All That and a Bag of Mail: What if Groom Says No to Bachelor Party
Okay, it's mailbag time.
On Thursday.
Yes, I answered your prayers for something to entertain you while you pretended to work. And Lori will have a good article on Friday to distract you too. So don't complain too much about me making you work on Friday. I'm off to New York this afternoon for a wedding.
In the meantime, thanks to @jparker698 for this fabulously awkward fan photo of a UT family.
I'll break this down next week in our awkward fan photos, but I wanted y'all to enjoy it in the meantime.
Our old buddy Orlando Shaw, he of the 22 kids by 14 women that Outkick made famous, has been autotuned.
And whoever did this is our beaver pelt trader of the week.
Fabulous.
On to the mailbag:
Jordan writes:
"I'm in the the wedding party for one of my best friends later this summer. Most of the groomsmen live out of state so we have been emailing each other regularly. Yesterday I woke up to an email from the groom saying that he doesn't want to have a bachelor party. I am very worried about this, how can I talk him off the ledge? FYI we are all around 26. He has never been married, no kids, he's dating her for almost 10 years and he loves to party."
This is an incredibly ominous sign for you, your friends, and the groom.
Assuming it's not something that's 100% his choice -- for instance, let's say he recently realized he has a drinking problem, has entered AA and doesn't want to share that with everyone -- then the culprit is probably the soon to be wife.
She's convinced him not to have a bachelor party.
Which means she's already cracking the whip to change him before they even get married.
Uh oh.
Let's take a circuitous route here. See, men and women enter marriage entirely differently. Odds are if you ask a man who is just about to be married what he would like to change about his fiancee you'll get very generalized answers. Lots of guy answers would involve sex, some would involve being allowed to spend more time with friends, but very few would be specific in nature.
The easy analogy here is, ask a single man what he'd like his actual wedding to be like. Most single men have very sketchy ideas at best. They have no idea what church they'd like, they have no idea where the reception should be, they have no real idea how many people they would invite, basically every detail is completely wide open for single men.
This is because most of us have given it no thought at all.
Whereas most women know the answer to these questions before they even meet the man they will marry.
The same is true of marriage.
Women have clearly delineated ideas and plans for how they want to change the men they're marrying. They like us okay as we are, but the real reason they're marrying us is because they've convinced themselves that with enough work and effort they can turn us into the men they wish we were. Put simply, all women want to change us.
Whereas lots of men, and I firmly believe this, really just want their wives to stay the exact same as they were before we were married, women want change.
So not having the bachelor party is about change.
And some change can be very good for newly married men.
For instance, there's a reason that married men live longer than unmarried men. It's because your wife discourages you from lots of the potentially deadly behavior that your friends encourage. If you survive your twenties these dangerous decisions turn into awesome stories. But some of us don't survive.
So all change is not bad, far from it.
But some change can be too abrupt and lead to a severing of your before and after marriage life. That is, your friend turns into a completely different person before and after marriage. This makes zero sense because it really tells us much more about the woman he's marrying than it does about him.
That is, some women are so desperate to get married that they're willing to marry someone they want to change completely. Hell, some women want to get married so bad they marry guys they don't even like. Initially your friend is just trying to placate the woman -- true story, my dad -- now married for over forty years -- once pulled me aside and said in a dead serious tone that the key to a successful marriage was three words -- "Placate. The. Woman." That's definitely necessary at times, but if all you ever do is try to keep your wife from getting angry, then eventually the house divided against itself cannot stand.
If a new wife tries to change her new husband completely then eventually there are only two options: 1. his friendship with you is over 2. divorce
My worry here is that your friend's fiancee is well on the path to trying to change him completely. Worse, she's such a bitch about the bachelor party that your friend finds it easier to agree with her about not doing something that he truly wants to do, than to fight it out with her now.
This is an awful sign. He should fight for the bachelor party not just because the bachelor party will be fun, but because of what a refusal to have a bachelor party signifies.
His battle is just beginning, and right now he's decided to turn tail and lose.
(Note: Again, if it's truly his decision then it probably means something big has come up in his life. That's important for you to know as well. I'm blaming the fiancee because I think that's the most likely reason to not have a bachelor party, but that theory could be wrong).
Also, it's important to note the same advice can go the other way for woman for women marrying controlling men. Except this is even scarier because the kind of men who are incredibly controlling are also the kind of men who are likely to be physically abusive.
Basically, someone, male or female, who wants to control their partner is really not the kind of person you or your friends should want to marry or date.
Jerman writes:
"From 2003-2007, USC was favored in 58 straight games. Coming into this season Alabama has been favored in 41 straight. Barring some major changes, Alabama will be favored in 13 games this year (they will likely be favored in all games even if they lose a game and fail to make the SEC championship game). In 2014, the only games they could potentially be underdogs in are Texas A&M, LSU and Florida.
Josh C. writes:
"Do you think a devout fan of their favorite SEC football team would let the team's starting quarterback sleep with his girlfriend/wife if it meant an undefeated season?"
Rob L. writes:
"Do you think your average Alabama football fan would be willing to pimp out his wife or girlfriend if it meant the 5 star athlete who hooked up with said wife would commit to Alabama?"
Really, what you're asking here is an even more fascinating question, how many men like their football team more than their wife or girlfriend? I would love to poll Southern men and find out what they would say if this was the option: "You can get divorced or never watch your favorite SEC team play again, which do you chose?"
Can you imagine those results?
By the way, this goes for women too. Lots of women would probably leave their husbands over giving up their favorite SEC team.
Can Outkick contract with a legitimate polling company and pay for this poll?
I'm serious about this, someone get me in touch with a company who can make this happen.
Okay, taking your questions in order.
First, I'd say the team matters here. Hell, Auburn fans might be willing to pimp out their wife or girlfriend just for a win over Saban this year. If you're a Kentucky, Mississippi State, Ole Miss, Vandy, Mizzou, South Carolina or Arkansas football fan, this really might be the only chance you would ever have of winning a national title in football.
So these teams would all rate at a higher level than, say, an Alabama or Florida fan where you assume you're going to win national titles again soon anyway.
You also have to break down the age range of the guys in conjunction with their team.
For instance, an 18 year old Alabama fan -- who will have undoubtedly outkicked his coverage -- isn't making that trade because he's got three titles in four years and his team is favored to win another one this year. He takes titles for granted, so there's a 0% chance he makes this trade. Whereas, a 92 year old Tennesseee football fan would probably smother his wife with a pillow to win a national title before he died. So he's 100% making that sex trade.
Breaking it down by age range with all teams rolled into the equation:
18-40 -- I think the percentage is fairly low, like 10%. You're relatively young and your wife or girlfriend is probably pretty good looking. You figure there's a decent chance that your team will win a title again in your life. (The caveat here is that if you're young and single you can just pick a new girlfriend. But I still think it's a substantial minority.)
41-60 -- This is a broad age range, but I think we're around 40% by this age. The funniest thing about SEC fandom is that the older you get, the more it matters to many. That is, SEC football fandom seems to represent an inverse maturity. When you're a young kid, all you care about is your team winning. Then most guys get busy in life and from the ages of 18-45, you're just there for the fun of it. (College kids care so much less about winning and losing because their lives are so much better than the rest of us.) But then up until about 45 you're busy with the rest of your life. By the age of 45, you have a pretty good idea what your life is going to be like. You're not suddenly going to become CEO of a major company or get elected President if you haven't been busting your ass working on this since you graduated from college.
So once you get past 45 or 50 you start to wind down and embrace your passions a bit more.
By now hopefully you're financially secure, you're unlikely to have young kids unless you've remarried to a younger wife in the midst of a mid-life crisis.
Some guys care less as they age, but there's a substantial percentage -- Harvey Updyke is their patron saint -- who care more and more as they age because they have less and less to distract them from their passions.
That's why...
60 + -- it's like 90%.
You should check my email sometime, old dudes care so much more about their favorite team winning did they did when they were in college.
It's crazy.
On the Bama fan question, we're probably talking a solid one in three.
Better question that you didn't ask, what percentage of women, single or married, would sleep with their favorite team's starting quarterback if no one else would know?
For instance, what percentage of Bama fan women would sleep with AJ McCarron right now if no one else would find out?
95%?
AJ's probably at 35% for Bama fan men too.
Cliff writes:
"I know that this would never happen but wouldn't it make sense to have fellow schools working compliance on each other rather than on themselves? Could we eliminate the NCAA altogether if each conference just drew names on who they were keeping an eye on? Imagine how much tougher it would be for Auburn to cheat if Alabama's compliance people were parked in the office down the hall. Am I way off base here?"
No, this is genius.
If every school in the country's compliance department was flipped to their most hated rival and vice versa, the SEC would be the cleanest conference in America.
Nothing improper would happen.
The flip at Auburn's compliance department would be the funniest.
They go from seeing absolutely nothing -- "What Cam Newton's walking through campus with a bag full of cash accidentally dropping 100's? Pshaw, boys will be boys. Nothing to see here." -- to the most zealous monitors on earth. "Are we really sure T.J. Yeldon paid for that haircut?"
This is actually brilliant.
Can you imagine an SEC Network reality show on compliance as it presently exists? It's like a CSI Investigation in reverse. Everyone is trying to prove that no crime was committed even though there's a dead body on the floor.
Allegation: "Okay, Trent Richardson has 14 cars, but according to his income tax return his family's income was $8,496 in 2012. His car payments in 2012 were $212,845.16 and he has no job."
Bama compliance official: "Okay, how do we make this look legit? Go."
Jimmy writes:
"I've been watching the HBO show Entourage recently and it made me wonder: would you rather be in a movie star's entourage, like Vinnie Chase or would you rather be in Johnny Manziel's entourage?"
You're just now watching Entourage? Did you just get an email address too?
I can't wait until you discover the Andy Griffith Show.
To answer your question though, it has to be movie star's entourage. The movie star lives in a mansion in a city filled with women whose lifelong dream is to sleep with famous actors. Plus, you're insanely wealthy. Robert Downey, Jr. just got fifty million for a single movie.
Being in Manziel's entourage would be really fun, but how many women really know Manziel?
No matter where you are in America every woman knows Leonardo Dicaprio.
You didn't ask, but I think a hedge fund guy could be the wildest to hang out with.
These guys are making insane money, money that no one in the history of the world has made in a year. Last year some guy named David Tepper made $2.2 billion dollars managing a hedge fund.
$2.2 billion!
That's over six million dollars a day.
Over $40 million a week.
That makes pro athlete money look like spare change.
Can you imagine what trouble he and his associates could get into in Vegas?
Hell, what does his top secretary make a year?
Like ten million?
I want to watch that television show.
Brian T. writes:
"I'm at Disney World this week and I can tell you that Texas A&M is by far the most jacked up fan base in America. I've seen almost two pieces if Aggie gear for every one of all other schools combined. I've decided that given Disney is a fairly neutral observation ground and that fans love to wear their gear when they expect to be in a crowd of people from other places, this must be an extremely accurate measure of fan base excitement. Anything wrong with my logic here? This is how I occupy my mind while my kids ride Dumbo."
Right now A&M fans are like the high school kid's whose girlfriend promised to sleep with them for the first time at prom.
And it's like two weeks untl prom. Only that two weeks has stretched on for a year now.
Just complete and total giddiness.
I guarantee you there are A&M fans who wake up every morning and one of the first things they think is, "Did I dream all this or did A&M really join the SEC, we went 11-2 and our quarterback won the Heisman trophy?"
So your Disney analysis seems pretty fair given that Disney is a cross-section of all SEC fan bases in the summer. (Leaving aside Kentucky fans, who sold their kidneys for SEC tournament tickets in Nashville and already know that Disney doesn't accept food stamps for tickets.)
Your Dumbo plan is also more acceptable than what I did while I was at Disney World and my kids were waiting on rides -- ranking the Disney princesses by hotness.
...
Lori will also have an article up on Friday that you guys will love.
Hope everyone has a great weekend.
