Thanks to reader Alyson for the latest link to the latest Hitler parody. This time he reacts to Tebow's return to football.
Lane Kiffin, hate him, love him, think he's crazy or a genius, you can't deny he's bold. Fortune favors the bold, and at least in this case Lane Kiffin locks down his first beaver pelt trader of the week. On to the all that and a bag of mail: John P. writes:
Rotnei Clarke?
While watching the UT-Ark game with a friend last night after several pregame beers we were legitimately amazed to discover this fact. Is the spelling Slavic? Did you find this as baffling as we did? Also, while watching Lost after the game we came to the conclusion that you look like Sayid. BGID!
Yes, people confuse me with Sayid all the time. They say, hey wait, is that a white guy with a beard or a former Republican Guard soldier in the Iraqi army? But Sayid is BGID. Except when he got shot with the dart and Hurley had to save him.
As for Rotnei Clarke, I agree. I bet they don't give him his hotel room key when he checks in on the road. In fact, and this is a hypothetical, do you think being named Rotnei is worth an extra star in recruiting? Some guy at Rivals looks at his stats, sees he's a good player, notes his name is Rotnei, and assumes he can dunk?
I think so. I had to go to Arkansas and see what his parents names were. From the Arkansas website: "Born July 20, 1989, he is the son of Conley and Christine Clarke."
If Conley and Christine had thought to add the apostrophe he would have been an All-American.
Chris B. writes:
Clay,
I am a UT grad working on my PhD at Ohio State. Love the fact that Tennessee canceled school today because it was too cold. The wind chill this morning in Columbus was -30 and the door to my apartment was frozen shut.
As much as I miss the South, Columbus is not a bad place. It is actually quite easy to be an SEC fan here. I never catch any heat when wearing my orange around town. Seems like OSU fans are so used to losing to the SEC that they just drop their head in shame. As bad as this season was, I always had a feeling that I could make an outrageous claim like UT would be a 14 point favorite in a game with OSU and get most OSU fans to agree with me.
Last Monday, I wore a UT sweatshirt to class. After class, another student approached me and began talking SEC football. This immediately cleared the area around us. The student told me that he was a UF grad and loved being an SEC fan in Ohio. We talked for several minutes and I became aware that there were several more students joining the conversation. In a graduate class of 60, there were 6 SEC grads, myself and 5 from UF. It was about 10 degrees that night so no jean shorts were present although I am sure are probably part of the wardrobes. This sucks! I get to spend the remainder of the quarter hearing about our lord and savior, Tim Tebow. All I have so far is Layla Kiffin, help.
Pick a recruit, say Nu'Keese, and make up all sorts of stories about him. He can bench 450 pounds, he runs a 3.9, you name it. Then repeat this over and over whenever Tim Tebow's name comes up. If he sucks once the season starts, claim he isn't being used correctly in the offense. This is known as the Jonathan Crompton experience.
Alternatively just talk about how much Coach O can bench.
CLB writes:
Coach Kiffin: "Don't think that Nu'keese didn't think that if 22,000 people could be this loud and this supportive what would 107,000 look like. I really thank our fans for their support. And Bruce for that game plan, when you win it always helps. I also want to thank who ever painted 'Nu'Keese for Heisman' on The Rock. That helped too."
In other news, Dixieland Delight author and avid Volunteer fan Clay Trav'is was spotted in the paint section of Lowes this past weekend. When approached Mr. Trav'is was heard mumbling what sounded to be the phrase "sic semper apostrophhis".
This is such genius it was almost too complex for me. I'm assuming it was intentional. Sic semper tyrannis is what John Wilkes Boothe screamed just after assassinating Lincoln. It's also the state motto of Virginia. In Latin that loosely translates as, "Thus always to tyrants." (I took one year of Latin in 8th grade and my wife claims that I always brag about this. I disagree, but it's important that y'all should know that I had a year of Latin.) Ergo, a hypothetical me is mumbling, "Thus always to apostrophes."
That's very good stuff. So good that this high heat humor almost went over my head. The only issue I have with this hypothetical is that it makes me sound insane.
Kevin B. writes:
Clay,
My friends and I have a dispute, when you're cyber-stalking a girl and looking at her facebook profile, do you go straight to the close-up shots to see how good looking she is, or do you look for skin?
Ah, the eternal male dilemma. Do you start looking at a woman from the ground and work your way up, or do you start at the head and work your way down? I'm a ground-up guy.
So I think you have to go skin first. I confirmed this with a friend who claims he can scan through 200 photos in a few seconds while looking for a bikini facebook shot. I think that's the way you have to go.
Unless you've just broken up with a girl. You've never seen a man more crushed than when he sees his ex-girlfriend wearing a bikini, on a boat, and groups of guys are doing body shots off of her. Still one of the funniest facebook reactions I've ever seen.
Tad B. writes:
Clay,
To further support the BGID, I submit two photos courtesy of the Charlotte Observer. First is 3 time reigning Sprint Cup Champion Jimmy Johnson, who clearly believes that he must sport the beard in order to go for 4 championships in a row. Also pictured is Dale Earnhardt Jr, who had free reign over any woman before the beard, so imagine his powers now.
The beard is ascendant. Coming soon is my column on why Barack Obama growing a beard would save our country from depression.
Turner Bowling writes:
Hello Clay,
My name is Turner Bowling, and I am surrounded by your fans. Not a day goes by that your name, sense of humor, writing, and Tennessee fanhood isn't lauded by one or more of my coworkers. I am an English tutor at a small liberal arts college in Tennessee called Lincoln Memorial University, and the majority of the tutoring staff - or those with personality, anyway - drool at the very mention of UT athletics.
We spend hours a day testing the effects of today's computer monitors on the human eye, and much of the visual exercise is in the form of Tennessee highlights and Claynation fun. If I had a nickel for every time they advertised a link to your blog...well, you know how the saying goes. I'm a wannabe law student, and a fiction writer as well, so my friends in the tutoring lab think it only natural for me to pray in the direction of your home seven times a day, as they do.
The problem, Clay, is that I'm as hardcore a Kentucky fan as one 6'1", 160lb., 24 year old male can be. You can imagine the challenges I face on a daily basis. Now don't get me wrong, I'm quite the realist. Prior to the UK/UT football game each season, I make sure to remind myself, before anyone else has the chance, that my football team hasn't had success against UT a single time since the day I was born. When my orange-clad friends found themselves on the brink of admitting defeat before last year's game had even been played, it was I who stepped in to lift their spirits. I knew that tradition is a tough thing to break, and though I wanted to rub UK's "success" in my fellow tutor's faces, it seemed, well...wrong. As you know, UT found a way, and I sulked in my corner and continued to delete e-mails with links to your blog. Then basketball season began. And UK lost to VMI. I began to view tradition a little bit differently after that loss, as something akin to Santa Claus and unicorns, or Playboy models with Ph.Ds. Sure, we'd stumbled during exhibition games a time or two in the past, but these Wildcats - lacking a defined image, a NBA-caliber player, and, above all, a coach we, the fans, could believe in - seemed destined for a truly shitty season.
After that loss I received an e-mail with a link to your page containing a video with the words "UK," "VMI," and "Hitler" in the title, and for the first time I thought, "What the hell. Why not? My team sucks, why not humor my friendly UT supporters?" I laughed my ass off at that video, Clay. It picked me up when I needed a pick-me-up the most. I sent it to my father) and he loved it, as well. As you, Bruce Pearl, and Jodie Meeks are surely aware, the tide has shifted in the Wildcats' favor since the loss to VMI, but since then I've also enjoyed your writing on a regular basis. I hope to walk an educational path similar to yours, and Claynation.net proves to me that my career, and life as an SEC sports fan, might be a whole lot of fun for years to come. Thanks, Clay. Keep it up.
I almost feel bad posting this given the trapdoor that is the UK basketball season. Can you believe Billy G. has only been at Kentucky for one full season. This is just his second year.
Unbelievable, right?
Anyway, what do Kentucky fans think of Billy Clyde right now? It's okay to be an asshole if you win, but if you're an asshole and you aren't that successful then it's tough to justify your employment. Kentucky has to, absolutely has to, beat Florida on Tuesday. Already the Cats are #75 in the rpi. This makes, and this is the complete truth, Tennessee's home loss to Kentucky by far the worst defeat of the Vol season. It's starting to look like that game was a complete aberration. One of those games where one team plays their best of the season and another team plays their worst. We'll see.
Have good weekends. See y'all on Monday. By which time Lane Kiffin will have shown up at Urban Meyer's house and pissed on the mailbox.
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.
Read More...
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...
Read More...
