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GD: I guess that all depends on who you ask. A lot of people hate golf and would tell you to shut up if you suggested that. I'd entertain the idea. But WImbledon is up there. What about the Kentucky Derby? At one point it might have been a heavyweight championship boxing match. Ultimately, I'd probably say no because I think a lot of people would tell you it isn't even the most prestigious event in golf (the British and US Opens would both get votes). It's one of my favorite events, but I don't think you can come to a conclusive decision on whether it's the most prestigious.

Just going off memory, I'd say Stan Utley is the most successful Mizzou golfer. He won the 1989 Chattanooga Open, won three times on the Nationwide Tour, spent four or five years on the PGA Tour and was the first golfer inducted into the Mizzou Hall of Fame. Peter Malnati is a touring pro now and has had some good weeks and won the 2015 Sanderson Farms Championship.

GD: 1) In your opinion, what does this say about the state of CFB and CBB?

It says, first of all, that the NCAA Tournament is random. Sometimes the best team wins. Sometimes the best team loses in the second round. In the NCAA Tournament, all you have to do to win it is to be better than the team you're playing six times. And you might do it without ever facing another "elite" team. Virginia became the first title team never to beat a 1 or a 2 seed. In college football, you have to win 11 or 12 regular season games. THEN you have to beat another really good team in the conference title game. Then you have to beat two of the country's top four teams in the playoff. That's a minimum of 14 wins in 15 games with at least two of them coming against top four teams and at least three (and probably more) against top ten teams. The equivalent would be if at the beginning of the Final Four, they had said, yeah, Michigan State and Auburn and Texas Tech are out and Duke and Gonzaga and Kentucky get another chance and then Virginia would have had to beat two of them.

So the major reason is the way the sport and the postseason are set up. But also, in basketball, you're playing five guys with 13 total scholarship players. One or two guys makes a HUGE difference. In football, you're playing probably 40 with 85 on scholarship. Depth and overall talent is a much bigger deal. Sure, there are upsets in football, but mostly, the teams with the most talent are going to come out on top over the course of 13 weeks leading up to the playoff.

2) What could the NCAA do to have more parity in CFB?

They could reduce scholarships. Which they aren't going to do. But other than that? I don't know. The truth is, the vast majority of teams that are good now were good 50 years ago. College football doesn't change. The rich get richer and the poor keep chasing them.

3) Will interest in CFB always be off the charts, or will the monotony of Alabama/Clemson/OU/Other start to wear on attendance and revenue eventually?

I assume it will continue to be wildly popular. Americans love their football and college fans love their team. I've long said, if you're interested in it to see your team do as well as it can and win as many games as it can, it's a fantastic sport. If the reason you're watching is to see your team win a title, then 85-90% of us are wasting our time.

4) If you're the AD at a mid tier P5 school, would you rather have a perennial NCAA tourney team with a Final Four sprinkled in once in a while, or have a football program that has between 7-10 wins every year with the occasional appearance in a conference title game?

I guess the answer is probably football because it makes more money at most places. I think a better question is would you rather be decent to good at both or really good at one and no good at the other? And truthfully, I'd take the latter. Give me a sport that's winning big, that's bringing my school conference titles and national recognition. If it means the other sport sucks, so be it.

GD: Coincidence. I mean, think about how close we were to Auburn in the finals. And that school had its name pop up just a little bit over the last 15 months. Don't get me wrong, I think it's great to see two teams in the title game that not only have never been there before, but also, I think, are pretty much universally believed to have done it cleanly. But I don't think it's this grand statement that cheating never pays. Because it does. Hell, we just dealt with two weeks of people trying to convince me UCLA is a blueblood program (and maybe it is) based off a coach who cheated his ever loving ass off a half a century ago.

GD: I don't see any reason Mizzou would make that call while it's still possible the teams could make the postseason (even if it's only the SEC Tournament). If they both tank and we get to a point where they're not going to make the postseason anyway, just take the ban and move on. I mean, if you're not going to get there anyway, why not just say, we'll serve our punishment now and be done with it? That way you don't have anything hanging over you.

I don't think that would give the impression that you agree with the punishment. I think it would just say "hey, whether we do it voluntarily or not, we're not going to be in the postseason, so we'll just save some time and say this counts as the ban."

GD: He is certainly dedicated to his cause.

GD: I really don't. I know it's very difficult for a fan to emotionally detach from it. But when it's a paycheck, it really isn't. I mean, there may be exceptions where a coach would have a certain school he just couldn't coach at due to personal loyalties. But it's rare. I know fans that won't shop at certain stores or eat at certain restaurants based on ownership's loyalties to a school. Just based on social media, I can say something that has absolutely nothing to do with Mizzou or college sports and I get replies relating it back to something that happened with Mizzou. Fans look at this whole thing differently than people who are involved in it for a job.

Many years ago a former Missouri assistant's name came up in a coaching search at Kansas. I was talking to a Mizzou coach and I said, "He can't coach at KU can he?" And the coach said, "For two million dollars? Of course he could." They're mercenaries. And that's not a bad thing. We all have to make a living.

I saw a bunch of Tennessee people mad at Rick Barnes this week. I read a lot of "he obviously doesn't care about UT" tweets and the like. And it's not specific to Tennessee. Many have said the same thing about Mike Anderson here. And you're right. They don't care. Why would they? They care while they're here because they're getting paid. But if someone else wants to pay them more or give them a better deal, they're going to care about that place. Until they leave or get fired.

GD: First of all, we're talking about two things that have never happened. But at least Mizzou football has won a conference championship before (even if it wasn't the SEC and even if it was 50 years ago).

But the answer is a Final Four. The reasons go back to the first question in the mailbag about the difference in college basketball and college football. To make a Final Four, you've got to win four games. Missouri has won four games in a row against good teams countless times in its history. It just hasn't done it at the right time to make a Final Four. If Auburn and Texas Tech and Butler and George Mason and Wichita State and LSU and on and on and on can make it, there's absolutely no reason Missouri can't make it. Hell, Missouri came within two points of making it after one of the most disappointing regular seasons in school history. The thing about making the Final Four is you don't have to be all that good to do it. You just have to be good at the right time.

But in football, five teams (Alabama, Auburn, LSU, Florida, Georgia) have won the last 20 conference titles. Tennessee in 1998 was the last team outside of those five. The last team other than one of those six to win it was Ole Miss...in 1963 (though in 1978, Kentucky did claim the 1976 SEC title. I don't know the story behind it, but you can read it here if you want to). Before that, it was Kentucky in 1950. Georgia Tech and Tulane have more SEC titles than half the league. Mississippi State has one. Kentucky has one-and-a-half. So if you want to tell me Missouri will never win an SEC football championship, yeah, I can buy that. Because the truth is, winning it once would be far more surprising than never winning it.

GD: Cuonzo was hired at Cal in March of 2014. His first class technically had two unrated recruits. The Class of 2015 was his first full class and it featured five-stars Jaylen Brown and Ivan Rabb. At Tennessee, he was hired in March of 2011. He held on to a four-star commitment and then added five three-stars. His first full class was 2012 when he got five-star Jarnell Stokes and three three-stars. That's a pretty good class. So his first full class at both schools was very good.

At Missouri, he actually improved on that. He was hired in March and immediately signed a top five recruiting class. Obviously that was due to the Porter brothers, but he also got Jeremiah Tilmon and Blake Harris in that class, among others, so he hit the ground running. It was a perfect storm of circumstances. I have never taken credit for that class away from Cuonzo, but there were factors outside of him being the coach with the Porters that kind of opened the floodgates. His first full class at Missouri was 2018 which featured four-star Torrence Watson and five three-stars. A good class if not an elite one.

The truth is, though, Martin has recruited well at Missouri. He just hasn't been able to prevent the stars of those classes from getting hurt. This whole thing looks different if Michael plays two years ago and Jontay plays this year. And the recruiting classes in 2019 and beyond might look different if that had happened as well.

Losing E.J. Liddell in the 2019 class was a big deal and it hurt. If the Tigers go 0/3 with Josh Christopher, Caleb Love and Cam'Ron Fletcher in 2020, that hurts too. No question. But I don't think there's reason to panic about Martin's ability to recruit at this point in time. He's always gotten players and he'll get players here. The question is whether he can take those players and make them into a team that can compete for league titles and make deep tournament runs. The truth is, he's never done it. The issue hasn't necessarily been where his recruiting classes have ranked. It's been that the teams on the floor haven't historically matched that ranking. And, yes, I understand he has only ever been at a school for three years and so it is difficult to judge him in that sense. I'm not writing him off. But if you are looking at it honestly, the level everyone hopes he can get to at Missouri is a level he's not reached in 11 years as a head coach so far.

GD: I'm not going to pretend to have any insight here because not only have I not seen a practice; I haven't even seen a game. So I don't know what she's doing. But the impressive thing to me isn't just the improvement since last year. It's the improvement since the non-conference season. Missouri was 17-10 in the non-conference, which is not bad, but the Tigers were just 1-3 against ranked teams. They really built a 17-10 record against mediocre competition...which would indicate they were a mediocre team. But after opening SEC play being swept by No. 5 Alabama, the Tigers have taken two out of three against No. 8 Georgia, swept No. 13 Kentucky on the road and took one of three from No. 15 Tennessee. That's a 6-3 record against top 15 competition. The remainder of the SEC series are against unranked teams, so the Tigers have a chance to do some real damage and put themselves solidly in the postseason. Impressive job in year one no doubt.