Brownlow's Twitter Mailbag: What's next for MJ, football coaches as gift-givers and more

By Lauren Brownlow, WRALSportsFan contributor

It might be the off-season in the Triangle, but we are never lacking for news around here. This week was no different as news broke that Michael Jordan is selling the Charlotte Hornets. I'll get into that in this week's Twitter Mailbag, along with Louisville basketball vs. Louisville football win totals, ACC coaches and gift-givers and ranking the major summer holidays.

So let's get to it!

Um ... maybe? First of all, let's deal with His Airness selling the Hornets. It was the rare piece of breaking news that I had no idea was coming but also did not shock me. The Hornets haven't had a whole lot of success in his tenure, but they didn't have a lot of success before his tenure either. At least he brought back the Hornets' name and colors and logo and all of that, and he did do a lot for the community, which he'll surely continue to do. But MJ is not the time to keep hitting his head against the wall competitively if it's not working. Will he spend more time with baseball? The sport does have a lot of sentimental value to Jordan, so I could see that, but he is part of a big ownership group there. I know he's into his NASCAR team now too, and I think he'll spend a lot of time on that, plus continuing to give back to the community.

I got multiple Louisville questions this week, and both about basketball! You people are masochists, I'm convinced. It really is wild that a major-conference college basketball program that has won multiple national championships and is in a basketball-crazy state won FOUR GAMES in an entire season. I was in college at UNC during its 8-20 season, and I remember thinking that was the worst team I'd ever seen. That team would beat this Louisville team by double digits. I remember watching Louisville this year and thinking they can't be that bad, and then ... they'd be THAT bad. It would take some time, and to their credit, they had players on that roster who kept fighting in spite of it all, but whew.

I'm nothing if not a scientist, though, and I have to be as accurate as I can when answering this question. I don't have a Louisville basketball schedule yet, but I know they'll play 30-something games. I know that a Power 5 team has to have a lot of things go very badly to win four games. The other Louisville question I got was whether Louisville would win double-digit games. I don't know that I'm ready to go that far yet, but I do have to go through the football schedule and guess at a win total. Louisville gets a Coastal schedule next year without North Carolina. No seriously: six games against Coastal teams. It's a bit of a transitional year in football with Jeff Brohm taking over and a new quarterback, but the Cards have a lot of positive momentum and they should make a bowl fairly comfortably.

Football's Vegas over/under win total is 8.5. I think that's a touch ambitious, but let's go with that number for the sake of argument. That would mean the basketball team would have to more than double its win total from last year, which sounds far more daunting before you remember what that win total WAS. This is why stats need context! "
"(Coach X) doubled his win total; he shouldn't be fired!" I mean, even in college football, going from 1 to 2 is ... not an improvement, but technically a doubling. And who you play and beat matters, and all of that. Louisville basketball did lose nine games last year by fewer than 10 points. Of course, some of those games weren't as close as the final score indicated and were a result of garbage-time surges by the Cards, but not all of them. Louisville's first three losses last season were by a combined 3 points, and the slide turned into a freefall. Those losses were to Bellarmine, App and Wright State, but those are still games the Power 5 team should be expected to win. Hopefully Louisville basketball did itself a lot more favors in the non-conference scheduling department, and if so, I think that yes, Louisville basketball wins more than Louisville football. What could bite me is my continued inability to believe how bad Louisville actually was last year.

True to who I am, my first instinct in answering this question is to go with snark. Before I do that, though, I feel the need to explain myself. Do I think it's possible that a college football coach is a killer gift-giver? Of course. I'm sure that's true of a handful of them. But college football coaches usually have way more to worry about than giving gifts. They probably have assistants who buy gifts for the people in their lives. If I had to non-snarkily guess which coach might be likeliest to tell his assistant he's got it, I'd actually go with Dino Babers. He is probably the nicest ACC football coach I have interacted with and I could see him really priding himself on giving good gifts.

But the snarky part of my brain wants to rank this based on the likeliest coaches to gift-wrap an opponent a win. So in that way, here's who I think are the most generous, in no particular order:

1. Mack Brown. This isn't unique to Mack so much as it is seemingly unique to Carolina football, but the Tar Heels manage to snatch defeat from the seemingly open and ready to snap jaws of victory in a way that most programs don't. No lead is safe with the defense. Even when it does seem safe, the Tar Heels have a knack for getting an extremely ill-timed penalty or making that crucial mistake at just the wrong moment. And the Tar Heels have a tendency to lose an annual WTF game to a team they have no business losing to (no matter who the coach is), often securing the opposing coach an extension or some more time off the hot seat. I mean, that's a gift, right?

2. Mike Norvell. Florida State is set to have a big year, and I believe in the Noles. But let's face it: Florida State has had a lot of games go wrong at the end. Sometimes, it worked out fine. But the end of the NC State game was a mess. So was the LSU game, but it worked out. FSU probably had the craziest game endings last year that I can remember but they still flirted with screwing it up a little too often for my tastes, and the Norvell era has featured some disastrous last-second losses before last season. FSU will have to execute well late in games to have the kind of season it has the potential to have.

3. Dave Doeren. How often last year did NC State's offense allow opponents to stick around, at times just long enough to steal a win? NC State wasn't as generous as it flirted with being last season, and with a new offensive coordinator, it has to hope to be less generous this season.

This is tough for me because my child's birthday is July 4, so I'm always a little predisposed to that date. But it's also a difficult day because, rational or not, I deal with guilt for not being able to keep him in for one more hour and let him have a July 5 birthday. I hate that he can't have a real birthday party on his actual birthday and accept his friends to show up until he's much older. And way more things are closed on July 4 than on the other two holidays in my experience. If I'm ranking them on the most fun, low-pressure holidays for me (with the caveat that I'm ranking these based on superficial things and not what the holidays actually stand for):

1. Labor Day. I have to rank a holiday with football on it at the top of the list. And it's kind of like the last hurrah for summer. It's a marker to remind you that if you haven't gone to the beach or done anything relaxing yet, you've got one more chance. But you can also combine your relaxing holiday with watching lots of football. I've been able to combine both before even while working, and it's great. The weather is warm or hot enough to enjoy the summer fun almost always. And did I mention you have football all weekend?

2. 4th of July. My kid's birthday, so always a special day. But I don't really care for fireworks or any of the rest of it. I grew up being terrified of the loudness of fireworks so I actually always dreaded July 4 as a kid. I can handle the loud noises of fireworks now, but my kid always wants like a sparkler or something that lights on fire and uses his birthday to pull rank and I don't feel comfortable lighting anything on fire. But at least the weather is always warm and you can have a really solid pool day or cookout day on the 4th.

3. Memorial Day. Other than having a 4-day weekend, I don't care much for this holiday. Sometimes it's warm and lovely at the beach, but not always. This year it wasn't. So in theory, it's a great intro to summer holiday weekend. But everywhere is always jam-packed. The one positive is I feel like not as many things are closed on Monday of Memorial Day weekend, but when the weather doesn't cooperate, it's just a holiday weekend where you have to find something to do for an extra day off. I realize the day was meant to think about the sacrifices the men and women in our armed forces have made for all of us, and I do take time to reflect on that on Memorial Day. But that's not what these rankings are based on.