2019 Tiger Mailbag: 21st Edition

GD: For the most part, yeah. There are some Power Five players that play on smaller circuits or maybe don't play a lot of AAU ball at all, but they're the exception. If you think about it, these AAU tournaments are the equivalent of a job fair. Sure, I can go out and recruit people individually for a job and do my own research. But if they had a convention where 400 kids who wanted to go into online sports media were all going to be in the same place, and they generally tended to be the most qualified such people, I'd probably just go there to hire people. It's why a lot of coaches didn't want AAU ball to go away like was speculated. These guys already spend a million days on the road. If AAU goes away, they have to spend a lot more because rather than seeing 20 players in one location, they've got to go to 20 different locations to see them. There are a lot of negatives about AAU ball, but there are some positives too. I mean, for every kid who goes into these tournaments with tons of attention already, there are kids who don't have nearly as much attention and play well when the coaches are there watching other guys and create an opportunity for themselves.

GD: We took our vacation in March. My son had a swim meet in St. Petersburg and we spent a week down there. So the vacation budget is done for the year. My only qualifications for vacation are these:

1) warmer weather than Missouri

2) alcohol

If we have those two things, I can make any place work. The trips we've taken that I've enjoyed the most were the Bahamas (which was built around me covering the Battle for Atlantis), Washington D.C. and Hawaii (where my son was playing baseball). I'd like to go to Alaska at some point. After the kids are paying their own bills, we want to get to Europe. My top choices would be Greece and Italy.

GD: Never have. I figure that's what the message board is for. It's like a running diary of your all's ten thoughts. We used to do fan blogs for each game where a subscriber would document his game day experience. They were somewhat popular, but honestly just were one more thing I had to edit and format on Sunday or Monday which is why I discontinued them.