All That and a Bag of Mail

It’s time for the mailbag. 

Our beaver pelt trader of the week goes to whoever can figure out this Cleveland mystery. Who keeps egging this old man’s house? Read this story. It’s wacky as hell. Over 100 stealth egg attacks?

On to the mailbag.

Chris writes:

“I don’t care about UFC in general, but Ronda Rousey is pretty fun to watch. We’ve been debating this for the past two weeks, what percentage of average American men between the ages of 18 and 40 could beat Rousey in a UFC bout?” 

A small percentage. Let me explain why. First, submission holds. If you don’t know how to defend against a submission hold, she’d grab you and you’d be done. As an example, a couple of years ago Rousey was in the Fox green room and put me in an arm bar. I’m six foot, 180, so I’m a lot taller than her and I outweigh her by forty pounds. But once she put me in that arm bar, she would have broken my arm. I couldn’t get away. I would have tapped out immediately because how am I going to make dick jokes on the Internet with a broken arm?

Second, most guys aren’t in that good of shape. Remember all those tough guy competitions where guys come in wearing jean shorts and start throwing wild, off balance haymakers? This is how a solid quarter of American men would approach this bout. They’d come in just throwing wild punches. Rousey would avoid most of these and the average guy who adopted this strategy would be able to throw punches for just a couple of minutes before he was totally gassed. Once you get tired it gets pretty easy to get you on the ground, which leads to a submission hold.

Remember, most guys aren’t very good at fighting. Only a small percentage of us have ever been trained in fighting at all. If you haven’t trained as a fighter she would probably beat you in a fight.   

So I’m saying Rousey could beat 90% of men between the ages of 18 to 40. The ones she couldn’t beat would probably just outphysical her or have had substantial amounts of combat training.

So for the vast majority of you reading this right now — Ronda Rousey would beat your asses. 

I think we need to see Rousey fight a guy.

Imagine if you got a famous guy to train to fight her and made it a 24/7 TV special? It would be like a 21st century battle of the sexes. Everyone would watch this. 

Who’s the best famous guy to fight Rousey? Can you imagine Justin Bieber, who is pretty much her size, getting his ass kicked by Rousey? We need nominations for this. With the right guy, I think we’d be talking about tens of millions in pay-per-view buys. Maybe one hundred million or more.

Bunches of you on email, Twitter, and Facebook.

“What about Curt Schilling going after Twitter bullies?” 

Good for Schilling.

I’ve been writing on this a ton over the past couple of years. There needs to be accountability on Twitter for what people Tweet to others. If you showed up in Schilling’s front yard and yelled what these guys Tweeted at his daughter, you’d be arrested for doing so. 

Why should you be able to do it online and face no consequences at all? My point’s pretty simple — we should enforce the same laws offline and online. That means if you threaten crimes of physical violence online, you should be prosecuted for them.

What’s the number one response whenever trolls get confronted and held accountable for what they say online? They buckle, turn into wusses and say they didn’t mean it. You know the number one way to prove that you don’t mean something? Don’t say it to begin with.  

I think Twitter is getting proactive, however. I’ve noticed something recently, I haven’t been seeing many hate Tweets on my timeline. And when I do see them sometimes they disappear when I click on the profile of the sender. So I’m wondering if Twitter is testing a hate speech policy with some verified users who get a lot of hate Tweets. (I’m pretty confident I’d fit that category). I haven’t been told this, but something is definitely up. Sure, it could be that it’s just the offseason, but over the past couple of weeks I haven’t seen hardly any hate Tweets on my mentions. I think something’s going on.

That would help.  

My editor Barry just gchatted me to write about this so I’m taking a break on the mailbag:

“What about Jim Boeheim’s penalty at Syracuse?”

Every time I see an NCAA penalty now I compare it to what the NCAA did to Bruce Pearl. I swear to God, Bruce Pearl got crushed worse than anyone in the history of college athletics. Pearl lied about taking juniors to an off-campus BBQ at his house. (A rule, by the way, that’s now legal under NCAA rules. Which basically means the NCAA acknowledged the stupidity of the rule existing in the first place). 

Pearl got three years plus eight additional games before the show cause. 

So that means Pearl was suspended over 100 games for lying about a BBQ. Meanwhile Jim Boeheim cheats for over a decade and gets nine games. 

This makes zero sense. 

Anyway, you can read my column on it today.

Geoff writes:

“What are the chances Vanderbilt’s Derek Mason makes it through the season?”

Vanderbilt went 3-9 last year, but was incredibly close to going 1-11 and posting the most losses in Commodore history. Remember, Mason’s team beat FCS Charleston Southern by one point and UMASS by three points. (The Commodores “crushed” Old Dominion 42-28). Coming off back-to-back nine win seasons, you can make a legit argument that Mason and his coaching staff replacing James Franklin and his coaching staff was the biggest coaching downgrade in SEC football history.

There’s a decent chance Mason gets fired next year, but I think it will happen at the end of the year. Honestly, we’ll know Mason’s fate by early October. The Commodores open with Western Kentucky, Georgia, and Austin Peay. Then come road games at Ole Miss and at MTSU. Figure that it’s impossible to lose the Austin Peay game and that it’s unlikely Vandy beats Georgia or Ole Miss. So what happens against Western Kentucky and MTSU? If Mason loses both, he’s finished because the Commodores will be 1-4 and other than Kentucky I don’t know what game they’d win the rest of the way. That means Mason would have back-to-back 3-9 or worse seasons.

So really the entire year boils down to what happens against Western Kentucky and MTSU. Win both and Mason would be 3-2 after the first five games, maybe he can beat Kentucky and get to 4-8 and argue things have improved enough to justify a third year.

But if I had to wager on it right now, I think Mason will be gone at the end of 2015 after another 3-9 season.  

John writes:

“There is a total of about 10 of us where I work, and that includes management.

One of our managers, all kidding aside, smells so awful. Literally everyday. It has become a talking point with every single one of us, all of the time. Including the other two managers.

It’s sad, but it has become a big joke. The problem is, is that no one seems to want to be the one that tells a grown man in his 30s, that he smells.

And a lot of the time, it’s his breath as well. It’s disgusting. I understand why no one wants to be charged with this, but I feel that someone has to. I’ve seen customers react to it. It’s not just us.

I typically don’t have a problem with confrontation. I’ve stated many times that I would be the one to tell him, as I feel that I could honestly do it without hurting his feelings or embarrassing him. As much as that would be possible obviously.

But my co-workers are afraid that it would make my work relationship with him awkward. The reason why they say “Don’t shoot the messenger”, is because the messenger gets shot right???

But I honestly can not stand it anymore. It will be hot soon, which will make this worse, and management doesn’t have the stones to say anything to him.

I’m afraid he will find out in a truly embarrassing way.

So, what should I do?”

I would tell him privately, just you and him. But since he’s your superior, I would get the other managers to promise you in advance that they won’t allow you to be fired. It’s really the job of the other managers to have this talk. It could impact your relationship with him, but I don’t think it will if you talk to him without anyone else around.  

If you really want to be smart about avoiding the blame for being the messenger, you could fake a customer complaint and say someone walked in and handed you a letter addressed to the store.

That gives you an opening to talk to him about it.

Good luck.  

Someone whose email that I lost writes:

“In honor of Frank Underwood and your ISIS buddies…

How far away are we from the first Kickstarter-funded presidential candidate?

The first person to gain traction doing it will save a fortune (tens of millions? hundreds of millions?) in fund raising because it will get a TON of online coverage, leading to prime-time coverage and snowballing them into the debates.

I think getting past the novelty of it all and into an actual debate to show prowess may be one of the the main difficulties. It also probably only works for the first one or two people. After that, it’s a knockoff.

The candidate is probably someone who doesn’t want to go the typical party route, so will have a hard time fitting in with traditional parties, which you must have some portion of to even gain momentum. The candidate has to be of actual pedigree, but chose to try this versus traditional fundraising… That may raise red flags to certain donors.

What are the other pitfalls here? Is this an actual possibility?”

The problem isn’t attention and money, it’s getting on all the ballots to justify getting into the debates. That requires a major organization that is well prepared and planned out. So I don’t think a Kickstarter campaign would work. Also, Kickstarter exists to fund business ideas that don’t exist, right? Are there really popular political ideas that no one is advocating for?  

Plus, I feel like I can already predict exactly what’s going to happen in 2016. It’s going to be Hillary Clinton running against Jeb Bush. Bush is probably going to need a Latino or minority running mate since the number of white voters continues to plummet. Since I don’t think he’s going to double down in Florida and take Marco Rubio — although he could — don’t overlook crazy ass Ted Cruz in Texas. Or Condoleeza Rice. 

Clinton will pick a white man from a swing state. My best bet early on would be Senator Mark Warner from Virginia. Warner had a tight race in 2014, but if the Democrats win Virginia they’re probably going to win the White House.

Hillary Clinton is a prohibitive favorite to win the 2016 election. Could she lose? Sure. But I’ll be pretty stunned if she isn’t the next president.   

Katie writes:

“I’d definitely vote for you and your Rational Party if you ran for politics (Vote Clay Travis: He’s offended that you’re offended).

Your column on the Oscars made me think more about what I had been bothered by in Patricia Arquette’s acceptance speech. I am a late-twenties female, and of course I think I should be paid equally with a man if I do the same job at the same quality of work. But I think I hated her speech, because here is this millionaire guilt tripping me into being vocal about that cause. I would prefer not to be vocal about that because I feel like if I am going to pick a feminist battle, I’d rather pick something like allowing female children to get an education in the middle east etc. Is Patricia Arquette using her privileged position to actually take a stand, or is this just posturing for popularity from the mob?

Also, should I stop sending emails to my congressman in favor of using the US Postal Service if I actually want to be heard?”

My biggest problem with most “stands” that people take now is there’s no one on the other side. Everyone is opposed to racism and sexism. Everyone supports the troops. So I feel like you do, that people are looking to increase their popularity by being more in favor of really popular things than you are. 

It’s like if kids argued over who liked birthday cake more. 

What’s more, nothing is that bad in America if you have a global perspective and actually look outside our country. Poor people in our country would be the richest people in the vast majority of the rest of the world. From a global perspective our poor people aren’t actually that poor. They have food and shelter and, often, cell phones and laptops and cable television.   

I’m with you on educating girls in other countries. In fact, do you know the number one and number two most effective ways to end global poverty? Educate women and give them them access to affordable birth control. That’s it. If women are educated and have access to birth control, they have less kids. That allows them to provide advantages to the children they do have, education levels of their children improve, the standards of living around the world surge.

We spend tons of time fighting about all sorts of things that don’t matter. If we just educate women and give them birth control, the world instantly becomes a better place.