Brownlow's Twitter Mailbag: Panthers' No. 1 pick, the Final Four, Austin Powers and more

By Lauren Brownlow, WRALSportsFan columnist

It's not the offseason in college basketball, and it's usually not the offseason around the Triangle. But considering all of the Triangle teams are out of the NCAA Tournament and have been, it's time to get started on the offseason Twitter Mailbag, where I take your questions on all things sports and non-sports. Mostly sports. But some non-sports.

This week, we'll get into that Final Four, what the Panthers might do to horrify me with the No. 1 overall pick, whether the Austin Powers movies hold up and an update on my health as I continue dealing with long COVID.

So, let's get to the questions!

What a great 'welcome back' question! I mostly tackled this in a piece for WRALSportsFan this week, but I'll answer you: yes. Yes it is, solely because Conference USA has a team in the Final Four and the Big Ten does not. Because one thing I'm tired of is postseason discourse being dominated by conference talk, both in college football and basketball. And so if the Power 5 honks who love to point to postseason results as proof that those leagues are superior in football, why don't we do it in basketball? Why is the ACC's record in bowl games only important when it's to denigrate them in comparison to another league? Why are bowl game losses excusable when it's anyone else? It can feel that way sometimes.

But the real answer, of course, is no. March Madness is mad because anything can happen in a 1-game season. If it were true, then Florida Atlantic — already a great team at 35-3 — would be No. 1 in the NET, Ken Pom, Bart Torvik, all of the analytics. Or at least closer to it. But Ken Pom has Conference USA as the No. 10 conference in the country. But it's just three spots below the ACC at No. 7, so there's that. But three of the leagues with a team in the Final Four rank outside of his top five. Because as I said in my piece, league strength doesn't necessarily equal team strength. College basketball is doing its best to find a fair way to evaluate teams, but a lot of the analytical tools do tend to revolve around conferences since everyone plays so many more league games now. But if this Tournament hasn't already proven that, I don't know what to tell you.

Well, the short answer is I'm still dealing with long COVID and it's still pretty debilitating. In some ways, I'm worlds better than I was 10 months ago. A lot of the worst of this is actually over, or seemingly so. The brain fog has gone from barely knowing where I was or why I was there to sporadic throughout the day, and forgetting a few words here and there. I've gotten my heart rate under control with medication, and that's helped me push the limits of my endurance ever so slowly. But 'slow' is the operative word here. The recovery is happening, but it is very slow. What I'm trying to do now is learn to live with this disease rather than wait for it to pass, because right now, it's not going anywhere.

I've been in physical therapy since January, and that has helped me with learning what my body can handle and what it can't. The most frustrating part is I can get through even a vigorous physical therapy session or set of the exercises at home in the moment, then crash hours or even a full day later. A big milestone I'm looking to reach is walking a half a mile to a hair appointment (my first since last February!) on Saturday and then walking back. The last time I tried a mile at one time, I needed a full day to recover.

I will be fine. I'm lucky — I have a support system in place that's been unbreakable. People have showed up for me and checked on me and made sure that I am all right and that my life is as easy as it can be. But there are plenty of people who are not as fortunate. I'd love for everyone to understand that long COVID has really become this invisible epidemic. The other day, I asked my psychiatrist to pass along any long COVID research she came across since she mentioned some during our session. She pointed out that she probably knows about as much as I do. And that's because none of us really know anything about long COVID or how to stop it or slow it or even prevent it. Know that people with long COVID need you, even if they won't say that. Please extend as much grace as possible to anyone you know that is dealing with the disease, since it's what we need the most.

This is in reference to the fact that my 6-year-old's teacher told me that in class the other day, she'd asked the children to name things they or other people like and my kid said 'beer'. Now, for the record? Yes, he's seen me drink beer plenty of times and he knows it's for adults. A child's fascination with beer is actually a thing I remember from my own childhood. Neither of my parents drank much, but if they did in front of me it was usually just a few beers and even then, usually only socially. I'm a little more apt to have a beer with dinner on a normal evening than my parents were, but it's not like I'm drinking beer all the time. Long COVID is an inflammation disorder, and let me tell you, that extends to the gastrointestinal tract. Can confirm.

But I remember as a kid that my dad would ask me to throw away mostly-empty beer cans and I'd have the little bit at the bottom, just to try it. I begged for a sip and finally got one, and my kid repeated this process nearly 33 years later earlier this year. And he and I both had the same reaction when we finally tried it as children: "AHHHHHHH THIS IS DISGUSTING WHY DO YOU DRINK THIS?!" I don't even remember my parents' answer to that question between full-on belly guffaws, but I know that mine was "only adults can like it". Doesn't that weirdly feel true, though? I don't think I ever actually ENJOYED a beer until I was actually of age to drink it, in spite of drinking plenty of it before that.

So the answer is that he does not have a favorite beer because he actually hates it and probably only gave that answer in class because A. he knows adults like it and B. to make his classmates and teacher laugh, both of which he's become quite good at.

My imagination has run particularly wild with the Panthers trading up for the No. 1 overall pick. Will they trade back down? Do they actually know who they want to pick already? It's hard for me because there is no Cam Newton in this year's NFL Draft. That made it easy for the Panthers in 2011. There is no quarterback like that, a true no-brainer. If they drafted C.J. Stroud over Bryce Young or vice versa, I can't stand on a soapbox and say "NO! THAT IS WRONG!" I don't know.

The true annoying thing is that they could have already had Justin Fields and all of these assets they've wasted on these garbage bridge quarterbacks. They didn't even have to trade up to get Fields. He fell into their lap. The Panthers took Jaycee Horn, a good cornerback who can't seem to stay healthy. They addressed a need, yes. But quarterback was too, and obviously still is. It's frustrating. And maybe he's not the answer either, but I don't know that he's less the answer than any quarterback they might pick.

So the short and only real answer to what the Panthers could do to upset me? Pick Anthony Richardson. No offense to the Florida quarterback, but I rode the rollercoaster of his performances far too often in college to want to do it again in the NFL. And he could barely get Florida football above .500. I've seen him compared to Cam Newton, who literally carried AUBURN to a national title. Take several seats.

I'm honestly not sure if I'm capable of answering this question objectively. My best friend and I used to reenact the scene in the first movie when Will Ferrell as the henchman gets ejected into the fiery pit and is still alive only "very badly burned". In college, my roommate and I watched Goldmember on a loop and I could probably deliver at least half the lines in that movie from sheer memory. I still regularly say "I ALSO like to live dangerously" and "allow myself to introduce ... myself".

There are plenty of things that we can and should revisit from the 1990s and early 2000s that were actually not very good. Washed denim, bleached hair tips, our treatment of Britney Spears. And there ARE problematic aspects of the franchise. Fat Bastard is bad. I ... get uncomfortable with the Mini Me thing and the way it's treated. There are bad ethnic stereotype jokes. I think that's the part of the franchise that has aged the worst. Beyonce's acting was bad too, but it was supposed to be.

But the humor? The HUMOR largely ages just fine. Because it's largely goofy and spoofs spy movies. The parts of the movie that stand out the most are always the gags. "That's not mine!" about the penis enlarger, the sharks with "frickin" laser beams attached to their "frickin" heads, the Dr. Evil and Scott dynamic, I mean almost any scene with Dr. Evil, really. Like this scene, that still makes me cry laugh:

"CONGRATULATIONS, NUMBNUTS! YOU'VE SUCCEEDED IN TURNING ME INTO A FRICKIN JACK IN THE BOX!"

Real tears.