All That and a Bag of Mail: Bobby Petrino's Tears Edition
By the time you read this I will be in Greenwood, Mississippi attending the wedding that followed our epic bachelor party in Las Vegas.
Our beaver pelt trader of the week is Usain Bolt, who is the fastest human in the history of the world. And if that doesn't get you the beaver pelt trader of the week what does?
Now that we've got that out of the way it's time for fun pictures from SEC fans. All of these images were emailed or Tweeted to me recently. I saved them on my iPhone and then proceeded to forget about them until my wife asked if I had a picture of our son saved. So apologies for not remembering who sent the next three pictures to me, but Tweet me and I'll give you Twitter props.
Up first, it's another Bama fan who seems unable to comprehend that his truck doesn't have to have a favorite team too.
How else to explain the Bama fan who turned the BCS title game into an homage to Nick Saban?
Yes, that really is Nick Saban giving Les Miles a spanking on the back of a truck with an oversize load tag.
I mean, who even thinks of doing this?
I'll tell you, an Alabama fan, that's who.
Not to be outdone, Kentucky fans, who refuse to relinquish their title of dumbest fan base in America, evidently feel the need to remind you of all their titles at the same time. On their trucks no less.
Notwithstanding all of the titles and the Wildcat on the bumper, I think the UK rear window wrap is my favorite. Because what happens when this truck's owner has to put down his rear gate to unload meth supplies? You can't tell which team the truck is rooting for!
And just when you thought that only Alabama fans got crazy tattoos of dead coaches, along comes the Tennessee fan with the General Neyland tattoo on his forearm.
Yes, that appears to be a bloody helmet above the Neyland tattoo.
Bet he's single, ladies. Line up now.
Now that I've got these three pictures up to make your Friday stellar, it's time to dive in to the mailbag.
A ton of Twitter followers asked me about Bobby Petrino on Thursday. So I'm collating all of those questions into one mailbag question:
"Do you think Bobby Petrino's tears are genuine? If you were an AD would you hire him? And where will he coach next year?"
Look, I believe that Petrino is really crushed that he's not coaching a top ten team at Arkansas this fall. So he might not even feel that bad about what he did and the tears would still be genuine. Plus, if you don't think the tears are genuine then you're assuming he's an amazing actor. How many non-acting men can cry on demand? It's almost impossible to do. Further, I also assume that cheating on your wife, who you want to stay married to, is pretty crushing to discuss. Not to mention humiliating your four kids. Hell, if I did this I would cry too. I think just about every man would cry discussing these errors with Joe Schad on ESPN. If Petrino hadn't cried then people would say he was heartless.
So you really can't win on the crying angle.
Now, whether or not Petrino will actually change as a coach at all? I have my doubts.
But it's the South so the Petrino redemption tour is all about putting this narrative to bed (without the mistress). We have a lying cheat who was busted for being a lying cheat. Then he was fired for hiring his mistress. Now he's acknowledged his mistakes and basically asked for public forgiveness while crying. If you ask for forgiveness and admit you sinned, as Petrino did, then the South is a forgiving place. This story is effectively over.
From here the question becomes, what jobs will be open and who will hire him?
I think a lot of teams will hire Petrino because he wins and because what he's done isn't that bad in the grand scheme of collegiate athletics. He hasn't ever had NCAA issues and left a program just before probation hit. We knew Petrino was an ass before he cheated on his wife with an Arkansas employee and he's still an ass after cheating on his wife with an Arkansas employee.
But you know what else Petrino can do? Score points, put butts in seats, and win football games.
Those talents are in short supply.
So he'll get hired.
What jobs will be open?
You know Kentucky and Arkansas will be open at season's end.
If I was the AD at Kentucky, where Joker Phillips is definitely going to win four games or less and get fired, I'd be very comfortable hiring Petrino. Ticket sales have plummeted, enthusiasm is virtually nonexistent, and who else are you getting that you know for certain can win in the SEC? Kentucky hiring Petrino is an absolute no brainer.
If I was at Arkansas I'd really explore hiring him back too. Truly. Why? Because your fan base would support you and you could argue that Petrino had served an appropriate penalty for his transgressions. Hell, you could even lock him in to the same contract as before just for much less money and save the university ten million dollars in the process. Sure, you'd get killed nationally, but you're Arkansas, big deal, you get mocked nationally already. Would you rather get ripped for rehiring Petrino or take a chance on a decade's SEC irrelevance?
Please stop with all the emails about recruit's mommas being upset. Trust me, they'll get over it. There's another Arkansan who proves this perfectly, look no further than Bill Clinton. Do you know who supported Bill Clinton the strongest when his term was over? Women. The most forgiving women in our society are mommas. With what their sons and daughters put them through, they have to be.
Now, the real wild card here is Tennessee.
If Dooley tanks and gets fired Petrino is the only guaranteed home run hire the Vols could make. You would 100% know that Petrino would win big, sell season tickets -- renewals are down big -- , and play an exciting brand of football. Are the Vols desperate enough to do this yet or would they take a shot on another coach with a lower probability of success hoping to win the "right way?" It's a difficult call. The majority of UT fans are already saying they'd take Petrino. And that's before a fifth consecutive disappointing season.
If Dooley doesn't get it done, by November Vol fans will be foaming at the mouth for Petrino.
You want the wildest of wild cards?
The other UT, Texas, has an awful lot of fans that would love to see Mack Brown put out to pasture, Petrino in to take over the offense, and Manny Diaz given complete control of that defense.
Damn, Texas would absolutely kill with Petrino. Can you what Petrino could do with top ten caliber recruits?
Intrigued by last week's repopulating the earth with females draft, Ashley emailed her list of the top five men:
"For a little background, I asked about a dozen of my girlfriends. We all have different backgrounds, alma maters, and careers. However, we were all born in the south. Also, everyone is between the ages of 25 and 30.
I assumed that I would get the same few answers and that would be that. Let me tell you, this was well thought about and discussed. I got a wide variety of answers, and everyone had their reasons or attributes that were important.
Here was our five (with honorable mentions):
Tim Tebow-
He is the only one who got more than three votes (5). He is kind, smart, athletic, and faithful. He is a worldly person and, with all his missions, he can surely build and survive in less than ideal conditions. If the apocalypse does happen, his rock solid faith may be the only thing to get you through. Also, he’s not bad on the eyes and, not to mention, athletic. To be fair, this also came from people who said, “I don’t like him, but the world may be a better place if...”
George Clooney-
He came in second place. He is older, hopefully wiser, and seems like he has a lot of life experience that may be necessary to repopulate.
Ryan Reynolds-
Have you seen him? He is perfect.
Matt Damon-
Oddly enough, no one who voted for him could give me a reason.
Barack Obama- There isn’t a great way to explain this without sounding creepy.
Honorable mentions:
Mark Zuckerberg- He is brilliant. Surely, he would know how to put things back together.
Justin Timberlake- He is cute, athletic, and seems like hecould be entertaining. Also, since he has a restaurant, we’re assuming/hopinghe can cook."
Note: I asked my wife this same question and she immediately responded, Bear Grylls. Because you know he'd survive, build shelter, and kill animals, then he'd teach everyone else how to survive, and he'd also be able to teach all the kids born into a new society how to survive too. She also pointed out that he's really good looking and in great shape and at this point I stopped listening because I think there's a pretty good chance that if my wife ever met Bear Grylls she would leave me for him.
But, I'm not going to argue with her, Bear Grylls would probably end up the leader of the post-apocalyptic world.
If you're wondering who my five women were, you can read last week's mailbag here.
Robin asks on Twitter:
"If you picked a school other than Vandy in the SEC which one would you pick?"
Oh, man, I'm going to make enemies here, but I'm treating this entirely as an academic decision.
I'd go with the best academic schools. I'm not familiar enough with Texas A&M to make that selection. So I'd go with Florida.
Aside from academics, my rationale is simple, I really like Florida grads.
I know, I know, this kills my UT bona fides, but I've met Florida grads all over the country and I'm always impressed by how much fun they are. Plus, as a group they're pretty damn smart. Every time I've been to Gainesville for games I've had a good time and I'm a sucker for warm weather.
Now, there are major drawbacks.
The girls have bingo wings, north Florida is kind of like hell warmed over in the summer, Gainesville isn't exactly heaven, and UF undergrad men use hair products way too much.
But you have to use your degree at some point after college. And I think UF grads are the smartest of any state school in the SEC. So Florida's my pick.
Crighton Tweets:
"Starting 1L at Georgia Law in a few days. Keys to first year success in your mind? Quit before it's too late?"
I get a lot of young lawyer or law school questions. You guys have it rough right now. Jobs are few and far between, student loans are massive -- I still have $50k in Vandy student loans, FYI, so I feel your pain -- and even if you get hired at a big firm you don't have much job stability.
So my advice is to keep your perspective -- which is sometimes hard to do when you're surrounded by law students at finals time. For instance, during my first year of law school, the twin towers came down just after my morning torts class. And we didn't cancel classes because our dean didn't want the terrorists to win. Really, he said this.
About an hour after the twin towers came down I had legal writing. We were talking about correct citation of law review articles, which is one of the most mind-numbing things to do in law school, and many people were already plugged right back in to class, asking detaild citation questions while taking notes. I don't blame those kids, they were just trapped in the law school bubble, competing for the first year's grades and plum jobs, while remaining completely oblivious to everything else.
Everyone knocks themselves out over that first job, but here's the deal, you might only have your first job for a couple of years. Put it this way, I'll be at a wedding in Greenwood, Mississippi this weekend. Around 15 people from my law school class will be there. Do you know how many people have the same job they had when we graduated?
One.
Out of my class of 184 people, I'd just about guarantee that no more than 10% of us have the job we started with after graduation. That's around twenty people. Now we've been out eight years, but that's pretty illustrative of the legal market in general, no one keeps their first job for very long. Yet if you're not careful you'll let the pursuit of that first job kill three years of school.
Some of my classmates have had five or six jobs already. And no matter where you end up, about six months into your first job you would do anything to be back in law school. So don't buy in to the first job hype. Yes, you need a job, but don't assume that job will define you forever.
The other bit of advice I'd give you is to make sure you keep your outside of law school hobbies. That keeps you sane. Sometime in late August I got approached to join a serious study group. This group went on to dominate with grades, outlines, and whatnot. But I didn't join that group. Why? Because they were planning to study all day Saturday.
All fall long.
So they wanted me to miss college football games to study contracts and torts.
No thanks.
You need to escape the law and maintain your hobbies because otherwise first year of law school can make you a little bit crazy. In fact, one of my buddies at law school actually -- and I assume this was illegal but he didn't tell me until after we graduated -- used to bring a pistol to law school because he was afraid someone might flip out during finals and he wanted to be able to defend all of us.
Seriously, he did this.
And now he's a partner at a big firm in Florida.
Good luck.
@willisrush Tweets:
"What would be the most epic venue for a live fantasy football draft if money/travel weren't an issue. Paint me a Rembrandt here."
My thought is you have to stay in the United States. I mean, in theory it would be great to head off to the African savannah, stay in your own compound, draft, and then go look for lions, giraffes and crocodiles, but that's just a really cool vacation, which is different than an actual draft. So I'm eliminating all sorts of spectacular foreign locales. Plus, it would just feel wrong to be fantasy football drafting outside of America.
U.S.A! U.S.A! U.S.A!
And if you're going USA for the fantasy draft it has to be in Las Vegas.
So the question I'm answering is this, what if Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was a huge fantasy football fan and he just decided to throw the most amazing fantasy football draft ever?
Here's what I think you could make happen:
a. It has to happen in the best Las Vegas suite there is.
You have a personal chef preparing steak, lobster, whatever every person's favorite food is.
b. A retired player from each fantasy team owner's favorite team is there to announce the picks.
For instance, let's say your friend is a big Cowboys fan. How much money do you think you'd have to pay Michael Irvin to do this? All stars have quotes. For $50k you could get the Playmaker there to hang out, announce picks, and tell stories. That's nothing to Zuckerberg.
Get the list of every owner's favorite players and get them all to Vegas for the night.
c. Charles Barkley is there.
Just because, can you imagine what would happen with Charles Barkley and Michael Irvin and abundant alcohol? (And potentially crack for Irvin).
d. You hand pick your favorite strippers and have them "dress" in cheerleader uniforms.
After every pick you get a lap dance.
e. You bring the "Saved By the Bell" cast as well.
Voila.
The only real issue I see with all of this is that the fantasy draft becomes secondary. Am I really going to care who I take as my fourth wide receiver when Michael Irvin is telling old Cowboys stories? Also, how drunk would you get? This draft would inevitably end up as a drunken disaster and when you woke up the next morning only one person would have completed the draft and his team would be stacked. The rest of you would have ruined your beer-soaked laptops and the guys who slept with the strippers would all be buying the new AIDS home test.
The lesson here: sometimes pizza and beers and your friend's bootlegged wifi is a safer bet.
Anonymous former South Carolina football manager writes:
Reading your Tyler Bray column reminded me of a prank that I'm sure Bray has pulled before.
There was one former player (who was an NFL star) who was a legendary prankster; in particular his jokes were at the expense of this odd dwarfish guy named Mack who worked at the stadium for like 100 years. The “go to” prank was for this player to walk up to the equipment room window, throw his penis and nuts on the counter, cover them with a towel and say, “Hey Mack, do you have anything back there that will fit this?”
Not one time, but EVERY time, Mack unknowingly would grab the towel, shriek at the apparent girth of what was underneath, and then run away screaming. The player then laughed like a maniac and went back to his locker. This happened at least 50 times that I am aware of.
Question, provided he is physically endowed enough to pull off this prank, is there any chance that Bray hasn’t done this same stunt 100 times at UT? I think not."
If Bray can do this, he's done it.
Hell, I'm surprised Spurrier isn't still doing this at South Carolina.
Or at least asking, "You want to go for a helicopter ride?" (Drops towel and swings penis in hand like a helicopter).
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