1) Who will have more carries this year, Toneil Carter or Kirk Johnson? (assumption is Warren gets most carries overall)
Anwar: I know Alex is has turned Kirk Johnson into his white whale, and that happens. We often see a player at the high point of their career and predict greatness. Heck, everyone on OB knows I have been president of the Chris Warren fan club before he stepped on campus. That being said, after seeing Johnson limping through practice on Tuesday, I give the young man a lot of credit for battling through his injury, but he is not at 100 percent. Carter is healthy, plus has the advantage of being Herman’s biggest acquisition in this year’s signing class (Sam Ehlinger was committed to UT when Herman was hired). It is just a matter of time before Carter is battling Kyle Porter for the No. 2 position. I am not saying Carter is the best running back on the team, but he should finish this season with more carries.
Alex: I believe I was the only person on the OB staff who ranked Carter ahead of JK Dobbins as a prospect so it’s not like I hate the guy, but Kirk Johnson will play ahead of him if he is healthy. I say he reminds me of a jackrabbit a la Jamaal Charles and still believe the Chris Warren monster vs. Texas Tech would have been the Kirk Johnson monster had he not been injured early on. Johnson lined up as the first RB up with the twos to start spring practice, so he comes in holding a slight edge. I don’t see him giving up unless he gets hurt.
2) Who would win a bull in the ring? Tom Herman vs. Yancy McKnight
Anwar: Why does everyone believe bigger is always better in a fight? Bruce Lee weighed 165 pounds, but beat down every opponent he faced. He even took down Kareem Abdul Jabar in "The Game of Death." McKnight has size, but Herman is a guy who would study his opponent, find the weakness, gain leverage and shock everyone by taking down the big fella. At worst, McKnight would let Herman win to stay employed.
Alex: Have you seen the two standing next to each other?
3) What’s more: Bill Belichick's accomplishments at New England or Nick Saban's accomplishments at Bama?
Anwar: I think Bill Belichick has done a phenomenal job coaching and drafting, but if you are asking me to compare him to Saban, he cannot win for one major reason – Bill has been caught cheating. Belichick was busted for cheating during the Spygate investigation. As a result, Belichick was fined $500,000 (the maximum allowed by the league and the largest fine ever imposed on a coach in the league's 87-year history) for his role in the incident. The team was fined $250,000, and docked the team their original first-round selection in the 2008 NFL Draft. New England accepted their Deflategate penalty, which resulted in a four-game suspension for Tom Brady, New England lost first- and fourth-round draft picks, while the organization was hit with a $1 million fine, the biggest team fine in NFL history. Belichick was cleared of any wrongdoing, but it happened under his watch. Imagine the incidents we do not know about. Meanwhile, Nick Saban has dominated college football so much, a two-loss season is disappointing in Alabama.
Alex: Belichick is the better head coach, but the fact that Nick Saban has recruited in an elite manner makes the conversation interesting. It can be said though, that Belichick has had several important hats to wear as not only coach but also GM during an epic run as a dynasty. Also, part of what makes Belichick’s accomplishments more impressive is the fact that he can’t recruit. He has the same salary cap as every other team in the league. But, the most important reason Belichick’s accomplishments are the most impressive is because he’s accomplishing it at the highest level which shatters any other argument. As for the fines and Brady suspensions -- he’s won Super Bowls in spite of them just to rub it in Goodell’s face.
4) What's the worst professional sports franchise out of the big three (NBA, NFL, and MLB)?
Anwar: New York’s last NBA championship was in 1973 (why did you try a layup instead of dunking the ball, Patrick Ewing?). The Cleveland Browns are destined to be horrible. The Padres are a young team that could lose 110 games this season.
Alex: The Cleveland Browns are a miserable franchise with no real hope in sight, stuck in a perpetual state of misery despite changes in regime, coaches and QB; The Brooklyn Nets would probably lose to a D-League team; and I’ll say the Tampa Bay Rays - horrible stadium, last in MLB in revenue, only one WS appearance since the team started in 1998.
5) One of my rules in life is that if you're in a relationship with someone and the cops are called to your house because of something that happened in an argument gets out of hand to the point where the law is called, you have to break up. Are you buying or selling that rule of mine?
Anwar: Buy, buy, buy. If you’re arguing with someone to the point where cops are called, this relationship is out of control. I’ve never seen an argument when somebody said “You’re a M-fer” and the other person responds by saying, “You know what? I am an M-Fer. Thank you for pointing that out to me. How about we squash this and grab some chicken wings?” Besides, life is way too short to be in a relationship where toxic arguments are the norm.
Alex: Sell, not because I don’t think it’s a decent enough rule of thumb - it certainly seems like it would be the best advice in probably 95% of cases. I just don’t trust my neighbors not to call me in for something they didn’t know or understand. I yell at my TV a lot, run around cursing at cats that try to poop in my gardens, etc. I can just see a million scenarios where the cops show up for a “domestic dispute” call at my house, I answer the door and the Curb Your Enthusiasm music turns on.
6) Next year, Shaka Smart's team makes us push the memories of this season way into the background of our sports memories.
Anwar: I find it hard to believe Texas will be worse with Matt Coleman. I am not saying this team will be one of the league’s top four teams. That would be asking a lot. Instead, Coleman’s presence should put Smart’s team in the 18-win conversation.
Alex: False, I can’t give any detailed answers about basketball but that team looks like one that is more than a year off from being any good, much less washing folks’ memories completely clean of what happened in 2016-17.
7) Which one of you has the more compelling story as to how you became a writer?
Anwar: I started off as a clerk in The Tampa Tribune newsroom in 1994. I was making minimum wage as a do-boy. I made coffee, ran errands for reporters, picked up lunches, answered phones, you name it. After six months, I quit the job to become a correspondent. I made $30 a story writing community features and occasional sports stories as a full-time college student. I would go to class, conduct interviews after school, study for a few hours, then go into the bureau and write stories until 2 a.m. I eventually was bumped up to $40 a story. I eventually landed a summer internship as a news intern at the Birmingham Post-Herald. Every Sunday I had the cop beat, which meant interviewing the families of people who had family members killed over the weekend. Each week I sat in the living rooms of grieving moms, sisters, brothers, cousins and friends, asking them for information about a loved one who died. I remember interviewing a woman who survived being trapped when an unfinished boathouse collapsed on her family’s pontoon boat as they took shelter from a storm during a holiday weekend. Her two kids – both under 5-years old – died. Her husband died. Her sister died. Her brother-in-law lived, but he had to break his leg to escape, and he unsuccessfully tried to rescue everybody. There were toys scattered throughout the house. She gave me pictures of her family to run in the newspaper. When I walked out of that home, holding back tears, I told myself that I could not do this for a living. That is when I decided to pursue sports writing.
Alex: I started generating fantasy football algorithms while bored, stuck on long road trips in tour buses. At the time, I was just doing it for my own purposes, generating matchup tools for my sit-start decisions and creating other things as my general means for consuming the data that I loved to examine. I knew that I could not play in a rock band forever early on and sometimes wondered about my future. When I was home, I could always work for my Dad’s recruiting company -- and I was good at it. In fact, I picked up the account that kept the company afloat during the time my father got sick the first time. Also during this period, I began writing a weekly column at the Austin Chronicle, unpaid. I had no formal training in journalism and only knew how to write based on the thousands of books I’d read as somewhat of a bookworm. I saw it as a means to get into the NFL combine, which was my apex of NFL events to cover. During this time, I also started a fantasy/NFL draft radio show locally and launched a website utilizing some of my tools and others which both grew in popularity. Around the time our band had been dropped by Disney (and our advance money had run out) was around the same time my Dad got sick for the second time with ALS around 2011 or 2012. He basically had to shut down operations of his recruiting company, as that big client I miraculously landed years prior had recently sued him and he needed to focus on his health, anyway. It took a little while of being very broke, but I’ve been a full-time “sports writer” since about then.
8) Should college athletes be paid and be considered employees of the Athletic Departments. i.e benefits, stipend, taxes, etc.
Anwar: I know what the “They’re getting paid a scholarship” crowd is going to say. Meanwhile, college football generates money at most school, but players don’t get a cut. Head football coaches are millionaires, but kids are told it is not about the money. The NCAA basketball tournament generated around $900 million in revenue, but players on the court do not get a cut. Playing college sports is a full-time job. Everybody else is getting paid off their work. They deserve a financial cut.
Alex: Ridiculous. If you’re going to pay them, then at least pay them the respect of calling their situation what it is: an education in football. If that is to be the case, there should just be a farm system where any curriculum taught is related to the industry. I could see big football universities adding football education departments and eventually full buildings, but I don’t think you can pay student-athletes. With this said, I do think that college players should get paid, but how do you do it? Does Malik get paid more than his backup? Will some guys have to take pay cuts when they miss more tackles one year? I think a stipend is fine, and to some degree they receive that in the cost of attendance checks. I also think it is wildly unfair that football players, just under the false-label of “student-athletes” do not receive health benefits that extend past their days playing football at the university. Especially those with pre-existing conditions prior to exiting the program. I’m not arguing that I find any part of the completely unethical paradox of the “student-athlete” to be fair. But, to make it truly fair, the system would need to be completely overhauled to where student-athletes were, once again, truly student athletes (which would mean a lot more boring football games and less revenue).
