Quote of the Day “What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more.” –Seneca, 1st century Roman philosopher
Over the course of Third Week and Thanksgiving Holidays, TB had occasion to observe the spending habits of some wealthy folks. What I saw was as perplexing as it was astonishing. The rich really don’t know have a clue about how to effectively spend their money. They need help. They need a purchasing department. They need TB’s years of experience in the fields of yearning, avarice and envy to better capitalize on their good fortunes. Here are some of the heartbreaking examples of the plight these people face at which I’ve marvelled over the last several days:
- A southern man transplanted to New York City likes to travel and likes to return to Mississippi quite often. He flies in to Memphis on commercial airlines and rents a car to drive to his home, purchased in recent years for money that could’ve put him slopeside in Colorado. For just a small amount more, in relative terms, TB could put him in that slopeside condo, get him a nice place in Mississippi and buy him a part interest in a private airplane. The investments would have greater long term value than his current spending provides, and the time savings alone would make the airplane worthwhile. TB could get all this done in exchange for a couple of weeks usage of that Colorado real estate and a few sky rides to get me there. I even have leads on a couple of pilots he could hire at a discount rate.
- A professional athlete, also residing in New York City, likes to go out on the town. As a well known and sometimes controversial personality, he’s aware that he could be accosted from time to time. So he buys a gun and carries it with him to the club. Yadda yadda yadda, his leg gets a hole in it and his pro career may be down the drain. While there’s not much I can do for this particular ig-no-ramus, I can help others similarly situated. I figure a pro football salary for someone in actual danger of being recognized is around three million a year, not counting endorsements. For about two hundred grand a year, TB will buy your gun for you. Then I’ll put it in the hands of someone who is not a mo-ron and pay them to follow your sorry ass valuable assets around town. As a bonus, I can probably get you a good deal on a condo rental in either Colorado or Mississippi.
- This one may be my favorite. It happens all over the country, but I’ve been closely following the situation involving Mississippi State’s football team. The Bulldogs found themselves in the position of needing to say goodbye to their football coach. As a fan of the Bullies, I was pleased to hear that some wealthy fan, or small group of fans, decided to put up enough money (3 million dollars) to buy out the fired coach’s contract. And to get a new coach, they’ve guaranteed the athletic director another couple of million a year for the next ten years or so. But as a “high wealth spending consultant” I have to say, “are you out of you’re freakin mind?” Hey I get it. It sucks to have a bad football team. It really sucks to lose 45-0 to Ole Miss. And its gonna really suck if you have to do it all over again in five years. There has got to be a better way to spend your money. Setting aside the millions of ways to spend your millions that make more sense than being obsessed over a low level college football program (as your “high wealth spending consultant” I’m trained to indulge your eccentricities), you’re strategy is far too simplistic. There’s a better way to direct your largesse. Go ahead and sell a little more GM stock, or outsource a couple hundred more jobs to China, or do whatever the hell it is you do to raise petty cash, and give me the jack you’d normally be spending on the next buyout. With that, I’m going to buy season tickets for about 5000 people who live in places like Batesville, Meridian and Tupelo. This is going to help your team’s home field advantage, reputation, and presence in key talent rich communities and could potentially lead to a bigger stadium to go along with that 6 million dollar scoreboard you just bought (oh how I could’ve helped you with that money). All those folks will buy their own chickens-on-a-stick so the program will generate additional revenue on its own. With the rest of your buyout money, I’m gonna hire a team of gun-totin baby-sitters to follow around your team’s prima donnas scholar athletes to keep them out of trouble and on the field. This alone should ensure no more defeats to the likes of Louisiana Tech and Maine. Throw in another million or two and I’ll make Stark Vegas glitter. Have you seen all the celebs that hang out at USC games? Think recruits don’t dig that? Look, everybody loves seeing Harvey Hull and his maroon blazer wearing brethren being honored before gametime. But the kids, and you’ll have to trust me on this one, would be a little more impressed with someone a little more famous with the under 70 crowd, a lot younger, a lot prettier, and with a lot less clothes. I’ll use those bonus funds to get some starlets on the sidelines. Hell I bet Brittany Spears and her kid sister would do it on the cheap.
As anyone who’s not rich can attest, the wealthy need help. They need more imagination and innovation, apparantly having used up their allotment attaining wealth in the first place. They need Travellinbaen’s High Wealth Spending Consulting Service. Won’t you help them? TB’s always here.
Travellinbaen 
I like the twist on the “if I had a million bucks” theme you posted earlier. I believe I would be the world’s most talented rich person. I would suffer none of the problems some rich people have (your new Starkville Starlet Brittney being a prime example). There is no chance that I would squander my wealth and I have lots of hobbies and would therefore NEVER miss or need work.
As you know, I believe that every rich person should start with his or her own compound. This facility should be comfortable and wired with all imaginable electronics and communication devices. It should have off the grid power options. The location of the compound should be remote. It should be surrounded by wilderness that supports lots of game, it should have a well stocked lake, and it is preferable that the land should be able to support enough agriculture to feed the people you may invite to the compound. The compound should have limited points of entry. The compound should have a large safe with ample guns and ammunition and, depending on your thoughts on the current economic crisis, a healthy supply of gold. It is great to have a private airstrip and aircraft you can personally pilot. Automation is good. The need to have hired help is very very bad. Part of the planning process is keeping a list of the people worthy of being invited to the compound.
It is ok to leave the compound regularly. No need to be a hermit. The idea is you are rich to be a hermit anytime you want to.
Now if I can only figure a way to acquire the needed wealth. I think I could set up a reasonable compound within 30 miles of Oxford for about 10 million bucks.
Are you going to do a post to finish off the year in “My Life as a Bulldog”? I have a series of questions regarding the MSU’s coaching staffs apparent lack of concern for the life and limb of the State QB’s. However, after the firing (ummm I mean resignation) I guess that is moop.
yeah, I’ll update it this week. It’s an ongoing feature, though it hasn’t been all that interesting so far. I’ve been too numb to vent. The new coach should spark my interest for the short term.
I vaguely remember one of our many trips to Gorenfloes one evening, you telling me how “lucky” we were to have a coach like Jeff Bower, well he is available along with the Nix brothers who will get an interview for obvious reasons. Now that Mr. Dive Right is there for the taking, will the bullies hire him? and do any of you big time booster lawyer types have any insight on who will be the next unfortuanate to coach in that career killing death trap of a job?
Teaj – no one else can put it quite like you.
That wasn’t TB, coach, at least doesn’t sound like it. I never thought much of Bower. That’s not to say I wouldn’t love for State to have his record for a decade or so. Your current coach may be a good one, we’ll know more next year. But USM got better all season, something I look for in a good coach.
Does Gorenflo’s have an “e” on it? I think not. I would just like to see the enthusiasm back in Starkvegas that was there when I played football for the Bullies. I was very dissappointed in the atmosphere when I went to the game this year. Wasn’t like it was back before I joined the military and went to fight the blanketheads.
How about Tubberville to State?
I’ll pull for any SOB they decide to hire. If he has too many of those “thanks for the check” games, I’ll want him fired. And I won’t put up a nickel to hire or fire one. With all these millions flying around, it kind of makes me wish I’d gone in to the coaching business.
An all time great TB rant was about coaching. TB’s basic theory is that most intelligent people are smarter than coaches and therefore are probably correct in questioning coaching decisions. It came after someone said something like “I am not a coach so I guess he knows more than me”.
TB attacked the speaker with gusto noting that generally coaches were former jocks that could not get real jobs when they could no longer play and that given a week or two with film and playbooks, we would likely be better than most coaches.
This is then followed up with the obligatory why don’t people fake the dive and throw to the TE more often because it always works speech.
The TE thing was part of a question TB posed to me in a job interview I had that TB participated in. I got the job so I guess I passed.
Does the new liberal (not to pigeon hole you) TB still like the fake and throw to the TE? Ole Miss ran it versus State for a TD long after I suspect TB found something better to do than watch this years eggbowl.
I watched every damn play. The play you describe still has the highest success percentage of any play in football and probably always will. But like anything else, if I see evidence to the contrary, I will change my opinion. It is why our species was blessed with highly developed brains.
I still stand by the notion that smart coaches are easy to spot because they are so few relative to their peer group. There are also some true greats, like John Wooden, or more recently Coach K who I believe would be at the top of any field they chose.
I also still believe, without any knowledge whatsoever about the nuts and bolts of football that I could be a successful coach for 2 mil a year. I’d forego half of that to supplement pay for the best coordinators. They’d do the on field work while I worked the booster clubs and in games decided to punt or not, go for one or two, and what play to run from the one yard line.
Dan (THE MAN) Marino loved the fake dive then throw to the TE play. Thus, good play.
Stuck at the game with your wife and/or in laws or were you savoring the fact that this was going to get you a new coach?
My 2 cents on that game was that Croom not changing something to protect his QB’s was downright criminal. I do not care if you are losing yardage, run the ball, burn clock, and get out of there without getting 3 QB’s beat half to death.
Run slants, quick outs, etc. so that your QB can get rid of the ball in 2 seconds or less.
Because of you, I am confident that my opinion on what plays to run is better than Croom’s.
As a coach, some of these lawyer types comments I find somewhat offensive, however my spelling or lack there of, may prove that your theory holds water. The jury is still out on that one,,,and I promise you, play action, roll right, hit the big lumbering white TE in the corner works 90% of the time especially on 1st down. I would base my entire offense on this one play. TB you and I should apply for the job in Starkghanastan, I think were onto something
On a sidenote Smilyj, the name gorenfloe’s is a myth, if you ever signed your reciept, and looked at it you would have noticed it was atually called Marina Point, I know this because as people were boarding up their houses and fleeing the coast the night before katrina I was at the G spot “lickin em up” I cleared my tab at 1:48am, I found this ticket in my pockets a few days after the storm in one of the few garments I had left, I still covet it, as I am sure I had one of the last beers ever served in that landmark of Biloxi watering holes…Gorenflos, G Spot, Marina Point..RIP
I was gonna throw you in there with Wooden and Coach K, but didn’t wanna embarrass you coach. Your big mistake was not deciding to become a coach until AFTER college. To get in the game you gotta start as grad asst most of the time. Your route has slightly fewer avenues to the millions I’m guessing. Not unlike my career path.
Is there any chance Croom is Huck”s biological….nah couldn’t be.
That receipt is a national treasure. I’m disturbed by some of your phrasing however.
TB that’s ok, I wake up most mornings after a night of debauchery and feel somewhat disturbed by myself also as I try to see if I recognize my surroundings…as a current colleague of mine once said when I asked him why he never got into coaching football and has just stuck with baseball. He replied with…”eff that, football coaches get fired”. I think there’s a lot to be said by that comment. Or look at Johnny O
I haven’t read any shout out to Waldo for opening TBs eyes to the play
On the subject of coaching, I was talking with a buddy last night. We’ll call him Bubba. The brother of a friend of mine. Anyway, after a few beers, he began to tell me that he had it figured out when it comes to baseball. He said “You gotta load the bases with singles, and then hit home runs. That’s how you score the most runs.” Brilliant! TJ, feel free to use this strategy if you coach baseball. Let me know how it works.
Im more into hitting doubles, bunting over to third and scoring on infield grounders, you do that 7 times a game, your in pretty good shape, just my opinion,,,