I wish Arkansas had its own Clay Travis.
Seriously, this state needs its own version of the fevered Nashville-based sports blogger who has made “Outkick the Coverage” one of the two best humor SEC football blogs (along with “Everyday Should Be Saturday”) around.
Nobody in this state’s sports media really, truly says it like it is. Or, rather, says it like it is with the same kind of punch Clay packs. Consider the following passage:
By the way, I’m a Tennessee fan and I consider myself to be reasonably intelligent. But if you’re a fan of an SEC school and at some point you haven’t looked around your stadium and thought, “Holy s–, there are a lot of really dumb mother—— here,” you are completely lying to yourself.
Sing it, brother.
Sing it to the high heavens.
Clay is massively entertaining in this way – the way where things get more funny the more uncomfortably true they are. Which is why I am in a whole mess of discomfort as I watch him unveil a new Top 10 list on his blog. It’s called “The Ten Dumbest Fan Bases in America.”
Clay gets things rolling by pointing the cannon at his own state’s most popular program – the University of Tennessee. He finger paints a Chik-Fil-A BBQ sauce-stained picture of 
the prototypical idiot UT fan – “He’s now 47 years old, still rocking his goatee and 1998 back-to-back SEC championship t-shirt. He has been wearing “husky” jeans since 1974 and he lives in a holler in a doublewide that he inherited from his mom when she died of a rattlesnake bite in 1996.”
C-Trav keeps on keeping on with his No. 9 most dumb fan base in America – the Dallas Cowboys. Here, he describes the typical Cowboys fan as bipolar, childless and likely eking out a living in a garage somewhere in Virginia: “He has one nephew, a Redskins fan, and every Thanksgiving he says, ‘When I die you get all my Cowboy gear.’ He will laugh as if this is a joke, but he’s actually written this into his will. His entire estate is presently valued at $9,500 and that includes an optimistically valued Tom Landry autographed football which he believes is worth $11,000. ”
This is hilarious, but Arkansans will notice these fanbases he’s ticking off are hitting awfully close to home. And Clay and the Arkansas fanbase have been known to throw a barb or two (hundred) in each other’s directions.
I get the sinking feeling that if he’s willing to unload on Tennessee as bad as he has, he may have something extra special up his sleeve for Arkansas. My unease is not allayed by his criteria for what, exactly, makes a fanbase crazy.
He says one reason he didn’t rank Tennessee higher than No. 10 was because the state had recent pro teams diverting the monomania of his sports fans.
On the other hand …
Craziness thrives in provincial states that see little migration. The less cross-pollination, the dumber fan bases can become. If people are constantly moving into your state from other places then you end up with hundreds of different fan bases and that kills your potency. Migration stops the crazy from percolating, the particular witches brew of insanity doesn’t fester and explode into the popular consciousness. So Tennessee fans are dumb, but they’re becomingly increasingly less so. Primarily because they’re so easily distracted by other teams.
I swear I can see it.
Off in the distance, a giant red pinata being raised to the rafters. In the shape of a pig no less…
