All That and a Bag of Mail: Masters Edition

It's Friday and you aren't working anyway, time for the mailbag. 

Let's dive in. 

Our beaver pelt trader of the week is the Kentucky fan who got the 40-0 tattoo, replaced the tattoo after the Wisconsin loss to honor the 2012 Kentucky title team and then caught someone trying to steal his car. 

What a week. 

God bless you local news for being on top of that story.

Let's start with my favorite email I've received in a long time. 

"Hello Clay,

Mike from the Pornhub communications team here. I just read through your article (great read) and noticed you incorrectly spelled Pornhub. If you could please amend your spelling of "PornHub" to "Pornhub" it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Best,

Mike"






This is why opening my email every day is such a treasure. 

Of all the things taking place on the Internet Porn(h)ub sends me an email three months after an article goes up on Outkick about a recruiting analysty mistakenly linking to a porn site to request a lower case h instead of an upper case h in our article. 

Welcome to my life.  

Keith writes:

"Could you bring back the old SI "Switched at Birth" idea, where readers submit a sports figure along with their celebrity/public figure doppelganger?  My nomination for this week:  New Vols coach Rick Barnes and writer John Grisham."

This is incredible. 

Now that I've seen this I'm not going to be able to not see it. 

Andy writes:

"The ranking of the dumbest fan bases in America may be one of the most fascinating things I've ever seen. I wouldn't necessarily say the rankings were all that surprising, but the results have been insane. I read those rankings as they were coming out and to see the progression and long lasting effects of it has been incredible to follow. Through all of this, I think we can all agree that West Virginia, Kentucky basketball, and Alabama football fans have each set themselves apart from the rest of the pack and are securely the top 3 dumbest fan bases in America. Just reading your mentions also shows that these have to be 3 of the most violent fan bases in America (no surprises there either).

With this in mind, if we were to put these 3 fan bases in a battle, who do you think would be victorious? You can set the ground rules, name this battle, and pick the prize. I personally think that if they were fighting for you, it would intensify the battle but, with you being the gay Muslim himself, you would know better than me."

Okay, we have to start with some working assumptions. 

Let's begin with the premise that every member of the fan base brings the weapons they already have in their possession. There would be a lot of guns, machetes, rakes, lawnmowers with deadly rotating blades attached, you get my drift. A ton of these guys would also have huge arsenals of like ten or fifteen guns for one person. This would be their dream come true, the war they've been preparing to fight for decades.  

The next thing you have to decide is the terrain. Where do they fight? Is one army trying to conquer another army's territory? Because West Virginia would be just about impossible to conquer. The topography wouldn't allow an invasion to take place. It's impregnable.

So I think we have to pull the fan bases out to a flat landscape in the great plains states somewhere -- Braveheart style -- and allow them room to maneuver there.

The next thing you'd have to do is think about numbers of soldiers.

The state of West Virginia has a population of 1.85 million. Let's take out women and children because, after all, this is a classy war. That knocks out over half of the population, so we're down to 900,000 troops. Figure that 2/3rds of that number, a high percentage, but not a ridiculously high percentage, are Mountaineer fans who would fight for their local team's honor. That would leave us with around 600,000 West Virginia soldiers.

Now let's do the other two states. Alabama has 4.85 million people. Take out the women and children there and you're left with around 2.3 million people. Let's also assume that 2/3rds of the state of Alabama is made up of Crimson Tide fans. So we're talking about 1.5 million Alabama fans to fight. Now, here's the wrinkle, what about Auburn fans? Could West Virginia or Kentucky fans persuade Auburn fans to be the France of our dumbest fan base revoluntionary war, allying themselves with another side to wipe out the Tide once and for all? It's certainly plausible. West Virginia or Kentucky would need the Benjamin Franklin of modern day diplomacy to make it happen, but it's worth contemplating.

Finally, Kentucky has a population of 4.4 million. Running through our numbers once more, this would leave the Bluegrass State with roughly 1.35 million soldiers.  

So our break down would be thusly:

Alabama would have 1.5 million troops

Kentucky would have 1.35 million troops

West Virginia would have 900,000 troops

Given that all three states have similar demographics, I don't think education or income or weaponry would be that much different. That is the quality of the respective soldiers would be fairly even.  

So what about leadership?

This gets even more entertaining if you insist that the basketball and football coaches are co-leaders of each fan army. So you'd have Nick Saban and Avery Johnson as generals for Alabama -- Saban and Johnson would be the shortest generalship duo since Napoleon dined alone -- Mark Stoops and John Calipari helming up Kentucky, and, in what would be an incredible buddy reality show to air during the war for the rest of us to watch, Dana Holgorsen and Bob Huggins mapping out strategy for West Virginia.

So who ya got?

(By the way, we have a ton of officers in the military who read Outkick. I would love to read a full-scale analysis of our potential war from a military perspective. 

Ultimately, I just think Saban would be a better general than anyone else and so I'd pick Alabama to triumph in the war of the dumbest fan bases.

Ben writes:

"My roommates and I are all in pilot training for the Air Force. We are coming to the end, and how it works is we get a sheet with the planes and bases available to us about 3 weeks before we graduate, then based on how well we did we get our first, second, third choice (and so on) of plane/base. And so far, I'm going to graduate at the top. So it's like having the number one pick in the draft... which leads to problems.

My buddies think I should choose Hawaii because it's Hawaii and exotic blah blah blah. But I'd rather choose Delaware - because my Cowboys will play in Philly, DC, and NY at least once a year and none are more than 2 hours away. PLUS I have MLB in easy driving distance, and Atlantic City (yay gambling!) isn't more than an hour and a half. Am I crazy or should I throw down Hawaii and get the plus package to watch my beloved 'boys?"

Is this a real question? You have a choice between Hawaii or Delaware and you'd pick Delaware because you'd be closer to the Cowboys for three games a year? I mean, you could fly from Hawaii to Cowboys games in Dallas instead of driving to games in New York and Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.

You worked this hard for the first draft pick and you're about to head out there and draft Tony Mandarich. 

Your buddies are right, go to Hawaii. 

If you don't, you will be the first person in the history of mankind to choose to live in Delaware over Hawaii. 

Alex writes:

"Clay,

I'm currently a senior in college in my final month at an SEC school. Due to my internship, I have nothing to do in my final month. What should I do?"

This is easy: Go out every night and have fun. 

Revel in the lack of responsibility. 

Most of the rest of your life will be filled with obligations, I'd take advantage of having none for one last month. 

Written by
Clay Travis is the founder of the fastest growing national multimedia platform, OutKick, that produces and distributes engaging content across sports and pop culture to millions of fans across the country. OutKick was created by Travis in 2011 and sold to the Fox Corporation in 2021. One of the most electrifying and outspoken personalities in the industry, Travis hosts OutKick The Show where he provides his unfiltered opinion on the most compelling headlines throughout sports, culture, and politics. He also makes regular appearances on FOX News Media as a contributor providing analysis on a variety of subjects ranging from sports news to the cultural landscape. Throughout the college football season, Travis is on Big Noon Kickoff for Fox Sports breaking down the game and the latest storylines. Additionally, Travis serves as a co-host of The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, a three-hour conservative radio talk program syndicated across Premiere Networks radio stations nationwide. Previously, he launched OutKick The Coverage on Fox Sports Radio that included interviews and listener interactions and was on Fox Sports Bet for four years. Additionally, Travis started an iHeartRadio Original Podcast called Wins & Losses that featured in-depth conversations with the biggest names in sports. Travis is a graduate of George Washington University as well as Vanderbilt Law School. Based in Nashville, he is the author of Dixieland Delight, On Rocky Top, and Republicans Buy Sneakers Too.