On Rocky Top Western Kentucky Week Events: Knoxville
Monday, August 31, 2009
This Wednesday in Nashville, I'll be talking to the young alums for UT at the Old Corner Pub in Green Hills at 6:30. It should be fun. Now for Knoxville events on opening weekend.
Friday, September 4th, from 6-8 in the evening, I'll be at one of Knoxville Wal-Marts. Here's the address and phone number:
6777 Clinton Highway Knoxville, TN 37912 865-938-6760
Please, come to this signing. Last time I did a signing at the WalMart in Knoxville I signed a few books with an X for my name because I didn't want to seem uppity.
Saturday post-game, signing books at Half Barrel on Knoxville's Cumberland Avenue. Yep, a signing in a bar. That's a first.
Also, I may set up a place to sell books and meet people before kickoff. (Always feel free to bring your books if you've already bought them to all signings. Seriously, don't hesitate to do this for a moment.) Any suggestions on good locations? Email me.
Lara, Fox and I are heading into the game for the start of a new era On Rocky Top.
Next week, I'll be doing three more Knoxville signings, details on that to follow. Two on Friday and one at the Vol Village on Saturday before the UCLA game.
Thanks a ton for all the support. We doubled the sales that Dixieland Delight had out of the gate and narrowly, and I mean narrowly, missed the New York Times bestseller list this week. (I may write more on this later, but we actually outsold some of the books that were on the list. Which is pretty frustrating.) Basically the list is not a direct correlation with sales.
On the flip side, we're the number one nonfiction book in America at Davis-Kidd independent bookstores. Which is, again, a credit to y'all.
UT Sorority Girls Needed Weekend of UT-UCLA...Seriously
I've always wanted to write a subject line that went something like that. Here's the reason, we're filming a pilot of sorts for FanHouse television. I'll have a camera crew with me for the UCLA-UT weekend. The idea is to do footage for a College Gameday-style show. Only we'll be immersing ourselves in the weekend's activities as opposed to setting up a stage and being on the air for an hour and a half. (That's not a shot at Gameday, by the way, I love it. But in a 24/7 media environment, there's room for a lot more content.)
As such we're going to debut our own roundtable discussion. I'll be the moderator and I'll lead a game breakdown of the upcoming game with a panel of sorority girls. This UCLA game will feature Tennessee sorority girls. After that, in theory, this sorority roundtable would become a staple of the show. The goal is to ridicule talking heads while creating content that is actually really funny. And the idea is all mine. So if it fails, you know who to cast aspersions upon.
But there's only one catch, I don't know a single Tennessee sorority girl. (Current not alumni, although to be honest the idea of a So I'm throwing it upon y'all. If they want to be featured in a roundtable discussion that will definitely air, at minimum, on FanHouse and the Internets on the day of the UT-UCLA game, have them contact me at the contact button on this site. Or at clay.travis@gmail.com.
The goal is to film on the Friday afternoon before the UCLA game. So we've got a little over a week to get this thing set up.
I'm convinced this is going to be a golden jewel. Like when my dad made it rain on my mom a couple of years ago. So if you want to participate, email. Football knowledge is not a prerequisite. In fact, if you know more about football than me, you might get cut. (This is not that high of a standard).
To poop in private or not to poop in private, that is is the question. Whether tis nobler for Stanford's Jim Harbaugh to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous public urination or oppose them. Such is the ruminative monologue racing through the minds of Stanford supporters in the wake of this announcement: a Stanford booster built a $50,000 to $70,000 private bathroom for coach Jim Harbaugh. Why was this private bathroom necessary? According to Harbaugh, "It cuts down on drag."
Already public indignation has poured in regarding the exorbitant cost of the bathroom. Some have pointed out that twenty athletic department employees have been fired in the past year due to budget constraints at Stanford. Others have wondered whether a private bathroom for a football coach sends the wrong message. I say, bully for Harbaugh. So what if at least one, and potentially two employees, could have been kept on for the cost of the private bathroom? Is Jim Harbaugh supposed to walk all the way down the hall, twenty full steps, and use a public restroom like a common peasant? Of course not, is he a barbarian? In this column, we come not to bury Harbaugh's private bathroom, but to praise it.
Some people might hear about a bathroom that costs between $50,000 and $70,000 -- how do we not know the actual cost, is there a toilet to be named later included in the contract? -- and think it's yet another sign that major college football is devouring the educational interests of colleges. Those people are idiots. They're probably the same people who had an issue with the Pentagon's $640 toilet seat or the luxurious bathrooms that corporate CEO's built themselves as their companies crumbled around them. These bathrooms aren't evidence of a colossal lack of perspective; they're the tangible and delectable fruit of well-deserved respect.
Tuesday, we coined the term trophy coordinators, applied to college football's answers to trophy wives, hotshot coordinators hired to be paraded around on the arm of a head coach in need of a boost.
So what does a trophy coordinator think about the term? How hard is it to come into a new team with the expectation of turning around a program? We caught up with former Auburn coordinator and current Middle Tennessee State offensive coordinator Tony Franklin to find out. Franklin started the 2008 season as Auburn's new offensive coordinator, bringing with him the spread system he launched at Troy that won two consecutive Sun Belt titles. He lasted six games at Auburn and became a cautionary tale for both college football fans and hopeful coordinators.
So, what's the most important detail when it comes to installing a new offense after arriving as a heralded coordinator?
"I think it depends on whether your head coach is really committed to the system," Franklin told FanHouse. "I've had two experiences with head coaches now, Larry Blakeney [at Troy] was committed to it all the way. Tommy Tuberville (at Auburn) wasn't. On the one hand, a coach was patient, didn't meddle, and was willing to eat crow until it worked. On the other hand, the coach wasn't willing to give it time."
Asked to assess Tommy Tuberville's offensive options at Auburn, Franklin said there were two.
"You either sit tight with your offense, stay on board with what you're doing and fight like hell or you go get something that's shiny and new and hope like hell it works. But you can't do both."
Unlike Tuberville, who fired Franklin after six games, head coach Larry Blakeney at Troy took the second path and remained committed to the spread offense. Even when it didn't run smoothly at first. . "Early on with the offense, we lost to Nebraska 56-0 and then we lost to UAB 21-3. The offense was awful. After the UAB loss we went into the locker room and the defense had played well. And if the defensive staff had been bitching, moaning, griping, or complaining it could trickle down to the players. Then the players start to do it and you can start to have an issue. Coach Blakeney stood up in the locker room and he was really direct and he said, 'We're going to do this and it's going to work.' "
"Then, Elbert Mack, who's now a corner for the Tampa Bay Bucs, stood up and said he believed in what we were doing on offense. That did it. From there we won seven of our next eight. We got better each week."
It's come to this in Florida: Tim Tebow is standing in as Jesus for minor league baseball promotions. At least he would be if the "What Would Tim Tebow Do?" promotion by the minor league Fort Myers Miracle hadn't run afoul of NCAA regulations promoting the use of player likenesses to promote for-profit events. Instead, after receiving a letter from the University of Florida, the Miracle scrambled and came up with an ingenious counterstrike that left legal scholars baffled: "What Would T.T. Do?"
SEC Kickoff Party On Demonbreun Tonight; SEC Panel
For those who are in Nashville the SEC young alumni group is throwing a football kickoff party tonight on Demonbreun Street (Music Row). Included will be live music and a panel discussing the upcoming season. Included on the panel will be Chad Withrow, my co-host on the radio, Bryan Mullen, current Tennessean sports writer and former beat writer for both Vandy and Tennessee, Mitch Light, managing editor of Athlon Sports magazines, and holding up the rear, yours truly.
It's going to be a lot of fun. We'll begin the panel at 7 and the revelry will carry on throughout the night.
Memphis Davis-Kidd Tonight; Radio With Chris Vernon from 4-6
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
I'm currently at the Memphis public library taking a break from the early morning TV and radio spots. I'll be signing tonight beginning at 6 at Davis-Kidd Memphis. It's located at 387 Perkins Extended. I'll also be on the radio with Chris Vernon from 4-6. You can listen live here.
Come hang out with us this evening, it should be fun.
Also, the first book numbers for the week arrived via my editor at Harper. We've doubled the opening for Dixieland Delight and are making a serious run at the New York Times extended list this week. Fingers crossed they take note of a book selling really well outside of New York City.
The Interview from Houston Where I Challenge Tim Brando To a Duel
In case you're bored, the guys at 1560 the Game in Houston did a good job with questions. Then I took a question and turned it into an attack on Tim Brando. In the end I did what every Southern man does when challenged by another man, I challenged Brando to a ping-pong duel. Listen here.
I also took a shot at the blogger living in the basement cliche and turned it into a blogger living in a three-story brand new house that his writing built. I'm not sure if it will catch on as well. Maybe Spencer "Moneybags" Hall can follow up and we can make a rap video where we make it rain on Brando's four hair follicles.
ClayNation Radio: Special Guest JP/LF/Raycom's Dave Baker
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Yep, one of the trio of Daves will join Wagon Withrow and me on tonight's show. As a preview, it should be known, Dave and I will be laying down our muskets, burying the hatchet and extending olive branches to one another.
You'll recall that after the demise of Raycom, I called off the dogs. Now there's a new enemy courtesy of ESPN, the 11 in the morning kickoff. Seriously.
Our rapprochement arose in the past two weeks when Dave Baker sent me an email to clarify that he didn't, in fact, want to punch me in the nose.
Blitzing Memphis on Wednesday; Radio Appearances Today
Monday, August 24, 2009
Okay, for those of you who are in the Memphis area, I'll be barnstorming your fair city on Wednesday August 26th. You won't be able to escape me.
Beginning at 8:30 in the morning I'll be on Live at 9 from Peabody Place on the local CBS affiliate, WREG.
At 10, I'll be in studio for a forty-five minute interview on the local NPR affiliate.
Then, from 3-6, Chris Vernon is bringing his show to Davis-Kidd Memphis to give us the first ever bookstore originating sports radio broadcast in Memphis history.
I hope to see y'all out there. As for radio, at 3:50 central I'll be going on with 1560 in Houston. Listen live here. Among other things I'll be talking about Tim Brando who is waging a one-man crusade against all that is decent and just in the universe.
By which, of course, I mean me.
Second, I'll be on at 5:05 with my boy Chris Vernon out of Memphis. Listen live here.
I spent the weekend in Las Vegas, city of sin, sun, boobs, and boobs who gamble on sports. And I did what I do every time I go to Las Vegas, step up to the window and place a $100 wager on a team that I follow to win the championship. Every one of these bets has been a loser, and, to be honest, most of the time I lose my ticket anyway. This year I laid down money on the Tennessee Titans. Inevitably they'll fall short of the Super Bowl, just like your team will, but at least I'll have the opportunity to talk about my bet all season long.
And that's exactly what I'm going to do if my wild and wacky SEC predictions turn out to be true as well.
Let's be honest, being right is its own reward, but being a risk-taker can make you a billionaire. And, by God, I'm a risk-taker. So let's roll into the scrum, toss up the homoerotic pom-poms, and whistle Dixie right into the face of a charging tiger. It's almost football time beneath the Mason-Dixon and it's time for y'all to know what to expect.
1. Georgia officials and irate fans will demand that Mark Richt fire defensive coordinator Willie Martinez. Instead Richt will issue an ultimatum, "I coach with my guys or I take over the football program at Miami and win two national championships in the next decade."
Georgia fans?
The proverbial ball is in your court. This is the year when Richt stumbles. And this is the year when it becomes more apparent than ever before that Martinez is to Richt what Randy Sanders was to Phillip Fulmer, the first chink in the armor.
If you'd seen Joe Cox at SEC Media Days, you'd be more nervous. Somebody elbowed me, "Travis," he said, "you look like a better quarterback than Cox."
Chances are, if you're reading this, so do you.
Looks can be deceiving, but the problem for Georgia is that Cox needs to be as good as Stafford. Immediately. Last year Georgia's defense gave up 40 touchdowns. The offense behind Matthew Stafford and Knowshon Moreno helped cover up those lapses. This year there isn't that luxury.
Glory, glory to old ... we gave up another first down!
Get used to it Bulldogs. And to think, LSU managed to snag John Chavis from Tennessee while y'all sat panting on a bag of ice in the doghouse.
2. If Lane Kiffin and Tennessee don't beat UCLA in Week 2, Kiffin will be fired at the end of the 2010 season.
On the flip side, if Kiffin and Tennessee beat UCLA in the second week of the season, they win a minimum of eight games on the season. The Vols have eight home games and will be favored in seven of them.
Why is this game so significant? Because the next week is Florida. And Tennessee isn't winning in Gainesville. Starting the season 1-2 would bring unbearable heat to Kiffin. As if that weren't enough, write it down, Tennessee needs to win in 2009 because they are going to be worse in 2010.
3. Tim Tebow loses his virginity to Miley Cyrus on their wedding night.
This one is just to make Tim Brando mad. Evidently, he spent all day Thursday ripping me for being all that is wrong with sports on his radio show. I didn't hear it. Since, along with most of you, I had no idea Tim Brando had a radio show. Nevertheless, I'm going to do what gentlemen of the South have done for generations.
Challenge Brando to a duel and select my weapon.
I choose ping pong paddles at 10 feet. Your move, Brando. Just don't move so quick that your combover falls out of place.
4. The dawn of the Bobby Petrino era comes Sept. 19 when Georgia rolls into Fayetteville and Martinez's defense is disemboweled by Arkansas' Ryan Mallett.
Houston Dale Nutt, who?
Seriously, mark this game on your BlackBerry calendar. It's going to be amazing. And no one is talking about because Georgia has to play at Oklahoma State and at home against South Carolina before this game.
The Hawgtron scoreboard at Arkansas just might explode. Even faster than the fans will after eating the pulled pork nachos.
First, signing at the Green Hills Davis-Kidd at 7 tonight. Below is the FanHouse live chat. I've replicated it below, but you can also read it here. I just know some of you are lazy. It starts off choppy because the blogger software was confusing, but then it gets rolling well.
In the beginning just work with the understanding that I may answer a question before it appears or long after it appears. Basically read aggressively.
Clay Travis: Hello to everyone. Happy to be here. 1:03 Clay Travis: Feel like a general, say McClellan, trying to figure out how the battlefield is going. Long way from bookstores right now. 1:03 [Comment From Tim] Clay, are you pissed that your "On Rocky Top" editor did not correct "pile-on" when it clearly should have read "pylon"? 1:03 Clay Travis: Are we really starting with this question? 1:03 RayHolloman: Ladies, gentlemen. Small handheld animals. Welcome to the chat. Clay's book 'On Rocky Top' is on sale today, so be a good American and be sure to buy at least a dozen. 1:04 Clay Travis: Perhaps it's correct in the book, perhaps not. Let's not "pile-on". There are 120,000 words in the book. Most of them are spelled correctly. 1:05 Clay Travis: Considering I'm from Tennessee all of them are spelled correctly. 1:05 [Comment From Guest] who is clay travis 1:05 Clay Travis: Good to see my mother-in-law stopped by. 1:05 [Comment From darrell] easy quesetion but how many wins do u think the vols get in kiffs first season? 1:06 Clay Travis: 8. I think Tennessee goes 7-1 at home, 1-3 on the road. I think there's a real chance of 9 wins. I'm more concerned about next year. 1:07 [Comment From STEVEO] when are you writing a vandy book??? 1:07 [Comment From Shaw] Hmm. I am not sure why your Tennessee pedigree gives you means you're a good speller. 1:08 Clay Travis: The Vandy book will not come anytime soon. Not unless they win a national championship. Then I will write a Vandy book and I will have planned it all along. 1:09 Clay Travis: Hmm, not sure why your non-Tennessee pedigree makes you think you can write a sentence that makes sense. 1:09 [Comment From Dave] I know your book just dropped a couple hours ago, but do you have any idea what your next book-length project will be? 1:09 [Comment From Gary] What's a Vandy? Never heard of it... 1:09 [Comment From Shaw] God, it's so embarrassing that I made an error in my post about your spelling. 1:10 Clay Travis: No idea on the next book. I want to write a funny book about the Civil War. Seriously. And not the Oregon-Oregon State game.
Sort is Life is Beautiful meets bearded men who didn't bathe. 1:10 [Comment From Guest] do you think the vols can ever beat the gators again? 1:11 Clay Travis: No, Tennessee will lose the next 800 games in the series.
Of course they can. Things look darkest before the sun. Remember 1998? How unexpected was that win. 1:11 [Comment From Clint in Memphis] Clay, I just finished reading the excerpt from your book. How hard was it for you to remain professional while Fulmer is essentially crying right in front of you? 1:13 Clay Travis: Well, I think you have to have empathy when you talk to anyone. Obviously, it's tough for him to talk about. I respect that. 1:13 [Comment From Matt] Fulmer working as a talking head this year....good/bad move for him? Do you see him getting back on the sidelines as a coach anytime soon? 1:13 [Comment From Tim] Following up on Clint's question: ...and did Coach Fulmer really wipe away his tears with Krispy Kreme napkins? 1:14 [Comment From Orange Chuck] Do you think Kiffin even considered any other jobs and if so, who do you think gets the job if he turned it down? 1:14 [Comment From I am working, really.....] Well, the excerpt worked. I went straight to Amazon and ordered. Excited to see who Hamilton went with. 1:15 [Comment From Gary] bought a copy this morning at Barnes and Noble in Bhm, they had already sold a few. Glad to see it down here but wonder who smuggled it in to Alabama. So far, the read has been excellent. 1:15 Clay Travis: Yes, I will rock a goatee for the remainder of the season. Zero doubt. Call me on it. 1:15 Clay Travis: I think Fulmer working for CBS College Sports will be good for him. He's going to be excellent at it. It keeps his name out there. Good all around. 1:16 Clay Travis: I think empathy is more important than any other trait when it comes to writing about anything serious. Truly. 1:16 [Comment From Tim] C'lay, if the Vols beat Florida, will you shave your beard into a goatee? 1:16 Clay Travis: At some point I'm wringing the neck of the livechat people at coveritlive. How do my comments always end up out of order. 1:16 Clay Travis: Getting on Rocky Top in Alabama and Florida probably required covert ops skills. With a z so skillzzz 1:16 [Comment From Greg] Since I haven't read the book yet...How was it taking the hug whooping from the Gamecocks in Columbia? 1:17 Clay Travis: So it was life reconsideration time. 1:18 Clay Travis: Anytime you lose to the Gamecocks you have to reconsider your life. 1:18 Clay Travis: Well, anytime you lose to South Carolina in any sport you find yourself reconsidering your life. 1:19 [Comment From Brian P] Clay, do you subscribe to the theory: BBGID? Bigger beard gets it done? 1:19 Clay Travis: Yes, I do. 1:19 Clay Travis: Backwards again. (Shakes fist at heavens) 1:20 Clay Travis: That's true the women have very svelte arms. They're extraordinary there. I think they stay in such good shape because they have to pick up the men after they lay prostrate in the road and beg for cars to run over them, Program style, week after week. 1:20 [Comment From Orange Chuck] If Kiffin and Spurrier got in a fight, who would win and why? haha 1:21 Clay Travis: Kiffin. Spurrier is 86. 1:21 Clay Travis: That's why if Robert E. Lee had gone Lafayette McClaws on us, he would have won the war. 1:21 [Comment From Greg] Very little arm fat in Columbia, though. 1:21 Clay Travis: Also, Spurrier would think it was still 1992. 1:21 [Comment From Clint in Memphis] Since Arian Foster was Captain Philosophy for the team, did you lean on him for any larger amount of info than you would have with any other player? 1:22 Clay Travis: Arian is smart, very smart. And so is his family, I think they made the book infinitely stronger than it would have been without them. 1:23 [Comment From Chef] Does your book cover all of spring practice with Kiffin ?? I noticed the 2nd excerpt was the 1st day of spring practice this year. 1:24 Clay Travis: He also speaks pterodactyl. Which is invaluable when dealing with someone like me who speaks Stegasaurus. 1:25 Clay Travis: Not all of spring practice, but it ends with the Spring Game. The change of an era at Tennessee. 1:25 [Comment From Bob the Cow] With the current arms race going on, do you see parity hitting the SEC (like the NFL) till we get a bunch of 10-2 teams who are out of the national championship race? 1:26 Clay Travis: Now the flip side to that is LSU has shown that if things break right you can go 6-2 in the SEC and still win a national championship. Of course Auburn is the other argument. They can go 8-0 and end up getting screwed like they did in 2004. 1:26 [Comment From Chef] Does Lane tone it down a lot next offseason ?? Was he just trying to get attention right away ?? 1:27 Clay Travis: Great question from Bob. I think we're awfully close to that now. Not this year, Florida is head and shoulders above the rest of the league, but I think parity has grown and grown. 1:27 Clay Travis: I think Kiffin's argument that he was trying to just get attention wasn't true. All of his errors weren't calculated. Now I think they redounded, for the most part, to UT's benefit, but what that shows me is that Tennessee is a lot different place to coach college football than Los Angeles. The media market is much smaller, but people actually pay attention to the details. I think that surprised Kiffin. 1:27 [Comment From Chef] Would Fulmer have resigned if told to resign or be fired last fall ?? 1:27 Clay Travis: No 1:28 [Comment From Guest] if the vols loose to the old ball coach again this year who are they gonna fire ? 1:28 RayHolloman: A question we missed earlier from FanHouse chat legend Orange Chuck: [Comment From Orange Chuck] Do you think Kiffin even considered any other jobs and if so, who do you think gets the job if he turned it down? 1:29 Clay Travis: That's a great question on if Kiffin considered other jobs. I believe that Kiffin could have been head coach at Washington, Syracuse, or Clemson.
I think UT would have gone with Calhoun from Air Force as their second choice. 1:29 Clay Travis: As for losing to the ole ball coach again and who they'll fire, I think it will be Smoky. 1:29 [Comment From Mike D] That could be the thing that gets us a CF playoff. SEC schools beat up each other, no national championship, so they opt out of the BCS and host their own invitational tournament 1:30 Clay Travis: I think that's a good argument. I like the idea of SEC cession. Of course that didn't go very well in 1861 so who knows. 1:30 [Comment From Brian P] Was there anything in the book you considered keeping out or anything you did keep out? 1:30 [Comment From Orange Chuck] Wow and I thought I was only a legend in my dogs mind when I hold a treat up to him haha 1:31 Clay Travis: Yeah, there's 340 pages and probably 80 or 100 hit the cutting room floor. A lot of that was funny stuff, some of it was locker room cursing, basically when you write a book this long the editing process is grueling. 1:31 Clay Travis: But I don't believe I left anything out that fundamentally alters the story. 1:31 [Comment From Orange Chuck] If Tennessee only wins 3-4 games, will they hang Lane Kiffin on the spot or just curse his name until next season? 1:32 [Comment From Chef] 10-2 or 11-1 like the Big 12 South. 3 team ties. 1:32 Clay Travis: They will hang him on the spot. And probably burn him too. Not in effigy. 1:32 [Comment From uga] what's layla kiffin up to these days? 1:32 Clay Travis: Perhaps they will bury him beneath the recently relocated rock on campus 1:32 Clay Travis: Layla's still got us all on our knees. 1:32 [Comment From Chef] Lane wanted press for recruiting season and next year's recruits. 1:33 Clay Travis: That's a convenient argument. I don't doubt he wanted some, I don't think he wanted all that he got. 1:33 [Comment From Chef] Yes L.A. is way different in CFB than Knoxville. They actually pay attention on the front page and not get buried on page 5 or 6. 1:33 [Comment From Chef] Who do think wins the SEC West this year ?? 3 good teams. I think LSU does it over Bama, Ole Miss and a stronger Arkansas. 1:34 Clay Travis: Nobody pays attention to the front page anymore anywhere. And even if they did, that's great for LA, maybe they can solve the California budget crisis. But we're talking about footbaw 1:34 Clay Travis: The w was intentional 1:35 Clay Travis: I think Bama, Ole Miss, LSU, Arkansas, Auburn, State is the final order of finish 1:35 [Comment From Tim] Has your fandom changed as a result of writing the book? 1:36 Clay Travis: Great question, I don't think so. It's a more fully-realized fandom, in that I know the details surrounding a team better than I did before. But will I want Tennessee to win any less?
No.
Now I may feel more sympathetic for the players than I have in the past. I know how hard they work and how much losing can eat them up. 1:36 Clay Travis: What I talk about a lot in the book is the difference between doing and feeling. 1:37 Clay Travis: Things we do, we don't get impacted by as much, our jobs, for example. But things we feel, like football, strikes us much closer to the gut. Football is just something the players do. Football is something the fan feels. That's a huge difference. 1:37 [Comment From Brent H] With your new connection to the football program, will you watch the games differently this year, in a new persepctive? (a theme you touch on a lot in the first few chapters) 1:38 Clay Travis: Similar to the last question, yes and no. I have an awful lot more respect now for the guys on the periphery, the student managers, the trainers, the equipment guys, the driver of the big rig, the police officers, guys you never notice otherwise. 1:38 Clay Travis: Those guys didn't change. And I liked them all. 1:38 [Comment From Brian P] After DD and this book, you've probably been to a big game in every stadium, how would you rank the toughest places to play in the SEC? 1:39 Clay Travis: 1. LSU (at night) 2. Florida (at night) 3. Tennessee (at night)
Seeing a theme? Night games are tough. But I think those are the three toughest venues in the SEC. Now, to be fair, players have a lot more to do with the outcome than the venues, but I think those three are the most intimidating. 1:39 [Comment From Orange Chuck] If Greg Paulus chose Tennessee, do you think he would have a shot at starting QB? 1:39 Clay Travis: Yes 1:39 Clay Travis: So would UGA 1:39 [Comment From tom] which book have you liked working on the most? 1:40 Clay Travis: Good question. Dixieland was more of a fun romp through the SEC. This book was darker, and I think more serious. So they were different. I loved writing them both, but On Rocky Top was tougher. 1:40 [Comment From Mike McCown] Can Ole Miss finally get over the hump in the West? 1:41 Clay Travis: Yes, thanks to the schedule and the quarterback play. But I think they lose out to Alabama. It's a big leap for them to make. And I'm interested in whether the talent will dry up once O's studs start to fail out or matriculate. 1:41 [Comment From Steve] As a Georgia fan, can I still enjoy this book or will I be cussing UT throughout? 1:42 Clay Travis: Good question. I think you'll enjoy it. We lose an awful lot.
More seriously, I wanted to write a book that transcended the team I was writing about. In other words, if you're a fan of football, you'd enjoy the book. I hope I've succeeded, but you'll have to let me know. 1:43 [Comment From JM] Clay what time are you going to be at Otter's tonight? 1:43 Clay Travis: That was the goal. And it's a tough goal. So is treading the line between access and fandom. When does the fan take over and tell you what running through the T feels like and when does the writer step back and tell you what a pre-game speech actually says. That was a real challenge. 1:44 Clay Travis: We're having a launch party in East Nashville tonight from 7-9. I'll be there at 6. Books and beer. A good combo. Also the radio show. Should be fun. 1:44 Clay Travis: The only book party I've ever seen (I've never been to one) was Carrie Bradshaw's on SEX and the City. Mine will not be like that. 1:44 Clay Travis: Sex was unintentinally capitalized there but I guess you can see what's on my mind. 1:45 [Comment From JM] worst and best, SEC Game day experiences? 1:45 Clay Travis: Best LSU Worst Vandy Next to worst Miss. State.
But they're all good. And Vandy's new stadium is really looking nice. It's actually a fun place to watch a game because you can actually see the field well from everywhere. 1:45 [Comment From Mike] Who's a better reporter? Kige Ramsey or Erin Andrews? 1:46 Clay Travis: Well, Erin looks better with her shirt off.
But Kige is more entertaining. So I'll vote Kige. 1:46 [Comment From Beth W.] Will you be doing any book signings out west...say...LA area? 1:46 Clay Travis: No, my book contract forbids me from traveling west of the Mississippi. So, no. But I'm headed out to Pac-10 country next year for a couple of games. I can't wait. 1:46 [Comment From Orange Chuck] Do you think books like this and blogs help get a fan base more encouraged about programs or do you think programs like Tennessee really don't need any help? 1:47 Clay Travis: I'm hitting Memphis, Chattanooga, Nashville Knoxville, Birmingham, Oxford (not the one in England), Orlando, and Atlanta for events. So far anyway. 1:47 [Comment From Brian P] Which stadium had the best visitor locker rooms? 1:48 Clay Travis: The Rose Bowl is extraordinary. No contest. Flat screen televisions everywhere. Supposedly they look like that on both sides because the NFL requires it. Honestly, some of the SEC visitor locker rooms look like high school football locker rooms. 1:48 [Comment From Guest] After speaking with Phil, do you think he will continue to hold a grudge till next AD and coach, ie Johnny or do you think in a few years after his next coaching gig he will forgive and forget? 1:49 Clay Travis: Fulmer will not be like Majors and stay away for 16 years. He just won't. He's upset and hurt, but he's still a Tennessee guy at heart. And I think he'll eventually reconnect with the school. But it will take time. 1:49 [Comment From Rod] Do you think Kiffin has any idea what he's in for during his first season in the SEC? Not talking about the reaction from fans in particular to him, but rather the week-in, week-out grind of coaching in the SEC? Bobby Petrino said last year he was not prepared for that aspect of coaching in the SEC. 1:50 Clay Travis: That surprises me about Petrino, because the SEC is most like the NFL. Every week in the NFL is a grind. So I don't think Kiffin will be surprised, no. I think it's more likely that someone would be surprised coming from a smaller school or conference. For instance, I think UT OC Dave Clawson was surprised. 1:50 [Comment From Dan H.] Has Peyton Manning weighed in on any of the controversy surrounding Coach Fulmer's dismissal or Kiffin's gaffs at the start of his "tenure?" 1:51 Clay Travis: I think Manning, if I'm not mistaken, said that Fulmer would always be his coach. But like Fulmer he's a Tennessee guy too. So I think he'll stay above the fray and end up supporting whoever is there. 1:52 [Comment From brettpharve] clay -- if phil fulmer and lane kiffin were all alone in a room, what do you think phil would say ? 1:53 Clay Travis: Well, Fulmer has been pretty clear that he doesn't know Kiffin personally. So I don't think he blames Kiffin for anything, Kiffin is just a guy who got a job. Somebody else would have if Kiffin hadn't.
But certainly there's a generational divide there. I think Fulmer would encourage him to be quieter in public, more careful with what he says. Kiffin has already gotten more headlines in ten months for off-field statements than Fulmer got in 16 years.
Good question. 1:53 [Comment From Steve] Do you know what really happened between Kiffen and Al Davis? 1:54 Clay Travis: I don't know if Al Davis knows what really happened between he and Lane Kiffin. So I don't, no. 1:54 [Comment From Kathy] Fulmer will always be the coach at Tennessee...I am ashamed of my university 1:55 Clay Travis: I think there's some of that, the UT fan base was divided, there's no doubt. Like I said, Fulmer, to me, represents the final man standing from the time when the SEC was still a regional game, played by and coached by Southerners.
Last man born in the state he coached, last man to graduate from his school. That used to be common. 1:55 [Comment From Brian P] Hypothetical: If you were covering the Vols with this coaching staff, in the locker room pregame, Coach O is giving a speech and rips off his shirt, all the players follow, do you rip your shirt off as well? 1:55 Clay Travis: Great question.
I think so, yeah, I take the shirt off. 1:55 [Comment From Kathy] If UT had any sense they would make Fulmer AD 1:55 [Comment From Kirk] Based on what you saw last year on and off the field, what is your opinion on who has the better chance of leading TN under Kiffin, Crompton or Stephens 1:57 Clay Travis: I'm a Cromptonite. I think Crompton is better than Stephens. And I also think that both guys got way too much blame for the offense last year. They weren't very good but everyone was awful.
And that was a proven offense! 9 of 11 starters returning. They went from averaging 35 points a game to 17.
It's amazing how they regressed.
Several players told me if Cutcliffe doesn't leave for Duke and they run the same offense as they ran in 2007, UT wins 9 or 10 games minimum in 2008. 1:57 [Comment From Andy] How long do you think Monte will coach? 1:57 Clay Travis: Three or four more years. I think he wants to leave his son on firm coaching ground. I think four years in Knoxville with him as DC would do it. 1:58 [Comment From Beth W.] Al Davis doesn't know what day it is! lol 1:58 [Comment From Andy] When looking at this coaching staff, one name stands out: Frank Wilson. Why is this guy employed? 1:58 Clay Travis: I'm not an expert on this year's coaching staff. I will say that in Bruce Feldman's great book, Meat Market, Frank Wilson came across as a very talented recruiter who connected well with kids O wanted. So that seems like a pretty good idea why. 1:59 [Comment From Eric] DId you ever stop being "star-struck" around Fulmer and all the athletes? After a while, did they all just seem like normal guys, or were you always a little in awe of hanging around with these people you revered? 2:00 Clay Travis: Good question.
I'm not really a "star" guy. Maybe that first half before the Rose Bowl was kind of overwhelming as a fan. And I wrote about that.
But after that point, all of these guys are just people. I'm trying to think of someone I'd truly be star struck around now. 2:00 Clay Travis: And it would probably have to be a hot chick, Sienna Miller, Megan Fox, even then, I'm not sure.
But that is a great question.
I don't think you can write a book if you're star-struck. I'll put it that way. 2:01 Clay Travis: I was more in awe of the events, running through the T, the Vol Walk, those things that transend people, than I was the people. 2:01 [Comment From Nate] How different would the book have been had Fulmer not been fired? 2:02 Clay Travis: Good question, much different. His firing made the book, I think, a window into the SEC moving from a regional to a national game. It was a subtext I didn't expect, but as i researched things it became clearer and clearer to me that this wasn't just a one=year thing, this was a real turning point in SEC football. 2:02 [Comment From Kirk] Were you a virgin before marriage? 2:03 Clay Travis: I answered this the other day.
No.
And I said then, what I'll write now, believe it or not women were willing to sleep with me. 2:03 [Comment From Frank The Tank] UT is known as a traditional power. Given the removal of the V-O-L-S sign on the new jumbotron, the moving of the Rock, recent jersey changes (the wide-panel design in 2005 still haunts me), do you believe that UT is slowly moving away from their "traditions"? 2:04 Clay Travis: I don't know about that, great question.
I think, and this is true everywhere, that the business side of affairs continues to encroach on college athletics everywhere. To the extent that business and tradition collide, I think sometimes business wins.
But that's everywhere. Look at the imbroglio over Michigan adding luxury boxes. 2:04 [Comment From Eric] Were you in awe of Layla? 2:04 Clay Travis: Yes. But she didn't arrive on the scene until the book was almost finished. 2:04 [Comment From Kathy] Fulmer taught more than football, he taught boys to be men. When did we loose sight of that being important 2:05 Clay Travis: I think most fans would be happy if their players were boys so long as they beat their rivals. 2:05 Clay Travis: Same thing with arrests and whatnot, I think fans talk a big game, but I think our actions reflect that all most of us care about is wins and losses. 2:05 [Comment From Beth W.] I wonder why Kiffin didn't pick up more of Pete Carroll's style of coaching? I've had a beer with Peyton when he was at UT at the TapRoom!. He's a good guy. 2:06 Clay Travis: Generational. The Carroll's babysat Lane when he was a kid. Just because you have a different public persona doesn't mean you can't be pretty similar to someone else in your work life. 2:06 [Comment From Brian P] Do the Titans do anywhere as good this year as they did last year? 2:07 Clay Travis: Yeah, they're going to be very good. Scary on offense. Seriously, scary. 2:07 [Comment From Frank The Tank] Are there are current or recently-departed players that you think will some day make good coaches? I know Tee Martin in doing his thing at New Mexico. 2:08 [Comment From Orange Chuck] If Tennessee won every game in the SEC except one every year and that one was South Carolina, how long before people curse his name? 2:08 Clay Travis: I know Manning is the fantasy. We'll see. Most of the guys are still young. It's hard to project.
Coaching is a very hard life. It's a rare player bird that wants to dive in. 2:09 Clay Travis: I like Josh McNeil, the center. Smart guy, witty. 2:09 [Comment From Eric] If you could pick one player from last year to just hang out with, who would it be? And why? 2:09 [Comment From Kirk] Did UT give you free range to write what you wanted or did Bud Ford or the Univ have to sign off along the way? 2:09 Clay Travis: Free range on the book. 2:10 Clay Travis: Spurrier's?
They already curse his name. Come on, we're in Tennessee.
Or Kiffin?
People could deal with losing to Carolina because they probably don't win the East. It's losing to your rival and not advancing to Atlanta that's the issue. 2:10 Clay Travis: Okay, guys, I've gotta bounce, I really appreciate the questions. Hope you've enjoyed it.
It's a good story, thanks to all the people who helped me out along the way. The book is immeasurably stronger for your help. 2:12 RayHolloman: Thanks to everyone for stopping in. Clay's book is on sale now and can be purchased at Amazon here. It's a great read, already praised as one of the best sports books of the generation. And we're told it might be a household remedy for shingles.
Top Sports Book in America (except for that damn running book)
It's 4:30 in the afternoon here and I'm about to hop off the computer and telephone to take a break before tonight's show. But before I did that, I just wanted to say thanks to all of you. Right now, we're the number 5 and 7 (Kindle version) of all sports books on Amazon. Which isn't really fair since there are actually only two books above us, one is a novel and the other one is about running. Here's the roster for you to check out. That's a tremendous accomplishment and I owe an awful lot of thanks to you guys.
So thanks a ton. Truly.
I'm about to head over to Otter's and gear up for the two-hour radio show, book signing, and book launch party over there tonight. So I can't wait to see y'all.
I don't know if we're going to conquer that damn running book on the sports book list, but I'm confident I'd rather hang out with y'all than the people buying that book.
On Rocky Top excerpt: Fulmer on Kiffin, How Mike Hamilton Hired Lane Kiffin
Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt of FanHouse writer Clay Travis' "On Rocky Top," available today in bookstores and at Amazon.com. Join him for a live chat at 1PM ET.
On the afternoon of Sunday, November 2, 2008 Mike Hamilton phones Volunteer Coach Phillip Fulmer on his cell. Hamilton asks Fulmer to meet him in his office at Stokely Athletic Center. The two never meet on Sundays. Fulmer arrives and they talk for an hour sitting across from one another at Hamilton's brown conference table. On the floor of the office sit pictures waiting to be hung commemorating great wins, including the 1998 national championship game, from Volunteer football seasons past. During their conversation, Hamilton lets Fulmer know that he's being fired.
Although, Fulmer is not surprised by Hamilton's decision, he does not take it sitting down. Later, Fulmer will describe how he argued to keep his job. "I said, 'Mike, this is when we hunker down and go to war and fight, you know, if you've lost ten percent of the people coming to the games, they'll come back if you win.' And I felt like I deserved, with the length of time I'd been there and all that I'd accomplished, that I needed a year to get it fixed and then make a decision if it didn't work." Live Chat: On Rocky Top Author Clay Travis, 1 PM ET
On his drive home after meeting Mike Hamilton, Fulmer reflects upon the change in athletic directors at Tennessee, from his old coach Doug Dickey, who he trusted intimately, to the more business-minded Mike Hamilton, "I liked Coach Dickey being there because I knew what was expected and so on, what he expected of me," Fulmer will say later. "He didn't mind one bit coming over there and having a conversation about football or the team or anything. I don't know that I ever didn't trust Mike ... necessarily. He was just different. Much more corporate, much more. Having not played ever, it would be very difficult for him to understand our world, having been from the development world where you stroke the boosters rather than Coach Dickey being a coach. He (Coach Dickey) understood those problems and how to make a stand and how to be tough, if you needed to be tough."
The news officially breaks on Monday morning. Just short of sixteen years to the day after he received the head-coaching job, Phillip Fulmer's career at Tennessee is over.
Now it is time for Tennessee Volunteer athletic director Mike Hamilton to find his replacement.
The list begins with 30 names. Hamilton has long kept a list of potential replacement football coaches -- an actual physical list of printed names that is fluid and constantly evolving. He edits and revises this list frequently -- the coaching golden boy can have a bad season, a coach can sign a huge contract that takes him off the table, or a coach can go down for rules violations. In a world as cutthroat as college football, a coaching list should never be stale.
Mike Hamilton, Tennessee athletic directorHamilton keeps his list at home, away from prying eyes. He's never known when the list would come in handy but in the wake of Phil Fulmer's firing suddenly the list is his holy grail. And gold, pure gold, for the trove of Tennessee fans who are watching every move, every hint of a move, and every rumored move to divine the name of the next head coach. Hamilton is aware of this obsession and he's going to do his best to avoid reading intimate details about his search in the newspaper.
This is not Hamilton's first big hiring decision -- in 2005 he hired Bruce Pearl, then a basketball coach at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Hamilton conducted his basketball interviews from a Chicago hotel room. He didn't leave and didn't permit anyone to contact him, to such an extent that the front desk didn't allow a pizza that he'd ordered to be delivered. Bruce Pearl's team, Wisconsin-Milwaukee, was in Chicago at the time playing the University of Illinois in the NCAA tournament. Hamilton considered going to watch the game but was afraid of drawing public attention to his interest in Pearl. He emerged from that search with a very successful hire and without very many leaks.
Last night I was up until 3 in the morning, too nervous to sleep. Then Fox got me up at 6. Even still, I'm ready to roll. How's the day shaping up? First, FanHouse is going to release a 3,000 word excerpt from the book shortly. I'll link that when it goes up. It will break quite a bit of news. Hopefully you'll enjoy it.
At noon central (1 eastern), I'll be livechatting on FanHouse for an hour about the book. So swing by, that should be fun.
At 1:10 central (2:10 eastern) I'll be on with Josh Ward in Knoxville. Then I'm taking a nap to prepare for the grand finale.
Starting at 6 I'll be at Otter's in East Nashville. We'll have books, beer and talk football. It should be awesome.
From 7-9 my co-host Chad Withrow and I will bring you ClayNation Radio. We'll be taking questions from the crowd, talking last season and the upcoming season, basically I can't wait.
Then, not to be outdone, tomorrow we're going the official Nashville signing at Davis-Kidd Green Hills.
Finally, congrats to the first reader to send me in a picture, bright and early this morning, of him buying a copy in Opelika. We're going to have a photo contest of people and books, although, I'm going to be honest, including the boat shoes in the photo was genius.
I'm going to be linking videos all day. This one is the official HarperCollins release that features me running through the T and gives a little bit of information about the season.
We're about four hours out from official release. And I'm going to be up all night trying to make sure I get the card right.
Due to the recession and a subsequent budget crunch, New Mexico State's football team is requesting that fans donate snacks to the team. That's not a joke, not a point of satire meant to illustrate the difference between playing at a Big Six conference and being a member of the WAC. Nope, that's the unvarnished truth.
According to the AP, "New Mexico State's budget-conscious football staff distributed an e-mail this week asking fans to donate after-practice or late-night snacks for hungry players." Why are they doing this? To help close a $1.5 million budget gap. That's an awful lot of snacks.
So far players have received peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, watermelons, and, wait for it, trail mix from helpful fans. Hopefully, the donated snack fuel will help players finish games with more staying power. Last year's team was 3-9 overall, and a woeful 1-7 in the WAC. And that was back when the football team could afford snacks! Is this the sign of the college football apocalypse? I think so. But it doesn't have to be a lasting sign. We at FanHouse can also help the football team save money. Here's how.
As a preliminary point, more ridicule. I understand that tough times call for tough measures, but how much money can snacks really cost the football team? $30,000 a year, maybe? Maybe. So they only have to eliminate 50 other identical spending issues and the budget issue is fixed. This is the rough equivalent of a family deciding they're going to make the mortgage payment from now on by cutting out toilet paper.
And so, they've made the program look ridiculous.
You don't think a coach recruiting against New Mexico State might mention this, do you?
Coach: "Aw sure, you can head out to New Mexico State. But, lemme tell you something, they can't even afford to feed their players. They got fans giving them snacks." I can see a mother shaking her head right now, "Child, please," she'll say, "You're not going to be an Aggie. They can't even feed you."
Busy Day: Follow Along If You're Bored, Radio and Live Chat
I'll be live for two hours today, first in a one-hour chat at 12 central with Matt Jones over at Kentucky Sports Radio. Assuming nothing new comes out about Karen Sypher, you should be able to swing by and even toss a couple of questions my way if you so desire.
In other news, I'm nervous as a whore in church. We're moving into single digit hours until On Rocky Top releases. Tomorrow I'll be running the power dive against the national and local media. We're excerpting a few thousand words with breaking news on FanHouse (and I'll also be doing a livechat there). I'll be on the radio all over the Southland during the day, and then in the evening we've got ClayNation Radio and the book launch party.
You'll also notice that I've now got my Twitter feed updating on the site. After all my criticism of Twitter, I've actually come around on the site. Primarily because it's going to be great for the fall when I'm on the road for three months.
In the meantime, the eve of your book release is about as nervous as you can get. My stomach is all butterflies, I can't eat. Tonight, I won't be able to sleep.
Every time news breaks, like the Rick Pitino imbroglio did Tuesday night, I always feel a little twinge of sympathy for the lawyer who ends up hurling a semantic argument into the whirlwind of 24-hour news coverage. These days news coverage has room for two opinions: you're right or you're wrong. The shades-of-gray approach doesn't sell.
But that doesn't mean lawyers don't try to split hairs. Think Bill Clinton asking what the meaning of is, is. Inevitably, these hair-splitting defenses blow up. Which brings me to this, according to his lawyer, Rick Pitino didn't pay for Karen Sypher's abortion. Heavens no. What he did was pay for an uninsured woman to get health coverage .... which she then, oh by the way, used to have an abortion. That's a great story except for one flaw, pregnancy is a preexisting condition. So adding health insurance doesn't cover an already existing pregnancy.
Oops.
Bad excuse. But not as bad as the 10 excuses for the $3,000 the legal team considered and rejected. Read on for those.
At moments of crisis like these, I always picture the frenzied public relations team -- which represents a variety of conflicting interests, the university, the coach, the lawyer -- all huddling together to come up with a response that minimizes the damage for everyone. You've got to make sure you repent while protecting yourself from further legal liability, apologize while being humble, and whatever you do, don't take a question.
Don't take questions is the first advice any lawyer gives in these circumstances. I attended a legal seminar about how to deal with media interest for famous clients and the only quote I remember from the entire day was one white-haired lawyer slamming his hand down on the table. "Whatever you do, don't let the damn client take questions. Read the statement and get out."
Not surprisingly, Pitino read his statement and got out without taking questions. Which means we still have an awful lot of things left to be unpacked here. Among them, how can you be certain you're pregnant in two weeks? How can you be so careful in your personal life that you have a designated driver, yet so reckless that you have sex in a restaurant while your designated driver is still there? How many other college coaches are reading these stories right now and thinking, crap, this happened six years ago, I thought I was in the clear. Speaking of which, why not keep paying the extortion fee? The amount of money that Karen Sypher was demanding is miniscule given what Pitino made. Yeah, the truth can set you free, but it can also get you fired. So I guess the truth, more accurately, can get you free time.
Can you imagine the e-mails Kentucky politicians are getting? One public school, Kentucky, gets to demand that another public school, Louisville, fire its coach for an off-court act. So you get to be morally judgmental and it helps your college program? That's a daily double in the South, the only thing better is when the rival church's preacher gets sent up the river for tax evasion.
After all the internal public relations debate, Pitino's lawyer attempted to argue that the $3,000 he gave Sypher was for health insurance and not an abortion. It was a bad argument that made Pitino look worse. Fortunately for Pitino it wasn't as bad as the 10 rejected suggestions for how to explain away the $3,000.
Here goes:
1. It was a down payment for a hit on Christian Laettner. Even though they starred in that ridiculous commercial this spring, I don't believe that Pitino wouldn't like to give Laettner a nice elbow to the kidney at some point. The charge of the Aminu Timberlake brigade.
This has the added benefit of straining Kentucky political alliances. On the one hand Kentucky fans want Pitino gone, on the other hand, at least the money was going to take out the top nemesis in the state of Kentucky.
2. Abort? I thought she said a port. Portuguese wine, you know, I love it. Remember when there was a controversy over whether Hillary Clinton called a Jewish campaign worker, "a Jew bastard" or merely yelled, "you bastard." This could be the equivalent. Pitino claims Sypher merely asked for a bottle of wine that she otherwise couldn't afford, and he helped her out.
"She's a oenophile, I'm a oenophile," he'd say, shrugging his shoulders.
3. Strength coach payments for personal training sessions. Quick question, how many people out there would marry someone that they knew had a sexual relationship with their boss? What's more, how many people would marry a divorcee with four kids, who slept with their boss at a restaurant on the night she met him?
Would anyone do this? Isn't this when you pull your friend aside and say, "I know, I know, she's pretty hot and you're not getting any younger, but, man, she slept with Ricky P. at the restaurant while she was married. And he wasn't the first one. Won't be the last either."
Every male friend of this strength coach should get punched between the legs by the Louisville president.
Last week, we brought you video of the Tennessee football team posing shirtless alongside an orange Lamborghini. After tens of thousands of you stormed the YouTube ramparts, that video blew up and was eventually removed due to a copyright issue. Since that time the Georgia Tech football tam has posed alongside Bumblebee and Ironhide from the Transformers. Seriously. They couldn't even get Megan Fox to lounge on top of the car?
All of this serves as clear evidence, in case we needed any, that college football is perpetually stuck in the timeless year of 1988. As Andy Staples at Sports Illustrated pointed out to me, the cars resemble nothing if not the Trapper Keeper cars that you and I carried to elementary school. Back when we were all going to have our own Lamborghini as soon as we turned 18. How's that working out for you? Not you, Mark Zuckerberg, you Facebook-founding bastard, I mean the rest of us. Yeah, not so well.
I've made fun of these shirtless photos, but I decided it was time to play journalist and tell both sides of the story. How? By fabricating a defense of the photos from a Georgia Tech player. So enjoy.
As a prelude though Georgia Tech and Tennessee are being singled out for posing with fabulous sports cars, the shirtless team photo is a staple of athletic programs across the country. Why? I don't know. IIt's truly unbelievable. The only thing more unbelievable than the shirtless team photos is the shirtless team photos lounging on sports cars. What comes next year? I think porn stars need to be mixed in. So clearly I don't get this trend that has swept through college football. That's why having a Georgia Tech player defend the photo shoots was so important.
It's a monologue, so enjoy:
"Hey, you, yeah you, Clay Travis, the guy with the flabby chest, whom Bumblebee from 'Transformers 2' would look at and say, 'Hey, you with the flabby chest, you just don't get it.' Posing without our shirts is about team unity. So what if we all know what each other look like with our shirts off? We need to show everyone else in the country what the team looks like with our shirts off. How else can we win football games?
See, sometimes you gotta dig down real deep to win. In the fourth quarter, right after we hold up four fingers to show we're going to totally dominate the quarter, you might find yourself laying on the turf, spent, not really wanting to get back up for another play. But you know what, you know what makes us get up then? We think about our brothers, the guys we leaned on the windshield of a sports car alongside, and we get up. We pose, therefore, we are.
You don't know anything about brotherhood. You've probably never even gotten to ride in a car that's so awesome it makes you forget about your 1.2 GPA for 10 minutes. Really colorful sports cars are badass, like a bowl full of Jolly Ranchers that don't cost anything. Anything! Only with wheels.
And then we get to buy the pictures of ourselves and put them up on the walls of our dorm room, so people who already know what we look like with our shirts off can walk in and say, 'Damn, I look good with my shirt off.' And you know what else we do, we give those pictures to the chicks, man. They love the pictures. I've had a girlfriend for three years. You know what I got her.
Year one? Shirtless team photo.
Year two? Shirtless team photo.
Year three? Shirtless team photo. Signed.
Plus, do you know how many ugly girls go to this school? We gotta work outside the campus to get the really good looking girls. Atlanta's got a lot of them, but it's competitive. You gotta represent. Now I roll straight into bars with the team photo. Throw that mug down on the table at a bar, unfurl it like a magic carpet, say, "You wanna ride with a man that rolls with Bumblebee?"
Two words:
Chicks.
Dig.
It.
Not to mention, have you ever stood in front of a mirror, slowly exhaled, covered your body in baby oil, hopped in a tanning bed, repped out 468 push-ups and then flexed so you could see how ripped you look in the mirror? Probably not.
And sure, some people, such as Georgia players, see the pictures and they think, "What a bunch of homos."
But you know what we say to that? We flip it on them with our scientist brains. We Pythagorean theorem that bitch. We say, "Yeah, homo sapiens!"
Then we all dance around and say, "Hypotenuse, what, what!"
I've linked before to the Real Clear Sports interviews. They're generally excellent, well thought out questions, and good, perceptive answers. Now I'm included in their roster of interviewees. Hopefully I'm as good as the others have been.
Here's an excerpt:
RCS: You mentioned the fan perspective, so we have to say: It's no secret that you are a lifetime supporter of Tennessee football. In writing On Rocky Top, you were often forced to walk a fine line between reporter and fan. Sometimes, like when you got to run through the "T," those roles overlapped. Where do you stand now, some eight months after going back to being a full-time fan? Clay Travis: What really interested me about this book wasn't writing a completely inside look at a team. That's been done quite a few times. What I wanted to capture was this question: what would it be like as a fan to have an all-access path to your favorite team?
I don't think it's been done before. So I felt an obligation not just to tell what happens, but to capture what it feels like for other fans. Now that doesn't mean that I'm not reporting on the entirety of the season, but I'm not doing it as a disinterested observer, there's a lot of passion involved.
The reality is full access attacks fandom. Because it makes you realize how absurd it is to care so much about the guys wearing "your" uniform colors. But that's only if you logically analyze fandom, which is illogical to begin with. So I wrestle with that throughout the book, will being so close kill the fan inside me? But I think that's true across the board logic is the enemy of sports in general.
I wanted to do a show, still do, where I follow an intramural basketball league for a season with the same intensity that ESPN covers the NBA. I want guys in suits sitting on the sideline debating who is taking shots, who is starting, whether players really like each other. I want to interview players at half time, coaches. I want to do the whole thing. All deadpan. I think it would be outstanding. Because when you get right down to it, there's a great heaping of sports absurdity that never gets mocked. At least not enough.
I'd like to be the telecast's version of Stephen A. Smith. Only I'd be the angry white guy. I think ESPN has become so all encompassing and takes itself so seriously that a show that did this would be extraordinary.
Clay Travis, rushes up to 5'5 195 pound white guy in rec specs, "Johnny, how could you make that pass? What were you thinking?"
And you know what Johnny would do; he would answer just like athletes do. Which would prove the point, we're all playing roles now based on what we've seen on television before. But I still think it would be hysterical for those of us who have been down the rabbit hole.
Hell, I'm 30, the same age as ESPN, I've never lived in a world where ESPN didn't exist.
RCS: While we're talking about younger kids, even though your book focuses on Tennessee football, it also occasionally examines the larger world of college football as a whole. A particular passage that struck a chord with us was when you brought your son, Fox, to a Volunteer game for the first time. "We come to watch college football games and root for out teams not because we need to see them win but because it's part of who we are. In the South, college football is in our blood."
What is it about SEC football, and football in the South, that makes it different than anything else?
Clay Travis: Well, excluding major league baseball most sports leagues in this country aren't very old. We aren't a very old country for one thing. At the end of every NFL season comes the Super Bowl. But the first Super Bowl didn't even happen until 1967. My dad, my own dad, was already 23 when that happened! Yet the way the Super Bowl gets covered nowadays, it's like the event has been with us since the Pilgrims. The reality is, it's still really new.
SEC football began in 1933. And Southerners have considered it our own since before that time. And college football was very popular even before that, way back to the turn of the century. So I think SEC football is unique because it truly links generations down here.
Fox, my son, is named after my grandfather who played for General Neyland in 1933. I was raised a UT fan; UT football is literally in my blood. It's in Fox's. Other regions of the country don't have that relationship with football. The NFL came late to the South. It's a birthright down here in a way that I don't think any other sport in the country but major league baseball can even compare. It's also regional in a way that major league baseball isn't, the teams really aren't that far apart geographically, it's like baseball before World War II.
Then take a step back and imagine that baseball's 162 games were distilled into 12 Saturdays. No playoffs. 12 games. Can you imagine how crazy that would be? You can if you come South for a game.
Here's the column. I've gotten several emails from you guys asking what I thought of it, so now you know.
The SEC should employ an intelligent 16-year-old girl and give her this title: New Media Tsarina. Anything they contemplate doing, should have to cross her pink desk first, because she clearly understands the new media landscape better than the old men at the SEC. How else to explain the consternation, hand-wringing and anger that has surfaced since the SEC's new media policy was released last week? After only a few days, the SEC has announced they will "tweak" the new policy. That tweaking is the result of a complaints from many members of the media.
From a legal, media and fan perspective, the policy is short-sighted, inefficient, out of touch with new media, and, for the most part unlikely to be very effective. If you want to follow along, here's the policy.
So what does the new policy actually do?
At its most basic level, it seeks to do is better control content, that is SEC sports games and the events surrounding them, press conferences and the like. The new media policy seeks to do so by limiting all sports highlights to a 72-hour window after the game is over (with convenient exemptions built in for broadcast partners like ESPN and CBS), restricting the airing of pre- and post-game press conferences, and limiting fans and media from uploading content onto sites such as YouTube. So, instead of going to YouTube and being able to find footage of your favorite player or game, you'll be rotated through the respective school sites, or a central warehouse where, for a fee, you can watch these highlights.
If you think you shouldn't care, that this is only a media squabble between rights holders over who gets the bigger sack of money, you're wrong. Under the new policy fans are theoretically liable for tweeting, updating their Facebook pages, or posting photographs from inside a stadium.
Does this make sense?
Not really. Not at all.
Why not?
Because the policy ignores the elephant in the room, that televised games in their entirety provide almost all of the actual value to any sporting product. Here are the five things it's important to take away from the SEC's misguided new policy.
I was in the hospital when Charles Woodson beat out Peyton Manning to win the 1997 Heisman Trophy. It was my freshman year of college, and I was still fighting the battles of a pre-adolescent; my tonsils had just been removed. I was in surgery when the ceremony date arrived and I didn't find out the result until the next morning. My dad called the hospital from Nashville, and I was still a bit woozy from the surgery.
"Well," he said, "Charles Woodson won it."
I didn't believe him, but my throat was so swollen I couldn't talk to ask more questions. Eventually, I scrawled out a message on a napkin that my mom could relay to my dad.
"How," I scribbled, "did Charles Woodson win?"
I wanted the numbers, the tally of Manning's defeat. My mom scrunched up her face as she looked at my message.
"Who," she asked, "is Charles Woodson?"
Back then, Tennessee fans who could talk, myself not included, reacted with indignation. "He's the guy," we might have said, "who stole the Heisman from Peyton Manning."
Twelve years later, the anger over Charles Woodson's Heisman victory still burns as it did in December of 1997. The people of my home state, Tennessee, still cringe when Woodson's name comes up in conversation. I married a Michigan grad, of all people, and the only thing I ask my wife is that she refrain from uttering his name in our house. Generally she complies. Unless, that is, she wants to win an argument.
"Oh, yeah," she'll say, smirking a bit, "Charles Woodson."
As word spreads of the q'uarterback formation, here's Nu'Keese Richardson, whose arms appear to be smaller than my 105 pound wife's, doing a standing back flip.
Nu'Keese, grandson of Ol'Keese is ready for football season. Are you?
Also, what was happening to Tebow when the above picture was taken? He looks like Mel Gibson being quartered at the end of Braveheart. Could there be a less flattering photo?
Poll results so far confirm that Tebow is BGID. But, and let's be clear about this, there is zero doubt that Tebow is winning the Heisman in 2009. The beard put it to rest. The only potential flaw in the system is Tebow's response when asked about the beard.
"Tebow said he'll rock the beard until his mother tells him to clean it up."
Timmy, Timmy, that won't do.
You should have thrown the media into a tizzy and said. "I'm just trying to be BGID like my boy Clay Travis."
Speaking of Orlando, early announcement, I'm going to be speaking to the Orlando Quarterback Club on September 28th. That's a Monday. I'm looking forward to it.
(Tip of the beaver pelt to Sherry for the email link.)
All That and a Bag of Mail: I hate you Clay Travis edition
I decided to roll with the most entertaining hate mail I've gotten in the past couple of weeks. After a prolonged summer absence during which I've been on vacation three weeks--I promised my wife when the book was over we could get away before football season and the book tour rolled out-- it's good to be back in the mailbag saddle.
Hate mail is always entertaining. Primarily because I don't know who these people are who actually send hate mail. I've never done it. Have you? Who does this? If you don't know someone, what true psychological issues do you have if you're sending hate email?
But beforehand, our beaver pelt trader of the week is Bill Clinton. How much of a rock star is this guy? Even still? Hops on a plane to North Korea and manages more rapprochement with Kim Jong-Il in ten minutes than we've had in nine years. Why? Because supposedly Kim Jong-Il appreciated the personal letter of condolence that Clinton wrote to him after his father died. There's a lesson there, even though there are six billion of us, a personal touch can go a long way.
And with that, let's roll with the (mostly) hate mail. (One note: I feel bad not including all the positive emails, but I tried to personally reply to everyone who wrote something nice. So hopefully y'all have those by now. These people I didn't respond to.)
Mike Walker writes:
suckit@ClayTravisIsLowerThanShit.com
You are such a greasy grimey douchebag. Kill yourself!!!
I tried, the gun jammed.
Apologies. I think the barrel was too grimy. Which, wow, I can spell correctly.
I'm beginning with this one because if the website claytravisislowerthanshit.com ever got rolling, I'd link to it every day.
This is from our new contact button.
Name: Your are a Moron Company: Email: youarentajournalist@yousuck.com Phone: -- Comments: Nice Question to Tebow asshole...I hope your media credentials get yanked as I am sure they will
"Your are a Moron."
I mean, honestly, do you have to make ridicule this easy?
Why are unintelligent people so focused on my media credentials? And why do they think that if they got yanked I'd be screwed.
Here are the media credentials I've requested in five years of writing about sports. This is a complete list.
The 2007 Motor City Bowl in Detroit (CBS sent me to cover the worst bowl game in America).
2008 UT vs. Kentucky (I got bumped upstairs for this game because of the overflow on the sideline for Fulmer's last game).
SEC Media Days 2009.
That's it. In five years of online writing, those are the only three media credential requests I've ever made. I'm going to request credentials for next year's SEC Media Days just to see what the response is, but otherwise it's not like I need to be in the press box to write. In fact, I think you can make a strong argument that the reason the column and books have been so successful is because I'm not writing from the press box.
Other point worth considering: Thanks to y'all we've sold more books about college football than any of the other 900 media members at SEC Media Days. If I wanted to start gigging Tony Barnhart, I'd start a website called "Therealmr.collegefootball.com"
That was the most entertaining thing to me about the Tebow response. Okay, so you disagree with the question, go ahead and write your outrage column. (Note: outrage columns are the easiest columns on earth to write because all you have to do is disagree with something. You don't have to actually have an original thought. That's why I try to avoid them for the most part.) But the most entertaining were the ones who labeled me a "blogger" (as if that's some sort of huge pejorative) or wrote that I wrote "online." (Again, ditto.) But the best of all were the people who wouldn't name me because I was so far beneath them. I'm looking at you Anniston Times.
Raise your hand if you know which state Anniston is in. Don't worry, I didn't either.
Have you not been in a bookstore in the past five years? Never checked Amazon sales ratings? Never read anything online about the sport you cover?
No.
Well, that's why no one reads your newspaper anymore, hombre. Because by the time you get around to penning your column, it's old news. Keep at it.
Name: Tucker Company: Email: @gmail.com Phone: -- Comments: Do you think Tebow is still a virgin for faith based reasons or because there is not a woman outside of Krypton who could survive having sex with him much less birth his immortal offspring? I think it would be a lot like the sex scene from Hancock.
Great question.
What if we mated Tebow and say, Serena Williams? Can you imagine what that child would be like? I'll tell you, the Mulatto Superman. (Our President excepted.)
The muscles would be extraordinary. It's possible Serena is the only woman who could survive sex with Tebow.
I mean that.
By the way, I should do a study on where my hate mail originates from. For instance, if you're writing me from a hotmail address, there's a four billion% greater chance that you don't like me. As you move up the food chain, gmail hate mail is virtually nonexistent.
Why is this? I think the younger and smarter you are the more likely you are to have a gmail address.
Of course if you don't have an email address at all, then you listen to Paul Finebaum's radio show for four hours every day.
Kevin Carver writes:
Punk. You are an "absolute" idiot and asshole for asking Tim Tebow that question. Where did that come from? Perhaps the fact that YOU are a LOSER!
Why is "absolute" in quotation marks? Am I an ironic idiot? Did this guy stop typing and do the finger quotation marks then feel compelled to include them in an email?
It can't be for emphasis because by virtue of YOU and LOSER we're aware that his caps lock key works.
See, deciphering the email punctuation of "absolute" LOSER(s) is so much fun.
Kevin writes:
I am a fan of your work. I've read your book Dixieland Delight and enjoy listening to you on the Roundtable each week. I ran across a picture of the new Alabama quarterback with Bama Bangs the other day. The picture must have been taken when he was backup to John Park Wilson, because he has since cut them off. I am unable to attach the photo here, so let me know if you want a copy.
Okay, interrupting the email for a moment to touch on McElroy. I wrote earlier today that of the four SEC teams ranked in the top ten in the USA Today poll--Florida, Bama, LSU, and Ole Miss--I think LSU is the most likely to fall outside the top 25 by the end of the season. And make no mistake, one of these four teams will. And it ain't going to be Florida. I eliminated Ole Miss because their schedule is so easy and that left me with Bama and LSU. I picked LSU.
Why?
Greg McElroy and Jordan Jefferson of LSU are absolute mysteries to all of us. But here's something for Bama fans to get excited about: I talked to one of the guys from the Manning Passing Academy this week and he said, "McElroy was the best college quarterback there."
That's better than Jevan Snead. Now the consensus was that Jonathan Crompton looked the second best so, take that for what it's worth.
His 'Bama Bangs disappearing will come as a major shock to the state of Alabama come fall. I'm not sure they'll even let him in Gallette's anymore.
Aalucero1@aol.com
I know that you think if you are really super nice to Erin Andrews maybe she will sleep with you but you are forgetting that you are a douche bag. That was clearly one of the worst articles I have ever read. You started making a point and dropped it several times. You might as well have made it a run on sentence, that way it just might have made a little sense. It should have never been an article, rather a paragraph. Kissing ass all the way through your article, protecting women's rights, and at the same time trying to appeal to a male audience that could give a shit less. I saw the video, who curls there hair totally nude and flexing, rubbing there ass the whole time. She knew it was happening, but it was probably a private video that wasn't supposed to be leaked. She only made it a big deal when she went public about it. By the way, your college decorated website is lame. It's funny how any clown with a keyboard believes they're a writer these days.
You know that I think if I'm really nice to Erin Andrews maybe she'll sleep with me? Really? Even accepting the lunacy that you can see inside my head and chose to begin your hate mail this way, has any writer ever gotten a woman to sleep with him by writing something nice about them?
The answer is no.
And if you thought the Erin Andrews piece was overly nice to her, you probably weren't smart enough to grasp the parts that were very critical of her. But even if my goal was sleeping with Erin Andrews--which by the way, would be an incredibly noble goal--I know that the best way to get hot chicks to sleep with you is not, and I repeat not, by being nice to them. That's the worst way to get hot chicks to sleep with you. All that does is permit you to be their friend and hear about the guys that they really wants to sleep with.
By the way, anyone else noticed that the number one sign you're a douchebag is that you call someone else a douchebag?
Sincerely,
any clown with a keyboard
John Breckenridge writes:
Clay,
Didn't know you existed before this stupid stunt you pulled, so I guess me and Verne Lundquist have something in common. But I hope your attempt to make Tim Tebow look ridiculous gets you banned for life from SEC media days.
How in the world could you send those VMI cadets into the Battle of New Market? How? Just because you were the youngest vice president in American history doesn't mean that you have absolute impunity when it comes to being a general on the battlefield.
Fun fact about your life:
He fought at the Battle of Monocacy in early July and was with Early when the Confederate force probed the defenses of Washington, D.C.. Since Lincoln was watching the fight from the ramparts of Fort Stevens, this was only time in American history when two former opponents in a presidential election faced one another across battle lines.
Banned for life from SEC Media Days? I won't rehash my commentary above, but that would be epic. Hopefully they'd put it in writing.
Then when the next bestselling book comes out we can lead with, "Clay Travis, the only man in the history of college football to be banned from SEC Media Days,..."
Remember when a youthful Steve Spurrier made news for running up the score and drumming up controversy with his rivals via witty and debilitating quips? And how he always seemed to have receivers running in the open field? With every nervous and jittery tic of his body as he called a play, you expected a touchdown to ensue. On every snap you held your breath, shook with fear, and hoped that your pregame beer wasn't about to trickle down your leg. As the ball was snapped, you had but one thought: what horrible doom was impending for your team?
It got to the point in the '90s when you were happy if Spurrier's team only completed a pass for 20 yards. Even if the Gators were your rivals, you respected Spurrier's puckish wit, the way his eyes, nestled up under a visor, lit up when he saw a play that appealed to him on his play card. Love him or hate him, Spurrier left no doubt that he adored what he was doing.
All that's changed.
Now, Spurrier seems weary, At long last, the fun in the fun-and-gun offense, is gone. Now all that's left is a gun. And sometimes, you get the feeling Spurrier would rather be hunting in the woods with that gun than standing on the sideline in Columbia, S.C.
There was a time when every fan in the SEC wanted Steve Spurrier to be their coach. After a scorching defeat at the hands of the Gators, fans would crack open cold beers and stare off into the distance. "That Spurrier," they'd whisper, "I wish he was ours."
It wasn't just that Spurrier dominated, it was that he was a genius-- l'enfant terrible--Van Gogh in a visor. The football field was his canvas. Where other coaches in the SEC fought tooth and nail to gain three yards, Spurrier tossed 30-yard passes to receivers who would appear, as if by magic, all alone on the field. Millions of times fans threw their hands up in the air, "How," we'd all curse, "is it possible for one receiver to be that wide open."
The media onslaught hasn't begun yet, but we're getting close. Greg Hardy's interview and analysis of the book is here. Greg's a good guy. Even if he is a Gator grad and fan.
GH: Speaking of insider information, when you saw Vols quarterback Jonathan Crompton nursing a severely sprained ankle that was clearly in bad shape before the season-opening game at UCLA, was there any temptation to cash in that knowledge for wagering purposes? Or did they make you sign anything that said you wouldn't utilize information like that?
CT: No, I never signed anything, but I gave my word, and I think I kept it. Obviously during the course of the book, I knew quite a bit of stuff. But I told them I wouldn't [reveal anything] until the book came out. But then, you're talking about "the line," and good God, I don't touch that thing. I don't think necessarily having all the best information in the world makes you better at the line. I think they've done studies where coaches couldn't predict that game outcome any better than the experts who were dispassionately removed from the situation. I wouldn't touch it anyway.
GH: Admit it. It's a better book because everything went wrong. Winning's boring. We want to see the football get yanked away from Charlie Brown before he kicks it. It makes it more of a page-turner.
CT: I wanted my team to win every game. No matter what made sense for the book or what made sense for a story angle. I never got to the point where I wasn't holding out hope for a victory in any game they were playing in. UCLA was a shocking thing. Tennessee came in ranked No. 18 in the country. ... But there is an ugly little irony that Tennessee football existed for I think 110 years, and going into the last game of the season they had to win to avoid it being the worst season ever in the 110-year history of the program. And that was the year I had the opportunity to write a book from the inside. As a fan, yes, that's your worst nightmare, right?
Nice to be back on the old CBSSports page. My last column went up a little over a year ago. That's it. Even though this past year seems like a lifetime.
Now Todd and his receivers reached the sideline. "What do you want to do?" Coach Smith asked his quarterback.
Todd's face flushed to hot pink. "You're asking me what I want to do? Why start now?"
Todd turned to his receivers standing behind him. They believed in him. They'd seen his magic. His last-minute comeback against Washington State the previous season is still remembered as "the Drive": A textbook ninety-one-yard march downfield — with eleven crucial completions, including a touchdown pass and a two-point conversion — it prompted a call from former President Ronald Reagan.
Todd turned back to his coach. "This is what we're gonna do," he told Smith, yelling over the crowd. "You're gonna stay the fuck over here while we go win this game."
Todd and his boys jogged back to the huddle. Todd called the play. The ball was on the twenty-three; sixteen seconds left. Wellman was in the slot. The pass was designed to go to him. But as Todd took the snap, he saw Wellman get jammed at the line.
"Whenever a receiver doesn't get a clean release," Todd recalls, "you got to go away from him, 'cause it just screws up the timing. So I looked back to the other side, and I saw Johnnie Morton on his corner route. He was supposed to run an eighteen-yard comeback, but we'd changed it at the line of scrimmage. Now he was making his move. When Johnnie went to the post, I saw the safety just drive on it, thinking I was throwing there. That's when I knew I had it."
Morton caught the ball deep in the left corner of the end zone, in front of the seats occupied by the Chief and his wife, Virginia. "It's been my favorite pass since Pop Warner," Todd said. "You really can't stop it."
Monday, Florida announced that Urban Meyer signed a six-year contract extension that makes him the third-highest paid college football coach in America. Meyer will pocket $4 million a year and, with the extension, pass LSU's Les Miles and Alabama's Nick Saban to become the highest paid coach in the SEC.
After all, Meyer's won two national titles in four years at Florida, gone 11-1 against the big three rivals on his schedule (Georgia, Tennessee, and Florida State), and most of the commentary has endorsed his pay. Collectively the college football cognoscenti seems to believe that Meyer is "worth" the money. Why? Because the market dictates that he deserves that salary.
And it completely ignores that, you, I and every taxpayer are footing part of the bill.
Saying Meyer is "worth" his salary is an easy answer that relies upon the perceived infallibility of free market-principles to dictate salaries. Often this principle makes sense in competitive businesses. If one company is willing to pay a set amount for an employee, then a second company can either match or reject that offer.
Eventually, the theory would hold, a free and efficient marketplace can determine the value of virtually anything. That's all well and good when it comes to for-profit entities, that is companies that pay taxes on their profits.
But here's a little catch that no one seems to pay attention to, you and I are subsidizing big coaching salaries because the athletic departments at major universities operate as not-for-profits.
They don't pay a single dollar of tax. And if athletic departments aren't paying taxes then you and I, as taxpayers, are subsidizing college coaching salaries.
By the way, don't even bother reading the comments, they're too dumb to get the point. Nowhere are state taxes mentioned, yet they're all focusing on Florida state tax. I swear, there should be an IQ requirement to comment on articles.
To reiterate, I'm talking about federal taxation. And exploring whether athletic departments should get the benefit of nonprofit status. The only real argument to use against this position is that many athletic departments don't show very much in the way of profits after they pay for the non-revenue sports.
That's a valid criticism. But it sucks to have to point out the valid criticisms of a piece because the people actually commenting aren't smart enough to do it.
You need to listen to this. Click here. Chris Vernon is the man behind the Coach O song that's linked above. If you have a soul, you've heard it.
Now, listen to this segment. Verno's hysterical.
On August 26, this crazy bastard will be broadcasting live from the On Rocky Top signing at Davis-Kidd in Memphis. So you'll be hearing more from him, but if you don't live in Memphis you might miss his daily brilliance.
On Rocky Top Launch Party: Tuesday August 18th 6:30 to 9 Otter's Chicken Tenders
Okay, some of you are asking about the details on the event. And what exactly a "launch party" is. I don't honestly know. I've never been to a book launch party, and the only one I've ever seen was Carrie Bradshaw's on Sex and the City. All I can say is we won't have martinis. And lots of people will be in shorts and flip-flops. Including me.
Here are some other details:
Otter's Chicken Tenders in East Nashville (just across the river from downtown.)
507 Main Street
We'll have a live broadcast of the ClayNation radio show on 104.5 the Zone. We'll be focused on talking about the book, the upcoming SEC football season, and sundry other topics. Chad Withrow will be quizzing me on the book (he's read it), and we'll probably be breaking some news. We've extended offers to the main individuals featured in the book: Phil Fulmer, Mike Hamilton, and several players to come on and talk about the season, the book, and any comments or critiques they may have with the way they or events were portrayed.
All of those people have copies by now, but I'm not sure whether they'll be on for certain.
There will be food and drink specials (they have a full bar), giveaways, books available for purchase, basically it's going to be a really fun time.
On Rocky Top, On Rocky Top (Kindle), and Dixieland Delight are the numbers one, two, and three college football books in America right now. And we're still thirteen days out from the release of On Rocky Top. Not that I'm counting. (The Amazon rankings are updated hourly but we've been in a similar position for the past week or so.)
If the SEC decides to pull my credentials for any events, as my boy Paul Finebaum has requested, (which I don't think they will), I'm going to mail them a printed page from Amazon and just write, "Scoreboard."
Seriously though, I owe all of you a tremendous thanks for helping to support the writing, hosting me in so many great cities, and keeping the emails flowing even when some people in the state of Alabama want to hang me. (Not even in effigy. Even though most people in Alabama who wanted me hung would spell effigy, f 'n g.)
Anyway, I'm working on a long piece for FanHouse on coaching salaries that should be up later today. But in the meantime, thanks.
Now, I'm going to buy a an orange Lamborghini, wear a chain, and film my video saluting y'all.
It appears that this movie has been crafted with the entire purpose being to make us cry. And not even for the scenes where the coaches attempt to act. Here's the clip.
Underrated, Sandra Bullock's body. Isn't she like 50 now? How is it possible that she's hotter now than she was ten years ago?
And the guy playing Michael Oher? He's got the body movements down pretty well by the end of the clip.
I'm intrigued to see how this turns out.
(Note, I would have embedded the movie trailer, but I didn't know how to do that from yahoo.)
So you'll have to make do with a picture of Connie Britton from Friday Night Lights. I know, tough break.
By the way, at some point soon, I'm going to have an epic mailbag. Epic. I've gotten thousands of emails and comments in the past ten days. I just haven't had time to collate them and put them into a mailbag yet. But it's coming.
I know how you feel Ole Miss fans. I know what it's like to clutch a preseason magazine close to your chest and inhale the paper and ink slowly, get high off the football season anticipation. "Athlon has us No. 10 in the country!" you might say. It's a giddy feeling, enrapturing even. Like being told you can go home with any sorority girl of your choosing in the Grove. Hotty Toddy, Gosh Almighty, Ole Miss is a legitimate contender for the national title!
Except, and Rebel fans know exactly what I'm talking about, in the back of your mind you really can't believe your good fortune.
The Greg Hardy and Dexter McCluster car fire? You expected it. The Jamar Hornsby dismissal? You knew it was inevitable. Jevan Snead tripping and falling into an open culvert on campus, being rescued after a vigil on national television, and breaking his throwing arm in the process? Easy, easy, that hasn't happened. But if it did, you'd have expected it, right?
Dickens began A Tale Of Two Cities with these words, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ..." (You may not remember that because the Cliff Notes didn't begin that way) It takes a gaudy preseason ranking for a perennial doormat to make those words ring true for a sports fan.
Peril lurks around every date on the calendar. Remember when you were a kid and Christmas never seemed like it would get here. You wanted a Miss Elizabeth wrestling figure and a Dukes of Hazzard big wheel more than life itself and, yet, even as Christmas neared, you were terrified you might not get either. Each day heralded the sweet suspense of uncertainty. You'd toss down a calendar date and stare at the square, delicious anticipation -- we're going to win them all -- mixed with delirious dread -- State's going to take our egg!
Right now Ole Miss fans are 35 days from the start of the season and each day is a feather to the bottom of their feet, the tickle of temptation, the agony of being tortured with pleasure.
It's an open invite. Like I said, we'll be doing the radio show, signing books, and discussing college football.
Like I've said before, we're double barreling the release, a book launch party on August 18th, that's the Tuesday that the book comes out. We'll have books for sale, do a live radio broadcast, and Otter's will have drink and food specials.
Then on the next day, Wednesday the 19th, I'll be doing a signing and reading at Nashville's Davis-Kidd bookstore.
Then Thursday morning, I'm headed to Vegas. Honestly, going to be an amazing week.
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.
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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...
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