It's Friday which means it's time for the Mailbag. 

Congrats, you can pretend to work while reading in advance of the Memorial Day weekend.  

Our beaver pelt trader of the week is Kevin Durant. He's included in a mailbag question as well, but his decision to donate a million dollars to the tornado victims is worthy of the award. 

And much more. 

Okay, let's dive into the mailbag.

Two Conference Games to Watch   Alabama at Tennessee (7:15 ET/ESPN2) –

"The Third Saturday in October" once again takes place a week late on the calendar as the Tide and Vols square off in one of the South's oldest rivalries. In a series defined over the past 40 years by its streaks, Alabama looks to improve its current run to five straight and six of the past seven. From 1971-81, Bear Bryant's Tide owned the Vols by claiming 11 straight wins. Tennessee took the next five during the mid-80s, and Alabama took back control with a nine-game unbeaten streak (with a tie in 1993 thrown in.) Phil Fulmer put his mark on the Tennessee program by dominating Alabama from 1995-2004, losing only once in that span, and claiming a national title at the peak of the run in 1998.

Alabama enters the game a prohibitive favorite - some outlets are giving Tennessee as many as 30 points, and the lines keep inching higher after opening at 27.5 - but two of the past three games in this series played in Tuscaloosa featured a highly-favored Alabama hanging on for a win as the result of last-minute field goal attempts. In 2005, the Tide was as good as dead until Corey Anderson fumbled a near-touchdown through the back of the endzone. A Jamie Christensen field goal a minute later sent Alabama home with a thrilling 6-3 win. In Alabama's championship run of 2009, the Tide had to block two Daniel Lincoln field goals - one bouncing off monstrous defensive tackle Terrance Cody's paw on the game's final play - to preserve a 12-10 'Bama win and thwart what would have been the greatest upset in series history. The takeaway here? At face value, this game looks like a blowout, but crazier things have (almost) happened in similar situations.

Nick Saban owns college football.

Even the most rabid Auburn partisan would recognize this fact if you plied him or her with truth serum. (Under the influence of truth serum Tiger fans would also admit that they cheated their ass off to get Cam Newton). There is no more dominant college coach in the country. In his past 48 games at Alabama Saban is 43-5 with two of those losses to eventual national champions. So he's 43-3 against non-national title winning teams. He's also recruiting at an insanely high level, developing the talent he recruits, and crushing opponents on the field. Saban's success is so monumental, in fact, that he's become the Bill Belichick of college football -- a luminous star so bright and awe-inspiring that every person around him takes on an added shine as well. Just as Bill Belichick's dominance at New England spawned the head coaching careers of Romeo Crennel, Eric Mangini, Josh McDaniels, and Charlie Weis, so too have Nick Saban connections led to two of the most premier jobs in college football, Florida and Tennessee, hiring Saban disciples.   

Saturday we posted this video of Vandy Coach James Franklin and Georgia defensive coordinator Todd Grantham's angry confrontation in the wake of Georgia's 33-28 victory. Monday afternoon James Franklin appeared on our 3 Hour Lunch radio show and said he couldn't get into specifics about what he and Mark Richt had discussed or about the report he was preparing for the SEC league office. But then Sports By Brooks posted the below video from Nashville's WSMV of the post-game handshake between Richt and Franklin.

The audible conversation between the two coaches on the first video sounds like this:

James Franklin: "Yeah, rubbed it in our faces right after the game and then your coach, when I tell him about it, he goes after me and the fight starts."

Mark Richt: "Yeah, that's what I thought happened, I apologize."

But go back and watch Richt as Franklin says, "right after the game," Richt appears to simultaneously say, "Yeah, he's a dumbass."

Which player is Richt talking about? We can't be certain. But presumably it's the player that Franklin is complaining about for taunting. Of course Richt could just as easily have been talking about defensive coordinator Todd Grantham. 

Everyone knows that guy's a dumbass too. And in the second video Mark Richt refers to his defensive coordinator's actions as "horseshit." Twice.   

You know the LSU game is getting close when Nick Saban starts to get short with reporters. What begins as a relatively innocuous question about, you know, the future of the Alabama-Tennessee rivalry game in an age of expansion quickly turns into a diatribe on the trouble the media causes.

“You all create so many problems,” Saban said. “I hate to start on this, but whether guys are going out for the draft that shouldn’t even be thinking about that right now. Whether we’re worrying about the Heisman Trophy, now we’re worrying about playing Missouri rather than Tennessee some time down the road. I could give a shit about all that, excuse my French.

“I mean, come on. Let’s talk about the game. What year are we talking about when we’re not gonna play Tennessee – 2025? I’m just hoping I can still go to the lake then, still can walk around and go on a pontoon boat ride."

Am I the only person thinking about the process that goes into a Nick Saban pontoon boat ride? Step one, check weather. Step two, apply sunscreen. Step three, ensure adequate gasoline is near. Step four, map the day's boating path. Step five, kick Barbara Dooley off boat before she gets on.  

And in defense of the Alabama media, given it has been reported that Alabama opposes the addition of Missouri because of the loss of the UT-Bama rivalry game, isn't the week of the UT-Bama game the perfect time to ask Nick Saban this question?

Evidently Nick Saban disagrees.

Watch the video for yourselves. (Although, be careful, there's a curse word!)

South Carolina's star running back Marcus Lattimore saw his season come to an end on Saturday. While blocking downfield at Mississippi State Lattimore's knee was rolled into by a lineman. Lattimore, a sophomore, would have been a first round NFL draft pick if he'd been allowed to declare for the draft after his first season at South Carolina. Instead NFL rules force him to return to South Carolina and play for two more seasons before he's eligible to leave. This year South Carolina was riding Lattimore like a rented mule -- he was averaging nearly 25 carries a game entering the State game. With his knee injury Lattimore will not only miss the rest of this season, but will probably spend much of next season returning to the same form that he'd already reached.

There's something incredibly immoral about requiring someone to risk their health and future earnings ability for free.

Many college sports fans are fond of treating NCAA violations as moral failings. Treating NCAA violations as moral issues is complete crap -- you can read my column on that here -- but the largest moral failing in college sports gets hardly any attention -- why should college football players have to put their bodies at risk when they already have the talent to become millionaires? Why aren't more fans, media, and administrators offended by the greatest moral failing of all -- indentured servitude that can lead to career-ending injuries? 

Here is James Franklin in his post-game press conference addressing his dust-up with Georgia defensive coordinator Todd Grantham in the wake of Georgia's narrow 33-28 win that ended with Vandy throwing an incomplete pass into the end zone. (I've also posted video from the post-game and of Grantham giving the choke season during last year's Cocktail Party).

James Franklin: "Some things were said that I didn't think were appropriate and I tried to find Coach Richt to address it and I couldn't find Coach Richt and I happened to have a discussion with one of their assistant coaches and it didn't go well."

If you're a Vanderbilt football fan you need to watch this. It's like the Gettysburg Address of Commodore football.

Franklin continued: "We're also going to fight and I want to make sure everybody understands that. We are not going to sit back and take stuff from anybody. Anybody. No one. Those days are long gone and they are never coming back. Ever." 

Watch his comments below, but, man, I love this guy.  

No doubt at all, this is not the Vandy football program of old.

Knoxville, TN

As LSU head coach Les Miles led his team off the field Saturday at Neyland Stadium, LSU fans leaned over the wall chanting: "We want Bama."

Miles merely nodded in their direction. After the game Miles was asked about the LSU at Alabama game on November 5th. A game that has already achieved mythic status before it has even kicked off. Miles dodged the question as deftly as Jordan Jefferson brushed off the Volunteer pass rush: "They'll be time for any other games at the back end of the season."

This time Les Miles and LSU didn't need an untimed down to beat the Vols. They only needed one spectacular interception from defensive back Morris Claiborne to erase UT's momentum and snag the lead for good.  

By the second half today's game had devolved into a glorified scrimmage. LSU physically dominated the Tennessee Volunteers in the second half. The crowning moment of that domination came when LSU took possession at the one yard line late in the third quarter. Leading 24-7, LSU began the drive with a three yard rush.

Then LSU ran the ball for an astounding 11, 3, 13, 9, 0, 2, 18, 9, 3, 14, 3, 12, -1, and 3 for the Touchdown.

All told the Tigers traveled 114 yards without a pass completion. (There was one 15 yard penalty on UT and one 15 yard penalty on LSU).

114 yards!

Now that the NCAA has officially announced it could find no wrongdoing in the Cam Newton investigation, I'd like to make a humble suggestion: how about the NCAA has to turn over its notes, tape recorded conversations, and whatever other data it has amassed to Yahoo Sports investigative team? After all, Yahoo is the one uncovering actual wrongdoing, not the NCAA. In fact, what if the NCAA just got out of the investigative business all together when it came to major programs and uncovered all tips it received to Yahoo and allowed them to track down the legitimacy or illegitimacy of these stories?

Put simply, I trust the guys at Yahoo a lot more than I trust the NCAA.  

Our beaver pelt trader of the week is surfer Doug Niblack who managed to convince the world that he surfed a great white shark on Wednesday. You have to read this story.

He's the H.G. Wells of the shark surfing community.

Here's the opening to his surf story:

"Doug Niblack was trying to catch another wave before going to work when his longboard hit something hard as rock off the Oregon coast and he found himself standing on a thrashing great white shark.

Looking down, he could see a dorsal fin in front of his feet as he stood on what he described as 10 feet of back as wide as his surfboard and as black as his wetsuit. A tail thrashed back and forth and the water churned around him.

"It was pretty terrifying just seeing the shape emerge out of nothing and just being under me," he told the Associated Press on Wednesday. "And the fin coming out of the water. It was just like the movies."

Two Conference Games to Watch   LSU at Tennessee (3:30 ET/CBS) –

LSU continues its march to a possible national title berth this weekend as it travels to Knoxville to face a Tennessee team decimated by injuries to its top two offensive weapons - Tyler Bray and Justin Hunter. Tennessee hasn't been able to muster a serious offensive attack in some time, and the best remedy for that can't be going up against the nation's top two defenses over the next two weeks. That's exactly what's on deck, though. LSU, meanwhile, seems to be on cruise control until Nov. 5. Remember, though, that the only thing that prevented Tennessee from marching into Baton Rouge last season and pulling the upset to end all upsets was Dooley going more "Les Miles" than even Les Miles could conceive in the game's final 10 seconds. If this game is as close in the final minute as it was last year, it would be the best coaching job by anyone in the SEC all season, and it wouldn't be close. Perhaps the only thing that could break LSU's focus right now is if UT boards up the Tiger locker room at halftime and forces them to watch the Pride of the Southland's historically awful Wizard of Oz halftime show, unveiled last week against Georgia.

We could forgive any slip-ups for anyone subjected to such a musical atrocity.

Vinnie Verno is back with his weekly dose of picks and his advice is simple: Alabama will cover in the first half against Ole Miss. Also, he's a big fan of Mike Gundy. And how couldn't you be a big fan of Mike Gundy when he's got dance moves like that guy does?

When he's not out looking for bagmen like Dannie Sheridan, Vinnie Verno is your typical Vegas handicapper. You know who isn't your typical handicapper?

My guys at Prediction Machine.

They're 70% against the spread right now and they also offer fantasy tips, survivor league suggestions, and more. How do they do it? They play every game 50,000 times before they predict outcomes against the spread. Plus they give free picks.

Go check out my guys at Prediction Machine.