Despite Flurries of Hot Air, Clay Travis Makes Little Impact on Florida

Thursday night I hunkered down in my Jacksonville residence preparing for all the damage that Hurricane Matthew was ready to inflict. After all, it was the most powerful storm to threaten the east coast of Florida north of West Palm Beach since reliable records were kept (dating back to the 1800s). It was predicted by some to be a Category 4 hurricane and it would possibly rake the entire Atlantic Coast of Florida. 530 miles of coastline were under mandatory evacuation, over 2 million people were without electricity (I still am over 24 hours later), and 19 people so far have lost their lives in the United States.

But what I thought were raindrops pounding on my roof turned out to be Clay Travis pissing in the wind. Let's face it, the only way a person can follow Clay on Twitter is to either be really drunk or have an IQ even less than his. Since humans cannot function with that little cognitive ability, here is a drinking game for the rest of us.

Before I reveal the game, let me provide some of the backstory.

Clay is a fan of the University of Tennessee. It turns out that the football team in Knoxville has won more than 3 of their first 5 games for the first time in a decade. Don't you remember 2006? That was a year after Hurricane Katrina pounded southeastern Louisiana and coastal Mississippi. I guess when you are trying to forget your miserable life, little details like that are hard to recall.

Anyway, Tennessee has been hyped up by the pundits all offseason, with such little supporting substance, that it reminds one of the local weatherperson selling Tropical Storm Nothing in front of a green screen in order to justify their existence and get ratings. And Vol fans believed it. Clay believed it, kind of. Nobody honestly believed it until the Vols were able to remove the black cloud of Florida from their path for the first time in 11 years. People like Clay became invested.

Clay looked at his team's remaining schedule and he had very little faith that they would not lose at least two more games. He heard the news that SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey postponed the football game between Louisiana State University and the University of Florida, due to the possibility of catastrophic loss of life and property, and naturally his first thought was that UF was trying to avoid playing the game so they could win the division in some backhanded way.

That is what fearful people do, especially when they are purveyors of hyperbolic clickbait. The bully is really the scared little kid inside. The abusive boyfriend is deathly afraid of being left by the object of his affection. When you are the whipping boy for so long, and you see a glimmer of hope, you are petrified that somebody will take it from you. Clay looked Texas A&M and Alabama squarely in the face and he became paranoid. It was out of this combination of fear and abuse that his conspiracy theory was born. Clay implemented classic projection. His fear turned into Florida's fear in his mind.

Thank God that Hurricane Matthew wobbled off course like a Joshua Dobbs pass. The crisis was nowhere near what it could have been. This hindsight emboldened Clay and reinforced his flawed logic. Ever since he has been doubling down on his insanity and keeping his campaign alive. To help us all deal with it until it stops, I present to you a drinking game.

Here are the rules:

1. When Clay Tweets about a Jeremy Foley conspiracy, and the deal he made with Mother Nature, take a drink. This alone should be enough to get you good and wasted.


2. When Clay sends out a picture of the beautiful weather in Gainesville, or the nice temperature on Saturday afternoon, take a drink. Take another drink for every other picture in your timeline in which the east coast of Florida is underwater.


3. Just in case you are still standing, take a drink if you weren't alive the last time Tennessee was relevant in football.


4. Don't let the fact that you are now lying on the floor deter you. Take a drink if Clay tries to convince you that a team with a 3-2 record, who just fired their coach, hasn't won on the road since September of last year, and was playing without their star player, was a certain loss for the Gators.


5. Do a shot if Clay references the game between Georgia and South Carolina being moved to Sunday as proof that Florida dodged LSU, and feel it go all the way down. Try to determine if it was the shot or Clay's credibility that you felt hitting rock bottom.


6. Have a beer if you feel the fear in Clay's Tweets as he sees the Vols ability to win the SEC slowly evaporating like the puddles of rain in my backyard.


7. Commiserate with a bottle of Jack Daniels when Clay insists that UF hosted recruits after the game was postponed. Ponder for a minute if you know anyone else with a Vanderbilt education that does not let facts get in the way of a good argument. Explain to him that UF was in position to have one of their best recruiting weekends in a while, and it didn't happen.


8. If you are ever in Rocky Top and you hear a high pitched shrill coming from the holler, go take a look. If you expect to see that Bluetick Coonhound, Smokey X, howling at the moon, but instead you see Clay Travis whining like the bitch that he is, call me up and I'll buy you a drink.


9. If somehow the Vols screw this up and don't win the SEC East in the same year that they finally beat Florida, kick back, take a big swig of whiskey, chuckle to yourself, and say, "As usual, it sucks to be a Tennessee fan". Laugh even louder if UF happens to be 6-1 and reflect on how angry Clay is at that moment.

I would have loved to watch the Gators play a game of football against LSU too, but instead I joined the first responders that were going to work the game as they rebuilt the community. I did not have the luxury of sitting around Sunday creating ways to glorify losing with 7 turnovers as if it were some kind of moral victory. Perhaps Clay could come down and help if he can stop worrying about the Tide that will be rolling into Knoxville this week.