All That and a Bag of Mail: The Repopulating the Earth Fantasy Draft

Okay, it's mailbag time.

Apologies for falling a day behind on part two of the bachelor party column, but now I'm caught up and it's mailbag time. Meaning you get two long articles from me this Friday to help the weekend get here faster than you could have hoped. (I know you're not working today).

Props to Gabby Douglas for her gold medal win, she's our beaver pelt trader of the week.

Without further ado, on to the mailbag:

Kyle A. writes:

"You talk a lot about women as lottery picks.  Let's say the apocalypse happens, you're a single guy, and you manage to get the 5th pick in the "choose a mate to repopulate the earth" draft.  What does your draft board look like.  Let's assume for reproductive reasons all women in the draft must be under 30. Go."

This is such a typical male question.

One of my best friends, and I'm not making this up at all, regularly pretends that the world is about to end whenever he's in a crowded elevator and he has to pick a woman to repopulate the Earth with from inside that elevator.

Seriously, he does this.

Still.

And he's over thirty.

Meanwhile, I don't think there was ever a classroom I've ever been inside that I couldn't have told you, within ten seconds, which girl I would choose to sleep with if the world was ending and we had to repopulate the Earth. I'm not kidding, like ten seconds. Hell, what's scary is I could probably still tell you a bunch of these girls. Like 9th grade geometry my choice was a girl named Jinaki Stallworth, 7th grade P.E. Jessica Benefield, 10th grade English, my teacher Miss Henry, God, she was really hot. (All of these girls are real and their top Google result may now become this article. I'm sure they're thrilled.)  

Anyway, this is a great question, but a confusing hypothetical because it assumes that the apocalypse has happened, but a. I've survived b. I'm now single and my genes are being used to stock the new Earth, which is an awful decision c. the women who have survived are not horribly disfigured from surviving the apocalypse -- which makes me think there must have been some hot women chamber that dove into the earth to allow them to survive unscathed. Either that or a spaceship that waited out the apocalypse in space orbit and e. it assumes that other men also survived and we're now drafting women, who have no actual choice who they should reproduce with and if we don't select these women who have survived, what, we prevent them from breeding?

So all of this is confusing.

Your premise is, however, sound, which is let's assume the earth is about to be destroyed and there are only a few people, in this case five women, who we can save. How do we pick those five women? Undoubtedly, I would not be preserved as the ideal male specimen -- unless SEC football jokes are suddenly the most valuable commodity left to protect -- but which women should be preserved as the best to repopulate the earth?

I'm really torn here because clearly the most valuable attribute would be intelligence. Otherwise you'd just end up with a lot of really good looking stupid people, which would probably not serve our population well. So what you're really asking me to pick is five famous people that everyone would know. What's more, I have no idea how smart most celebrity women are. Plus, if there's only ten people on Earth, can you imagine how awful life would be if you were surrounded by five idiot women? Dumb guys are tough to deal with, but dumb women are so much worse because in this situation they'd all be catty and trying to kill each other.

I. Hate. Dumb. Women.

Especially if we're repopulating the Earth with them.

My own wife is over thirty, but she's brilliant and hot, so I'd put her into the repopulation mix if it was possible since I actually know her. Especially because we have gorgeous kids so we know her hotness just destroys my averageness when we breed.  

But since that's not possible here are my five choices:

1. Natalie Portman

Positives: Brilliant, hot, Harvard grad who has already produced one child so we know she can have children, which is clearly the most important part of the repopulation draft.  

Negative: She's actually 31. So I'm already breaking the rules here.

2. Scarlett Johansson

The knee socks will keep her warm in the cave!

Positives: Look, she seems smart. I have no idea if she's actually smart. She's 28.  

Negatives: Supposedly got divorced from Ryan Reynolds because she didn't want to have children. Countering out the negative: but surely with the fate of the world's population at stake and no movie scripts or movies to distract her, she'd be willing to procreate.

3. Kate Upton

Positives: Birthing hips. Also, milk to spare.

Negatives: Potentially dumb as a rock. YouTube no longer exists. Nor does recorded music so doing the Cat Daddy isn't that helpful. Once she has children her breasts will make catching prey nearly impossible.

Okay, I'm striking Kate Upton from consideration.  

3. Candace Parker

Positives: Perhaps the most-skilled athlete of her generation, tall, fast, beautiful. Also, she seems pretty smart.

Negative: Was willing to ruin her gene pool by marrying Shelden Williams. Which, honestly, might be a positive since it proves she will sleep with anyone when repopulation becomes necessary.

4. Lolo Jones

Positives: She's an incredible athlete and she's hot. Presumably chasing down food would be important again in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Lolo would give you a good shot of producing incredible athlete offspring. She's also a virgin so she's unlikely to bring any communicable sexually transmitted diseases into our new utopia.

Negatives: Could be a lesbian. I'm not trying to be negative here -- after all, I'm gay in Alabama -- but she's a virgin, what if it turns out she doesn't like men? Like all this time she's been waiting and expected to be blown away by men, but when the time really gets here, she's completely unimpressed by the experience. That could be a big repopulation risk.  

5. Chrissy Teigen

Positives: I follow her on Twitter and she's really, really funny. And not just funny in a "I'm smoking hot so you give me more credit for my sense of humor than it's actually worth" way, she's truly funny. Plus, she's a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model who is, you know, kinda hot.

Negatives: Seems to be a finicky eater. Would squirrel for two decades in a row keep her happy? 

Jerome R. writes:

You have 4 years to train before the 2016 Rio Olympics. What is one game/sport that you realistically think you could qualify for? I'll even get you the benefit of representing another country if you think it would give you a better shot.

FYI: Most popular response I have heard so far have been handball and speed walking.

Realistically, I would qualify for none, but the country caveat is key here. For instance, what if you were a really fast American, but not fast enough to qualify for the Olympics. But then you moved to Saudi Arabia to make the Olympics. Yes, you'd have to wear a burka and you couldn't drive a car, but you would totally dust all those Saudi women in a race. 

So that's the angle here, you'd have to move to a new country and adopt a new sport. 

In America, I don't think you could qualify for anything, no matter the sport and no matter how much time you had to practice.   

All sports that require skilled body movement or speed are out. i.e. you may think you're a good swimmer or a fast runner, but you're wrong unless you've received a scholarship to college to do them. Like, I'm sure there's someone in Yemen who would dust you in the 100 meters. In the same vein, you're not going to be able to get better in gymnastics or diving or something that requires starting in childhood and is immensely complicated. And you're not going to make a team sport because that would require you to be selected for a team which would never happen. Finally, I'm assuming that Olympic bids are partially decided by the region of the world you're in, otherwise that movie about the Jamaican bobsled team makes no sense at all.   

So with all these parameters at stake I think you need to pick something that is more "skill" than sport. That is, you don't have to move much and there aren't a ton of complexities involved.

With that in mind, archery is my field. 

Like, if I just spent the next four years in Qatar shooting arrows, I think I could become good enough to qualify for the Olympics from the Middle East. Or if I moved to Kenya and just shot arrows for the next four years, I think I could qualify from Africa. 

Note: I've never actually shot an arrow in my life. 

Tyler C. writes:

"How bad are the new Auburn practice shorts?"

Atrocious.

Especially for me because a year ago, right after the SMU Thirty for Thirty special came on, my wife argued that eventually short shorts were going to come back in style for men. 

I told her she was crazy. 

Then this. 

What's the first thing she tells me after she sees these photos? I told you so. 

But you know what's even worse than these shorts, the rolled up sleeves being held in place.

You think Nick Saban lets this happen?

Hell, no. Nick Saban would choke you to death with that scrunchy that you're using to keep your upper shoulders from getting too hot on the football field.  

By the way, am I the only person who is certain Gene Chizik is wearing these shorts with the Auburn leather jacket on the sideline at practice? Can someone photoshop this for me? 

Kevin E. writes:

Reading your bachelor party column. Why vodka cranberry's? Are you a 21 year old sorority girl?

I like fruity drinks.

(Insert "your gay" joke here).

Seriously, though, when you have bottle service you get mixers and juices provided to make your drinks. The best bottle of liquor to get is vodka because everyone will drink it. Sure, we had whiskey too, but I'm not drinking straight whiskey and I'm not a fan of whiskey and cokes. Gin, tequila, bourbon, whiskey, lots of people might not like those liquors. 

But everyone drinks vodka.  

Once you decide on vodka as the liquor, what's the best mixer? Tonic is disgusting. I'm not drinking vodka and water because I'm not a 74 year old alcoholic. So my options are Red Bull, orange juice, or cranberry juice. And I like cranberry juice the best of those three.

So I drank vodka cranberry's all day.

Ben S. writes:

In your opinion, what's the biggest disappointment of the Olympics so far?

I haven't seen Pippa Middleton anywhere.

Which is just a national disgrace.

The Brits should be ashamed.