It's Friday, time for the mailbag.
I am presently writing this mailbag on Thursday night for two reasons: 1. I have a Southwest flight to LA early in the morning for our college football show and y'all know how much relying on Southwest wifi takes off my life and, most importantly, 2. my two youngest kids have combined for seven pukes in the past 24 hours and I'm presently terrified that at any moment I'm going to get sick and start puking. So I'm trying to get all my work done now in the event I'm sick on the flight.
Every parent knows this feeling, right? When a stomach bug slowly starts stalking your family. You think you're in the clear and then bam, another kid or parent goes down. Worst, it's like the germs make you think the worst is past -- timing everything out -- just to taunt you. Because the moment you think you're in the clear -- more puke. So you start trying to isolate the sick kids and the puke germs in one part of your house. It's Outbreak, Travis household.
Our oldest hasn't gotten sick yet, but he spent last night in bed with me after his little brother puked all night and now he's spending the night at his grandparents. We think he's in the clear, but you know how this goes, inevitably he's going to puke all over his grandparents at two in the morning and it's going to be outbreak for them too.
These germs are bastards.
So I'm watching Thursday night college and pro football right now secretly hoping that if I'm going to get sick that I get sick now because I'm terrified that I'm suddenly going to get nauseous -- by the way, ever judge a word by how it looks, how much of an asshole is the word nauseous? -- just as my cross-country Southwest flight takes off.
Is there anything worse than being sick on a cross-country flight? It almost makes me puke just thinking about trying to puke in the airplane bathroom. Even when I'm perfectly fine I want to puke every time I even go into an airplane bathroom. What with the blue gunk in the toilet and the fact that you're wobbling around like you've already had eight drinks even though you're stone cold sober and the fact that if you try to wash your hands it's fucking impossible. (Why does the airplane bathroom bounce around more than any other part of the plane?) You can actually see the people who just went in front of you and you know that they all have Ebola. Seriously, find me a worse group of people than the ones who use airplane bathrooms.
I'm not even a germophobe and writing about the idea of going into the airplane bathroom is freaking me out right now. Can you imagine if you have to puke into an airplane toilet? That's not the kind of puking experience you come back from. That's like post-puking traumatic stress syndrome.
This is my worst nightmare.
And I've puked everywhere.
I did a three hour radio show with puke breaks once. Like every commercial break I threw up. I've puked in the subway, during job interviews -- seriously, I left to puke and then came back -- at Congress -- and, mind you, these are just sober pukes -- I've drunk puked all over the place, in like 90% of SEC college towns.
Last year I had a Michael Jordan with the flu in game six like performance on TV. I could barely sit up straight. I was having heat flashes and sweat was pouring off me, I looked like Bill Clinton during his sexual history deposition.
But I nailed the show, went straight back to the hotel and had that sweaty fever sleep for the next 12 hours. You know all those weird ass fever dreams you have? Like you're convinced that they're going to remake Wizard of Oz and you have to play the Cowardly Lion and it's your big break but you can't remember all the lines? And then your first grade teacher is Glenda the Good Witch and for some reason you are supposed to make out with her and, anyway, maybe it's just me who has weird fever dreams.
Anyway I'm terrified of puking on an airplane.
And I say this as a dad who has had a baby puke on him on a Southwest flight. Back six years ago, when we only had one kid and thought he was a ton to take care of, my one year old threw up all over me while we were taxiing down the runway to take off from Houston. I mean, just gobs of puke all over me. My wife had already put him in his sleep clothes -- because, of course, he was supposed to sleep on the flight -- so she had to take him out of his puke clothes -- I stayed in mine -- and he rode the rest of the flight in just his diaper. Like we were the biggest redneck family on earth, flying with a baby on Southwest in just a diaper.
So pray for me.
Our beaver pelt trader of the week is Jeb Bush, who sat down for a 25 minute interview with me on Tuesday in Miami.
The full interview should be up later Friday -- and I think you guys will enjoy it -- but here are two clips that FS1 has released so far:
On to the mailbag:
Wade writes:
"I've been internally debating myself all week over how many guys in the NFL would win the Heisman if they returned to the college game in their current being. I think a lot of quarterbacks could, but what about all of the other positions? For example, Randall Cobb is one of the best receivers in the NFL, but would be really be dominant enough in college to win the Heisman? Would JJ Watt win it? What if these guys were on a solid, but not spectacular team (i.e. any SEC East team). You can see how I've spent the last week now."
I'd love to see how much better a good college quarterback is after a few years n the NFL. For instance, Andrew Luck was pretty fantastic at Stanford. He's been in the NFL for three years and change now. How much better do you think he is now than when he took the last snap for the Cardinal? How about RGIII, he won the Heisman at Baylor and has been a bust so far in the NFL. But how good would he be if you gave him the keys to Baylor's offense and he played at Kansas this weekend?
I think any top twenty NFL quarterback would win the Heisman if you gave him time to practice a bit with his team. I won't go beneath top 20 quarterbacks because I think based on what we've seen so far this year Marcus Mariota was a top 20 NFL quarterback last year at Oregon.
I would love to see, for instance, Peyton Manning screaming at Tennessee's receivers for not adequately reading the defense -- they play like four defenses total in the SEC -- and consistently managing to get covered despite the fact that you have one of the greatest quarterbacks to ever play the game throwing you the football.
J.J. Watt is a superb call, there's no way anyone could block him in college. But I think he's a rarity. I also think you could potentially scheme away from him. But when you start talking about skill position guys, wide receivers and running backs, they require someone to get them the ball. Randall Cobb is a great example, would he be unstoppable this year at Kentucky? He'd have a mediocre quarterback in Patrick Towles throwing him the ball. So how good would he be? The drop off from Aaron Rodgers to Towles would be like th drop off from having sex with me after Lexington Steele.
The same is true for running backs. If your offensive line is awful, you'd be good, but I don't know how great you'd be. For instance, if you put Adrian Peterson behind Vanderbilt's offensive line this year do you really think he'd win the Heisman? I don't. Now if you put him behind Georgia or LSU's line that's a different story. But you specified an SEC East team.
You need guys who control the action themselves, which is why quarterbacks would dominate. Other position players, much less. But I would think there are thirty or so NFL players who would definitely win the Heisman this year.
We've been overloaded with great anonymous mailbag questions lately so I'm going to start dropping them in the Friday mailbag occasionally.
Here we go with an anonymous mailbag interlude.
"I'm the best man in my cousin's wedding next month, so of course I was tasked with throwing the bachelor party. We assembled seven pretty regular, non-creepy guys (this is actually an important detail) and set off for the Wal-Mart of party locales, New Orleans.
Somehow I lucked into a great condo for us that had a balcony overlooking Bourbon Street, so spirits were high. Of course with this being Bourbon Street, there was a strip club literally under our condo and another one right across the street, and soon the doormen were fighting for our Friday afternoon business. Every group of friends has a Strip Club Guy, the guy who just really enjoys paying for lap dances and talking to strippers, and our Strip Club Guy was legitimately torn about which place we should choose. Luckily an average looking woman with great boobs and only a few tattoos walked out of one of the doors at the perfect time; and the decision was made, we were following the boobs.
Inside the place was relatively empty, so the girls were just lounging around and seemed happy to have some customers. We bought a bottle for the group and went upstairs. To any bachelor rookies out there: ALWAYS buy the bottle. You can pour your own drinks and it buys you instant legitimacy with the staff. Our purchase, paired with not being creepy, made the girls comfortable and willing to do pretty much whatever we asked. We had a private pole, private balcony overlooking the losers drooling on the stage, and private rooms for dances, all for $300. And, most importantly, the girls were opening up and having fun with us. Life was good.
While the bachelor was getting a dance, Strip Club Guy was immersed in serious childhood talk with one girl, but he made an astute observation: we were in an ass club, and the only girl with big boobs was the one who walked us in originally. We ask her about this and it turns out she had just had a baby a few weeks before and that her boobs were full of breast milk.
Then this question happened: "Can you squeeze the milk into a cup?"
Stripper mom: "Of course!"
"Do you have any Kahlua behind the bar?"
Stripper mom: "Sure, want me to grab it?"
Long story short, the bachelor unknowingly came back from his dance to a fresh 2 PM Bourbon Street Stripper Breast Milk White Russian, which he happily drank. There's some shame that just doesn't wash off in the shower."
Does he know yet?
Or is he reading the mailbag today finding out for the first time? Because I would give anything to have seen his face as he worked his way through this email and he went from, "Awesome, my bachelor party made the mailbag!" to involuntarily gagging when he realized he drank a stripper's breast milk.
Alex writes:
"In your opinion, what is proper urinal etiquette? And I'm not talking about SEC football stadium trough etiquette where everyone is wasted face peeing like a bunch of drunken camels...
Riddle me this...You walk into a small(ish) restroom with 3 urinals in a row, with no urinal screens. Let's say someone is standing at the urinal on the far left, leaving the middle and far right one open. In my opinion, you're supposed to choose the far right one. Right? I don't even like making eye contact or conversation with other people while I piss. Let me recap that I'm married, not homophobic, and my penis is normal. I just don't really like soberly discussing anything at the urinal. It's weird...right? No? I don't know."
You have to leave a spot between you and someone else at the urinal.
I mean, this is basic like first grade etiquette.
People who don't know this infuriate me nearly as much as people who drive in the left lane and aren't passing anyone.
HOW IS IT POSSIBLE IN THIS COUNTRY THAT SOME PEOPLE DRIVE BELOW THE SPEED LIMIT IN THE LEFT LANE? I MEAN, WOULDN'T YOU REALIZE THAT YOU WERE DOING SOMETHING WRONG WHEN YOU LOOKED BEHIND YOU AND THERE WAS AN ENTIRE LINE OF PEOPLE?
This drives me insane.
Dylan writes:
"Clay,
Completely practical mail bag question here. Let's assume for the moment that Randy Edsall's situation becomes your life situation. It's Thursday and your boss tells you that you will be fired by Monday. Do you go out in a blaze of glory (shot-gunning a beer at halftime and streaking across the field) or do you try and save your job and write the best damn story you've ever written (Beat Ohio State)?
Love your work, by the way! Also appreciate all the money you've made me over the past 2 years."
How badly did Maryland screw this up that the news comes out before the Ohio State game? The Terps are 33 point underdogs. Was it that important that news leak on the Thursday before the game that Maryland is going to fire him after they lose to Ohio State? What purpose did this serve?
Just let the Terps lose and fire him after this game.
I don't get it. I mean, you can't hire a new coach right now, right? It would make more sense to me if there was a tremendous coach not coaching now and you needed to get a jump on everyone to sign him before someone else did, but that guy isn't out there. And even if you thought you could get Chip Kelly, everyone's bona fide home run, he's got 12 games left in the NFL season.
It sucks to get fired, but if I knew I was going to get fired in three days, I would take every possible risk in coaching this game. Go for broke. You might as well empty every absurd play call you've got and hope for the best. I wouldn't do anything truly crazy because I'm sure Edsall wants to coach again somewhere in the future. And once you get one decent coaching job you can always get another one.
As for who Maryland should hire, I go big after Tom Herman down at Houston. The Terps think they can be the Oregon of the east coast, a traditional also ran with a huge backing from a major athletic company. Only this time it's Under Armour instead of Nike. Regardless of who you hire, you need a coach who plays an exciting, offensive brand of football.
How much has Ohio State's offense collapsed since Herman left? It's exactly like what happened to the 2009 Florida Gator offense after Dan Mullen left for Mississippi State.
I'm really intrigued to see what Maryland does here because there's a good shot that the Virginia job is also open at the same time.
How good of a hire can they make?
J.T. writes:
"This summer I vacationed at Navarre Beach FL with the family. It was lovely by the way. As I was sitting on the beach I started thinking about this: if the Germans had somehow built up their transport and airlift capabilities to the extent that they could have invaded America during WWII; where would they have come in? Topography, lack of bridges and defensibility were also considered as I thought they may do a reverse march from the sea; invading Pensacola with its natural port and grabbing Atlanta and cutting off Florida. Or would they have just come in and tried to seize NYC or Washington in a relatively boxed in and highly populated areas? Or Houston to get access to the Texas oil fields? What do you think?"
I'm far from a military genius, but I think you have to attack from the Atlantic Ocean to free up your supply line. It's much easier to resupply your troops with the entire ocean than it is to work your way into the Gulf. So if you come into the Gulf the problem is how do you support those troops? You can't resupply very easily.
It's also much tougher to avoid detection there, you can mobilize troops and defend the gulf much easier than you can the entire eastern seabord.
So I think you force the United States to defend the entire East Coast -- the proverbial run pass option on third down -- and then hit them on a part of the country that they probably aren't anticipating defending. Figure most of the defense goes to the big cities in the northeast. Florida is well defended because it's America's dangling penis, out there on its own. So what happens when the Germans come ashore in South Carolina?
From there you have so many invasion routes to pursue.
You can avoid the major mountains and get into the South fairly easily. From Atlanta you can head north and threaten the Midwest or you can head further South and threaten the oil supplies in Texas. Or you can turn back up and attack the east coast from the rear while you simultaneously attack from the sea. Admittedly, I'm not an expert on American industrial might in the 1940's, but I think you make a run at Ohio and Michigan, which are tough to defend in the middle of the country once you've got an invading army that can still attack you on the coasts.
There have to be secret plans for Germany invading America somewhere, right? I'd love to see those.
Dave F. writes:
"Clay
Baylor plays Kansas this weekend and even though the game is at Kansas I feel like Baylor could put up 100. There is a log jam among the teams ranked 2-6 and this would definitely separate Baylor. They have the offense to do it and this Kansas team might be the worst power 5 team ever. Is 100 possible on Saturday?"
I think 100 is definitely possible. In fact, I have zero doubt that if this were like a hostage situation and someone had kidnapped Art Briles's family and the only way they could come home safely was if his team scored 100 that Baylor would score 100 on Kansas.
I took Baylor - 41.5 in this game and I'm not sure how many points you'd have to give me not to take them in this one. 50? I just don't see how Kansas ever stops this offense.
Get rich, kids, the Bears win big.
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Have great weekends. And pray for me not to puke on the airplane.
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