title without Tim Tebow. (Before you email me, the freshman year SEC title and national championship owes a great deal to Tebow. In fact, I can think of at least two fourth down conversions that Tebow converted by himself, at UT and against South Carolina. Fail on either and Florida might not even when the SEC East that year.)

Alex Perkins writes:

Clay,

Do you think Orgeron chose UT over LSU so he could bide his time and pad his wallet/resume somewhere else before taking over at LSU in a year or two when Les Miles gets fired? Speaking of Miles, now that The Hills is over do you think he will tune in for The City and Bromance spinoffs?

The only thing surprising about Bromance is that Les Miles isn't on the show. How awesome would this have been? If during the opening scene where they gather all the guys from their beds and take them to the mansion, if you see Les Miles sleeping in his bed in the nightvision shot. He'd have the LSU hat on, wouldn't he? I know he sleeps in that thing. Probably nude in just the cap. Then when they were dragging him down the hall, Miles would inexplicably begin doing naked cartwheels while rapping Gin and Juice. Right then and there Brody Jenner would stop the show and announce he'd found his new Bro. Once more, Les Miles's errant decision making would win the day.

What was the question again? I can't stop thinking about Miles as a contestant on Bromance.

Drew Harkins writes:

C'lay,

Sure you've received the tip already, but I haven't found a mention of
South Carolina punter Spencer Lanning.

While arguably androgynous, it's also unmercifully fratty. Perhaps in
the offseason, he'll star as the coxswain in Caleb and Chas's latest
release.

Coxswain is one of many words you can use that are always funny. Others off the top of my head? Poonhound, bicurious, svelte, and cans (in reference to breasts). Spencer Lanning? You know when he shanks a punt, he just shrugs his shoulders and says, "Doesn't matter, my dad has a yacht."

Ben'ji writes:

C'lay,
Just been killing BCS season drinking heavily and reading your website. And for whatever reason it suddenly occurred to me that right now in both college football and basketball, arguably the top players in their respective sports are both white, Tim Tebow and Tyler Hansborough. However, what I find to be more interesting is that neither athlete is considered to be a lock for pro sports. Has that ever happened, the top two athletes in their sports stay in college because they aren't considered talented enough to be a top 10 pick?

Great question. Shane Battier's senior season comes to mind in college basketball. So does Charlie Ward at Florida State. I haven't trusted the NFL or the NBA since. Remember how no NFL team would draft Ward, but every NBA team wanted him? Yet if you watched the games you were never impressed with Ward in basketball and always impressed with him in football. I still think this is one of the weirdest things I've ever seen. Ward won the Heisman by the largest margin of anyone other than O.J. Simpson, won a national title, won the top award for quarterback and then the Knicks took him in the first round. So weird.

Anyway, clearly the NBA and the NFL are racist against Tebow and Hansborough. That's the only possible explanation.

Tom Felice writes:

Is A'uston Calhoun the first known 2nd generation apostrophe? His mom
features the apostrophe and a combined last name with a dash.

Great find. From the bio: "A'uston Brandon Calhoun was born June 25, 1990, in Detroit, Mich. ... currently undecided on a major ... son of La'Tanya Cash-Calhoun." I'm not even going to ask how you found this. Somethings are better not to know.

Matt Dean writes:

Clay,
Beeing a fan of good beards my self I was curious as to wether or not you would consider any of Ryan Reynolds beards BGID, be it Amittyville Horror or Smoking Aces. Keep in mind he is married to Scarlett Johansson.

Ryan Reynolds is BGID. My only reticence with him is that he always appears shirtless in his movies or television shows. Eventually this needs to stop. Or his wife has to appear topless in every movie where he appears shirtless. That's more than a fair trade.

Josh writes:

According to this article, the Utah Attorney General is looking into bringing anti-trust action against the BCS. A while back, I sent you an e-mail in which I claimed that I thought the Rose Bowl’s financial setup constituted anti-trust violations. Maybe I was right!

But looking deeper into this, I think suing the Rose Bowl instead of the entire BCS is an easier case to make, plus it seemingly avoids the problem of bringing litigation against an organization whose members include state institutions from the same state as the party bringing suit (i.e. Utah and Utah State being part of conferences that comprise the BCS, as mentioned in the article). If the Rose Bowl is sued independently, one could reason that the Rose Bowl is an affiliated party with the BCS, but not an actual BCS entity, allowing the Utah Attorney General to sidestep the problem of possibly bringing a lawsuit against state institutions that it supports while still making a public stand against the current BCS setup. And by suing the Rose Bowl, you would be removing what many believe to be the main obstacle currently preventing the move to a playoff system.

Your thoughts?

As a lawyer I'm in favor of anyone being sued for anything so long as it's not me being sued. I've been sued once. Although I was never served. While I was sitting around waiting to get served I was thinking, "Man, it really sucks to get sued." Now, mind you, I've sued quite a few people in my time. But never been on the other foot.

Diving in, there seems like there might be a standing issue. Namely, what's the injury in fact here? Why would the state of Utah have a concrete and particularized injury in a California court against the Rose Bowl? Finally, is there really any likelihood of redress?

I'm not even sure of what exactly the claim is relying on: Would we be arguing that Utah is unfairly being excluded based upon the collusion between the Big Ten and the Pac-10? Isn't the Rose Bowl obligated to take the two best teams on occasion--Texas and USC--for instance? So, in theory, if Utah was one of the two best teams in the BCS standings and the Rose Bowl hosted the championship game, they'd be selected.

I think it's an interesting theory, and God knows the Rose Bowl sucks and is deserving of being sued, I'm just not sure what legal basis we could attach to sue them individually. Even if they're the biggest dickheads of the bowls, they're still not acting independently of the other teams in making their choices. Someone else who specializes in this area of the law is welcome to write in and give us a better analysis.

Joe writes:

Dear Cla’y

As someone who has been afflicted with Non-BGID-Status-Disease, I need your opinion on the “pregnant man”. Being that he/she has a beard due to unnatural circumstances, can it be said that the pregnant “man” is BGID? If so where does that put women with beards? As a man who ashamedly can only grow a Jim Rome-esque goatee, I fear our kind are being phased out but recognize the power of the beard.

P.S. As an FSU fan I must point out that only UF girls have bingo wings. FSU women are quite attractive and have solid triceps due to multiple reps of tomahawk chops. The “chomp” is not conducive for anything really.

The pregnant man is not BGID. You can't inject yourself with testosterone and become BGID. You just can't. We have to draw the line somewhere. For instance, if you went to a Halloween party dressed as Abraham Lincoln and wore a paper beard made out of construction paper is there any doubt that you wouldn't be BGID? Same thing here.

Speaking of BGID, Tardio, after seven years of ridiculing me for having a beard, just went BGID over Christmas break. What happens immediately? He has three women fighting over him. It's uncanny. Yesterday he pulled me aside and said, "I have to admit, nothing else has changed but the beard."

Bang.

Labels: all that and a bag of mail tim tebow is the best college player ever ryan reynolds bgid bingo wings les miles bromance

Posted by Clay Travis at 10:01 AM
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Tim Tebow Is The Best College Player of Our Lives: Mailbag Arrives

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