All That and a Bag of Mail: Alabama Fax Girl Edition

On Wednesday, the South's national holiday -- signing day -- took over the region. Four-stars and five-stars become celebrities for putting hats on their heads. Or posing with cuddly bulldog puppies. Bulldog puppies that, sigh, it might be necessary to use as a replacement for UGA VIII given his recently untimely demise after just six games. Maybe it's time to get some new genes into that bulldog family tree. Just an idea.

In the meantime, let's go ahead and crown our beaver pelt trader of the week. Her name is Briana Baisden and if you ever wondered whether the people who are obsessed with recruiting suffer from a heterosexual sex deficit that would make prisoners look lame, Baisden's ascension to Internet sex symbol proves the deficit. What did Baisden do? She retrieved a letter from Alabama's fax cam -- yes, this exists -- in her Crimson Cabaret dance uniform. The resulting Internet pandemonium over her thigh's public airing even made officials in Riyadh blush. The Internet, which basically exists as a flesh emporium, still has the ability to titillate by showing virtually nothing at all. So awesome was the uproar over Baisden's bum -- the skirt that launched a million e-mails -- that the Southeastern Conference felt compelled to issue a public rebuke to Alabama.

I'm not making that up.

As many of you have emailed, the league office was quicker to chastise Alabama for this than it was, and has been, to publicly condemn Auburn for the entirety of the Cam Newton escapade.

Anyway, Briana is our beaver pelt trader of the week. On to All That and a Bag of Mail.

Corndog Chris writes:

Clay,

Question: Is National Signing Day the "Black Friday" for fax machine manufacturers? In other words, would fax machines be obsolete if there was no signing day?

Why can't recruits e-mail signed letters of intent?

I hate faxes. But I hate people who ask me to use fax machines as if it's not an inconvenience. Fax people always assume it's 1983 and everyone just has one sitting around. And the thing that needs to be faxed is always crap that isn't that important in the grand scheme of things.

If I can pay my mortgage, my student loans, my credit cards and more by merely clicking a button, why can't there be a similar option on e-mail?

Every time someone asks me to fax something it always takes at least a half-hour of effort. The fax machine is positively antediluvian in today's economy. You might as well insist someone sign parchment with quill feathers.

Brad L. writes:

"Just saw this when looking through c/o 2011 recruits and knew how much you loved inexplicable apostrophes:

Meet La'El Collins, the number two recruit in the nation according to Rivals.

Is this the first recorded example of the masculine and feminine versions of the same Spanish word being separated by an apostrophe? It's like someone being named Novio'Novia Wilson.

Maybe his parents just wanted to name him "The Collins" before they knew if they were having a boy or a girl."

You know how in some states you have to take a class before you get married? What about a naming advice class for parents? Especially when they go with foreign words. For instance, what would his parents have thought about the name The'The?

They'd probably say, "That's a stupid name."

But there's a large Hispanic population in the United States who are going to see that name and think that every time they see this guy's name. So that's why you need the name counselor. To kind of put this into context.

In the meantime, how awesome would Les Miles analyzing this name be? Especially if you prefaced the question by asking him to comment on how La'El's name evidences the growing links between America and Spain.

Doc Harper writes:

"Clay,

I've been meaning to ask you this for a while. Arkansas is one of the states in which ticket scalping is illegal. Some people have tried to get around the law by offering tickets as a package with something without any specified value. For instance, on eBay you might find "buy this really nice and stretchy rubber band and we'll throw in a pair of Arkansas/LSU tickets" and the seller will claim that since the rubber band has no specific value, buyers can spend whatever they want. However, sellers have gotten in trouble for this as well.

My question is, if the above is considered illegal, how can the university get away with only selling tickets to someone if they make a certain donation to the school/athletic department? If the price for a 50-yard line seat is printed as $75 per ticket, is it not scalping to demand the buyer to also throw in a $5,000 donation or else the tickets go to someone else? It seems like the same principle.

By the way, this is not an argument for ticket scalping to be illegal. If other industries, such as hotels, can raise their prices for an event, I don't understand why people shouldn't be able to sell a ticket for whatever the market determines it's worth.

Thought you'd be the man to ask."

I agree with you. I'm a free market guy and think that tickets, like any other product, should be able to be sold in a completely legal way. The donation is a really interesting question. Because, you're right, the donation itself is effectively an increase in the price of the tickets that leads to an artificial face value. But here's the rub, it isn't illegal to price the tickets for whatever you want to price them for. Say that instead of requiring a donation schools just added on the cost of the donation to the cover price of the ticket -- in your example above instead of a $525 season-ticket price for a seven-game home slate, you'd actually have a $5,525 ticket price. The face value of the ticket would move from $75 to $789.

But scalping doesn't criminalize the initial transaction -- you can sell a ticket the first time for whatever you want, it's why some concerts have seats that cost thousands of dollars -- it only criminalizes the subsequent transactions that exceed the face value of the ticket. But why, out all the of the streams of commerce taking place every day, do we pluck tickets out of that stream and say you can't sell them for more than the face value?

I understand why certain objects are illegal -- drugs for instance -- the idea is that the product itself is such a danger that we can't allow anyone to use them. But tickets aren't dangerous and their sale doesn't create a danger.

In fact, I don't even know what the rationale to regulate tickets would be from a state's perspective. I'd love to know. And here's an even more interesting question, in a day and age when tickets are sold across state lines, on the Internet, and across the scope of the country, how can you have conflicting state laws? Isn't interstate commerce being restrained? I think so.

For instance, say Alabama and Arkansas play every year. I believe scalping tickets is legal in Alabama (and if it isn't it's legal in one of the states that Arkansas plays every year). How can you scalp a ticket on one side of the river, but not the other? In other words, why should Alabama fans who buy their tickets in Alabama not be able to sell those tickets at the game in Arkansas?

I really need to look into the laws behind scalping. The ticket market is fascinating, but I think you can construct an argument that all state laws involving ticket scalping are unconstitutional.

Great question.

Rob writes:

What would happen if the infamous Auburn Airport Heckler could get a re-do?

http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=cHGIJiF4xIE

Is there any doubt that the Auburn fan who heckled Jay Jacobs for hiring Gene Chizik has a "Family All In" shirt and feels that Cam Newton is being unfairly treated? Or that he was waiting in the parking lot of the Oppelika Wal-Mart at 3 a.m. so he could be the first person in line to get his picture taken with the trophy? Or that he's posting anonymously on Internet message boards all day long?

Any doubt at all?

The fact that this guy continues to stay beneath the national radar is a fundamental flaw of social media and makes me question how connected our society really is. How is this guy not publicly known?

Everyone in the state of Alabama reads everything I write. Can someone not e-mail me and find this guy?

Now some hate mail for messing with Texas.

Krwalvoord writes:

"In response to your childish attack on the University of Texas, what college, if any, did you attend Bonehead? Texas A&M? Are you a Fighting Farmer?

I'll call you Bonehead because no parents would really name their kid Clay Travis. That's as phony a name as your college degree.

You, just like A&M and those losers at Nebraska are just jealous of Texas.

I can't wait for the UT Network. I am sure it will be very popular. And you wrote that no show idea would be turned down? I really doubt you could be a spot on the network. You are stuck with Twitter and the internet, which of course anyone can do.

A&M hasn't gone to the SEC, because the SEC does not want the Aggies. They would bring very little to the conference. You said the lucrative TV market in Texas? Have you ever been to College Station? I guess maybe you should visit it before making such a bonehead statement, Bonehead.

Texas is afraid of the SEC? Mighty Vanderbilt leaves them shaking in their boots, Bonehead.

The only thing you got right in your article was when you said A&M can't compete with UT, Bonehead."

Bonehead?

Really, Bonehead is your insult of choice? What is it, 1953?

Clearly my parents needed to attend the child-naming class back in 1979 because it was going to lead to me being called a bonehead in 2011. For the record, I was named after my grandfathers. I'm guessing that La'El Collins' grandfathers weren't named La and El. Although if they were this might be the greatest story ever. What are the odds that the only two men named after the Spanish word for "the" would end up with children marrying? How joyous of a day would this union have been?

Anyway, this was a representative response from Texas fans after I wrote that it was time for A&M to join the SEC. And if this is indicative of what you A&M fans have to put up with on a regular basis, I'm truly sorry.

T. Scott writes:

"You have a joke degree from a joke school. Go back to your monster truck coverage. Get cancer and go see a dentist.
p.s. never write about our terrible towel again, or I might have to make a trip to your hood and pound your face in."

Why would I go see a dentist if I got cancer? That seems like it would be a really bad treatment option.

Me: "I have liver cancer. Can you cure it if I rinse with fluoride?"

Dentist: "No, but the insurance pays for it. Here's a gallon."

(FYI, I'm convinced that dentists are the most corrupt profession on Earth).

Cancer would win if I went to the dentist.

Anyway, the only thing worse than Steeler hate mail is Steeler hate mail that arrives two weeks late. This came yesterday. You know you're at the bottom of the Internet totem pole of stupidity when you make threats so far removed from my terrible towel column that even I'm getting bored with Steeler fan idiocy.

And I have no idea why my college degree and two subsequent graduate degrees have become such an obsession for people who clearly don't have GEDs. Two of those graduate degrees are from Vanderbilt, which as T. Scott notes, is world renowned for its joke degrees.

Kimberly Mary Stewart screams:

"HEY CLAY,

HAVE YOU EVER BEEN TO PITTSBURGH. IF SO HAS IT BEEN IN THE LAST 20 YEARS OR SO. I KNOW YOU ARE AN IGNORANT AND JEALOUS PERSON BECAUSE WE HAVE SOMETHING IN PITTSBURGH THAT YOU DON'T HAVE TO ENJOY. A SENSE OF FAMILY. SOME OF THE BEST THINGS ABOUT OUR CITY IS THAT WE DON'T HAVE JEALOUS IGNORANT PEOPLE, OR MAYBE PEOPLE LIKE YOU WOULD LIKE TO LIVE HERE AND YOU DON'T AND THAT'S WHY YOU WRITE AN INCREDIBLY LONG ARTICLE THAT COULD BEEN MUCH SHORTER IF YOU WERE NOT SO FRUSTRATED BECAUSE YOU ARE NOT FROM PITTSBURGH. OUR RIVERS ARE NOT DIRTY AND WE HAVE BEAUTIFUL GREEN ROLLING HILLS, WE HAVE MUSEUMS, A ZOO, A WORLD -CLASS SYMPHONY, WORLD- CLASS UNIVERSITIES AND TECH CENTERS. AND WE ALSO HAVE THE STEELERS AND THE GREAT TERRIBLE TOWEL. POOR YOU."

I can't stop picturing Kimberly screaming this when the Pittsburgh metro council meets.

"OUR RIVERS ARE NOT DIRTY AND WE HAVE BEAUTIFUL GREEN ROLLING HILLS. AND A ZOO. AND MUSEUMS."

Everyone is ducking down at the meeting covering their ears and she continues, "WE DON'T HAVE JEALOUS IGNORANT PEOPLE."

Am I the only person that gets sick reading caps lock emails? Like, I can't even look at them for that long without getting dizzy. Is that normal or do I need to go to the dentist and get checked for brain cancer?

Anyway, what I love most about this harangue, and I love a great deal of it, is that she thought my Terrible Towel article was "incredibly long."

It was 864 words.

Why do I think my article's the longest thing Kimberly has read that doesn't involve a bare-chested, long-haired man making sweet love to a woman while riding horseback through the verdant English countryside?

Bryan T. writes:

"Back in 2008 I was an employee of the Arizona Cardinals when they made that miraculous Super Bowl run. So with Steeler distaste in my heart, it was off to the Super Bowl I went with a chance to get a Super Bowl ring for myself (as an employee of the team).

After all my experiences with other fan bases -- I went to school in the SEC and worked in the NFL -- they are clearly the least intelligent. My friends and I also noticed that as a group they had a large amount of people with underbites. I know weird, Pittsburgh is the underbite capital of the world.

I wanted to turn you on to this, just like LSU fans and corndogs."

Steeler fans have underbites is about to go viral as the greatest NFL insult I've heard.

Let's make this happen.

Steeler fans are so dumb they'll try to defend themselves from this insult and with each retelling it will become greater and greater. Our own pyramid of comedy that continues to climb higher into the sky.

It's a glorious insult.

Follow Clay Travis on Twitter here. With All That and a Bag of Mail back on a weekly basis, you can e-mail him questions at Clay.Travis@gmail.com.

sports wikipedia tennis tennis games trey parker