Okay, it's mailbag time, the final Friday before actual football begins. I'll have my over/under picks for you guys soon, but in the meantime, let's dive into the mailbag and help you pretend to work.
Our beaver pelt trader of the week is the guy who did the "The Wife Zone" chart. I have no idea who this guy is, but he now leads Twitter in Outkick submissions.
Enjoy his matrix.
Good luck finding your own unicorn. I really think I did.
On to the mailbag.
Ronald K. writes:
"Could a guy who is a foot taller, 100 lbs heavier, and an average fighter beat a 5 foot 100 pound Manny Pacquiao in the ring? This has been the biggest debate among my friend group. The theory is that at some point height and weight neutralize someones fighting ability, so at what point is that? I said a foot taller and 100lbs heavier and when Manny was 16 he was roughly 5 feet and weighed around 100. Thoughts?"
This is a great question. A five foot 100 pound boxer is tiny, but the key here is that you're boxing and he's a great boxer. I'm six foot 180 pounds. If you added twenty pounds to me I'd be pretty chubby. So that would probably make me an average guy. If I use myself as an example, is there any way I could ever hit Pacquiao?
I don't think so. He'd be way too quick for me. I'd have to get really lucky to injure him boxing. Combine that with the fact that your average guy would get winded really fast. All Pacquiao would have to do is avoid my wild, comparatively slow haymakers for a few rounds. Then he could start working my body as I tired out. How many punches from a hundred pound man pro boxer would it take to knock me out or get me to quit? A ton, right? But how many punches could I take in my midsection from a trained boxer, even a little one? I'm not Ali, the rope a dope strategy isn't working.
One hundred pound Pacquiao might not knock me out in 12 rounds, but he'd definitely win the fight. I'm not sure how small he'd have to get for me to beat him in a boxing match. Eighty pounds? I think I could take eighty pound Pacquiao. Mayweather too, for that matter.
Bert N. writes:
"Clay,
With all the excitement that was baseball's trade deadline yesterday, it got me thinking: what if college football allowed trades? Would teams look to trade senior studs to teams who lost players due to injuries? Would 5 star prospect freshmen be traded? Any trades involving LSU would be incredible, especially if Les Miles orchestrated them. Can you give us a snapshot of what this would be like, or a hypothetical trade or two that make sense in the SEC this year?"
Trades might make sense from a competitive perspective, but I don't think they could ever happen because if you made a bad deal it would be catastrophic to your coaching future. Plus, there are no GMs so it would be entirely up to the coaches. Which means Nick Saban would have a print out of every player in college football with a numerical value assigned to him. Meanwhile, Les Miles would watch ten minutes of game film, burn grass over incense, rub his hands together while sitting with his legs crossed for fifteen minutes and then suddenly explode up and say, "Yes!" or "No!"
Having said all that, trades would typically happen between teams that have no chance to win an SEC title and teams that hope to contend for one. So this year Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas would put their best players on the market to build for the future. Florida clearly needs a couple of game-breaking receivers and Muschamp is in a contract year, right? So he's got to pull out all the stops and trade his young guys for immediate impact players this year. Meanwhile, Tennessee is actually stocked at wide receiver with Marquez North, Von Pearson, Josh Malone, and Pig Howard. I mean, this wide receiver corps, while young, might be the best in the SEC. So what would a guy like North or Pearson, both of whom will have huge breakout seasons, be worth to Muschamp this season? Tennessee needs real help on the offensive and defensive lines. So I'd argue that North or Pearson might be worth three four star freshmen linemen. None of those guys will play significant minutes for Muschamp this year, but they could be of great value for Tennessee by next season when the Vols hope to contend.
So there's a trade for you.
Tyler S. writes:
"Would you ever consider running for public office? Your ideology seems pro social, pro markets, which is what many people want, but there's no politician like that (especially in Tennessee)."
I'm pro-markets and anti-stupidity. I honestly think that would probably be enough to get elected state-wide in Tennessee. Running for political office in Tennessee would be outstanding fun. (I'd be the greatest gift to all the political reporters in their careers). Especially if I ran as an independent for governor or senate. Sure, I have a decent amount of negatives -- being a gay Muslim conservative racist sexist homophobic extreme liberal does that to you -- but here's the deal, people know me in this state too. So it's hard to make up much ground by attacking me. People will shrug off everything and be like, "That's just Clay Travis."
I've never actually voted for anything so I'm clean on all attacks there. I'd do well in all the debates and speaking engagements because I talk for a living and I'm fairly entertaining. The biggest issue would be the cost of a campaign. You have to buy millions of dollars of television ads to run during Matlock and the local news, two things that no one under the age of 45 has watched in the last decade. I'm not rich enough to spend millions on a political campaign. (Although my ads would be FANTASTIC). That means I'd have to fundraise a ton, which is just an awful way to spend your time.
Plus, I'd have to quit doing everything I do now to make no money during a campaign. And if I won, we'd have to live on a senator's salary. Which means my wife couldn't shop in Nordstrom much any more which means she'd probably stop sleeping with me, which means I'm not running for political office.
Greg G. writes:
"Last night I was with my kids and my neighbor's kids around a bonfire when my 10 year old son asked, "So, Clay Travis gets paid to make people mad?"
I responded, "Yes, that's a good observation."
He said, "I want to do that for a living."
It got me wondering what careers (besides those in the media) actually earn more money when they make people upset?"
It's kind of an astute observation, but I think it misses the other side of the equation, in order to make people hate you, you also have to make people love you. I'm in the love/hate business. Either one is fine for what I do. In fact, if you hate me you probably read, listen, and watch more than the people who love me. This took a little while to get used to, but I learned that if someone ever Tweets or emails that they're never listening or reading again, I'm probably going to hear from that same person a week later complaining about something else I did. Haters are addicted to their hate so much that they can't quit me. Combine that with the fact that people are tribal, when some people hate you, that makes the people who like you like you that much more.
Where else is like this?
Politics.
No matter which politician you are, if you're currently involved in politics, about half the people hate you. Once you leave politics, that changes. Don't believe me? Guess who the most popular politician in America is today? Bill Clinton! And he was impeached for getting a blow job from an intern in the oval office. Now no one even cares about that. Just use George W. Bush and Barack Obama as examples. Our last two presidents were uniformly hated by their opponents. That's despite the fact that I guarantee you that any person reading this right now would like both men, regardless of politics, if you spent twenty minutes with them. Why is that? Because you don't get elected president without being a pretty charismatic and likeable guy one on one. Remember, before you persuade people to support you in a major election, you have to persuade the billionaires and multi-millionaires to like you in smaller, more intimate settings. Pretty much every modern president has great interpersonal skills and likability.
It's not just me, pretty much everyone in media who has much of an audience is polarizing in some sense.
Branden writes:
"Clay,
My wife and I were watching Bachelorette: After the Final Rose this week and both our mouths dropped when Nick told the entire world that he and Andi had sex in the fantasy suite. We couldn't believe he would mention that on national television, especially with Josh backstage about to come out. My wife asked me if I'd be angry at Andi if I were Josh. My answer: "Yes." My questions to you are what did you think about the discussion of the fantasy suite? Do you think Josh knew prior to the show or did Nick break the news to him?"
No way Josh knew, right? Unless Andi just volunteered it to him. And I can't imagine her volunteering it unless she was afraid it would go public. Generally speaking what happens in the fantasy suite stays in the fantasy suite -- except for Juan Pablo last season, who somehow managed to freak out one of the girls on their night in the fantasy suite.
So my guess is that's when Josh found out they had sex, while he was waiting to go on stage. Having said that, is it really that big of a deal? How many people get married today and neither of them have ever had sex with anyone before? Like 99.9% of people are married to someone who slept with someone else. Don't you have to assume that something amorous goes on in the fantasy suite? Are you going to be angrier over sex than oral sex? Heavy naked petting? Are you really drawing an appropriate sexual interaction line? I mean, sex is probably the most normal thing you could do in the fantasy suite. I think you have to assume it.
Having said that, this raises all sorts of interesting questions -- how often do you think a woman gets proposed to within a week of sleeping with a different guy? That's got to be pretty rare, right? Obviously the Bachelor and Bachelorette represent an odd construct -- when else would you be aware that a girl or guy you were dating was staying in a room with another person he or she was interested in? -- but that still had to violate a ton of ethical lines to announce that you slept together on national television. That just seems bitter.
Put yourself in Nick's position, you've just been jilted on national television for telling a woman that you love her. This makes you a pretty sympathetic character to most women ages 18-34, the largest collection of BacheloretteTV viewers. They're going to love you for being willing to love. All of you have to do is not come off as petty and vindictive and you're probably set for life on the dating front. They'd give you your own show, you're the next Bachelor, you're set.
Instead you blow it and end up looking unstable in the process. Moreover, keep in mind, he's had months to get over the whole situation since the show finished filming. Even if he was petty, vindictive, and bitter back then, he should have gotten over it by now. Bad play, dude.
Trevor V. writes:
"I've been dating these two women for a couple of weeks and now it's time to narrow it down to one. Both are great girls, different than each other but, equally great. So my question to you is this: With all other factors in my side-by-side cost/benefit analysis netting out to equal value... is it ethical/logical to use the fact that one has U-verse (SEC Network ready) and the other DirectTV (SEC Network questionable) as a tie-breaker? I mean, I see a lot of Saturday mornings on the couch together in our future and this could be a real issue."
Outstanding.
The real issue you have here is that DirecTV will have the SEC Network too. So this isn't actually a distinguishing factor. If all other things are equal, I'd go with who has the hotter mom.
JD writes:
"Hey Clay,
Is this a real question? 100% of men have masturbated while on road trips by themselves. How many other things are there to do in a hotel room by yourself? I mean, why do you think they have x-rated movies on the hotel TVs? Before the Internet made pornography virtually free, the single most lucrative part of Marriott being in the hotel business was x-rated movies. Think about that for a minute, it wasn't actually the hotel room that made them the most money, it was the porn in the hotel rooms. (Crazy stat for you, at any given moment in America, 40% of all Internet traffic is pornography. Forty percent!)
Update: our emailer said he meant WHILE DRIVING SOLO IN THE CAR. This is a great question. I'm going 65% have.
It's not just single men either. If couples are staying in a hotel room, I'm convinced that hotel room sex is like 500% more common than regular bedroom sex. Especially if you're married. If you're married and at your own house your wife is laying in bed thinking about all the things she needs to do with the house -- chores, new window treatments, laundry, you name it, the things that women worry about would render most men incapable of thought. Men, in general, think about three things all day long -- money, sex, and sports. Once they're in a hotel room women don't have to worry about anything else so they're more into sex.
This is why the single greatest thing married men can do to increase the amount of sex they have is hire a housekeeper to come clean once a week. Seriously, it's the best money any of you can spend. Trust me.
Patrick H. writes:
Clay,
"My fiancee and I are trying to resolve an issue and need your sound advice. She is a Georgia fan and I am a Tennessee fan who are both pretty crazy about football. We had planned the ultimate weekend in September for the UT-UGA game. Go to Athens during the day for the football game, then come back home to Atlanta Saturday night for the Outkast concert at Centennial Park. Sounds great, right?
Now one of her friends is getting married that same day and wants us to come, "because it would mean a lot". Now, I have no sympathy for people who schedule weddings during football season. Especially on the day of such a big rivalry game in your own state.
The fiancee is torn, but I skipping the wedding as the only answer.
How would a Gay Muslim handle this situation?"
You go to the UT-Georgia game and the Outkast concert. No doubts at all. If you actually feel bad about this decision, figure out how many people are going to this girl's wedding. The answer is probably 150 or more. If a crowd is that big then it's actually hard to spend much time with any individual couple. So she's lying to you about how much it would mean and she'll be fine.
Spend a bit more than you otherwise might have on her wedding gift. If you really want to rattle her, claim you were there and she just drank too much and forget about talking with you.
Enjoy the game.
