It's time for The Mailbag, presented by Whitney McNutt of Tommy Morgan Inc. Realtors: Edition 212.

I asked for your questions. You delivered. So here we go…

I'm not one to get sentimental about stuff like a studio, but no, there's nothing I miss about it. It was too small. We had grown out of it. The equipment was outdated. It was hard to clean. I could go on and on.

The new office has much more room. It has more creature comforts. The equipment is new. I can clean it. I'm a bit of a clean freak. I think it looks and sounds better. It was expensive, but it was time to do it.

I guess I need to go back and watch. I don't remember that part about the motive involving his father's killing. As far as Jordan, I've always believed he was likely going to be suspended from the NBA so they cut a deal where he went away to "follow a dream." I also think it's possible he had a mid-life crisis of sorts and just wanted to try something new.

1. One player? My friend, this roster isn't close to being dependent on one player, but I'd say Suntarine Perkins. After Chance Campbell and Troy Brown and without another linebacker of their caliber lined up, Perkins could give Ole Miss an impact freshman on defense.

2. I'd guess 10 wins, but I'd bet heavily against Ole Miss in both Athens and Tuscaloosa. I just don't see it.

3. I don't think that's my place to say that, one way or the other, about Kiffin. That feels like an emotional take regardless. As a site, we were prepared for Kiffin's departure had there been one. When he stayed, we continued covering him. The rest if hypothetical. Ole Miss' job is to make the sure the job is attractive as possible if Kiffin leaves.

I do agree that the last two months weren't his best look and showed some cracks in the proverbial armor. He can repair those cracks, but he's entering a key period during his tenure.

I'd say you nailed it. I'd add that the offensive line ended up featuring two freshman offensive tackles, one who was penalty-prone, and that limited the offense further. I'd also say the lack of impact defensive tackles was an issue at times, though Pegues showed flashes. I also thought the punting game was insufficient. But all in all, 8-4 was about what this team was. They could've beaten Mississippi State and gone 9-3, but they could've lost to Kentucky and gone 7-5.

Is this the first Fire Bianco thread of the spring? Great work if so.

Look, Bianco has done an amazing job of making Ole Miss baseball, as you said, a social event. I'm always blown away by the crowds I see on TV, by the number of neighbors and such that I live around that go every weekend.

I can't speak for a fan base. I have no idea why people have no interest in basketball. I know the product on the floor right now is difficult to get excited about. Could Ole Miss get a Pearl or a Musselman? I don't know. It's still premature to go there, in my opinion, but if it comes to that, Ole Miss has to find a way to breathe some excitement into the program.

Baseball shouldn't prevent basketball from being exciting.

While it would be quite popular and I'd be thrilled, something tells me it wouldn't go over very well. But it's a hell of an idea. If you can get momentum, I'll try to help.

There are some agent connections and whatnot, but unless Nick Saban wants Golding gone, he'll still be in Tuscaloosa. And if Golding is a "free agent," I question the fit in Oxford. That said, someone told me late Tuesday Kiffin "wants" Golding. I don't believe there have been any recent conversations or discussions, but that could change once people get back from vacations and the convention and back into the recruiting grind.

I think it's a nice deal. I want to see how it's utilized before I judge it. I really don't know the details. Chase interviewed Walker Jones when it was announced. I haven't listened to that podcast. I suspect a lot of answers are there.

Yes, the guys who are closing themselves off from traditional media opportunities are limiting their brands. Bottom line.

I'm not paying high school athletes for interviews. Others can; I'm not judging. I won't do it, however. I don't think it's a value proposition. If I start paying $25 or $30 for a high school kid to DM me answers to questions, I have to start really questioning my sanity. The kids think we're all fans, because 90 percent or more of us are. If we pay them, they're going to tell us what we want to hear. So you're not only paying a kid to give you benign, innocuous quotes about Ole Miss, but you're paying him to give you some favorable spin to make your readers happy (for now).

I don't blame the kids; if some moron (I guess I am judging) is going to pay you to talk about a visit, by all means, get paid. I'm not doing it. Frankly, the 10 people who will bitch about this answer and threaten to quit won't quit. They're junkies.

And yes, the collectives should absolutely offer advice on taxes, media relations, et. al. I think they try to, in fairness.

My opinion on this isn't very popular, but I've never really felt he viewed this as a long-term stop in his career -- until now, perhaps. In 2020, things were just so weird and I don't hold that against him -- or anyone other than the people who reveled in lockdowns and ignored the damage they were doing to young people. Oxford was really, really freaking weird in 2020; I don't blame him for not wanting to be here much.

After the 2021 season, I think he thought he'd be a hotter commodity. Then he used the transfer portal to avoid a rebuild and it worked until it didn't. Personally, I believe he thought he was going to Auburn until the final days when family/personal considerations changed his mind.

All of that is my opinion. It's worth whatever you think it's worth.

So we're left with the quick fix/rebuild conundrum. Right now, it appears he's trying to split the difference. Will that work? It could. It couldn't. The jury is out.

As much as I love Trout, I'm taking Harper. I'm concerned about Trout's back/core issues. His inability to stay on the field is becoming a concern.

In a roundabout way, I answered this earlier. Kiffin wasn't fully checked in during his first year on the job. That's my educated opinion. Clements was a Lebby guy and Clements was unhappy about some recruiting decisions. Things went south and, again in my educated opinion, Kiffin made an emotional decision.

He's obviously much more engaged now, and he's said as much.

I got lost in that question. I'm sorry. As an aside, I knew the late Tommy Joe Eagles when he was an assistant for Andy Russo at Louisiana Tech. Nice man. He just wasn't equipped to handle the "culture" at Auburn. I covered Cliff Ellis at Auburn. I saw the heights and the depths of college coaching covering Ellis.

Could the right hire turn Ole Miss around? Again, there are 18 games left this season, so it's unfair for me to go there. However, when you look around the league and see some of the jobs guys like Oats and Musselman and Pearl (and McMahon and Gates, for that matter), the answer, albeit more complicated than this, is yes.

It's absolutely possible. What happens? Nothing. Maybe a coaching staff shakeup or something, but nothing. Kiffin and Ole Miss are in it for the long haul if he becomes a six- or seven-win program. The contract is likely difficult for either side to get out of. From Ole Miss' perspective, I suspect, a scenario where Kiffin is a perpetual 7-5 coach with an albatross of a buyout is the worst nightmare.

I'd have to study the roster. I don't know. They replaced a very good program-building coach with another. They have a quarterback who is a born leader.

“Their kids believe, they have a lot of similarities to our kids in terms of the culture created there,” Georgia coach Smart said on the Tuesday CFP Championship Game teleconference.

“The way they play, the way they believe. I think they have the most comebacks in college football in the fourth quarter and that shows what your mental makeup is.”

That doesn't answer your question. I'm not a student of the Big 12. It was a good league full of solid programs but it was nothing special. The Frogs were picked seventh but they got some wins and the wins led to belief. They obviously have strong culture.

“The question about the Cinderella thing, I think for a while in some ways we probably viewed ourselves as that early on, because we were figuring this thing out,” said Sonny Dykes, the first-year coach of a Horned Frogs team that was picked to finish seventh in the Big 12 coming off a 5-7 season.

“I think the Cinderella label probably started to wear off a little bit after the three-game gauntlet where we had to play three or four on the road, West Virginia, Texas and Baylor.

“I think at that point our guys started to believe, okay, we’re a real football team and we’re a battle-hardened team and we’ve had to overcome some adversity. And you know what? We have a chance to make a run.

“I think the Oklahoma game is when we saw, okay, look, here’s what we’re capable of because we played really good football on all three sides of the ball,” said Dykes, whose Horned Frogs beat the Sooners by a 55-24 count the fourth game of the season.

“We played great offense, great defense, great special teams in that game. It was a bit of an eye-opener for me, honestly because we played okay up to that point. We felt we were playing against really good competition.

"Fortunately, Oklahoma State rolled around right after that, and we were down 17, and we had to rally. And I think that was, to me, that was just a big a moment for our football team was seeing how we were going to do when we were down.”

Culture really matters, now more than ever, perhaps. TCU, at least this season, has elite culture.

I have no idea what Kiffin wants. I suspect he's one of those guys who is never really satisfied/placated, though he likely needs to stop the whining and poor-mouthing at this point, given the way November played out.

Kiffin just needs to win. It's best for him and his program. Ole Miss, on the other hand, needs to do whatever it takes to position itself to win -- both with Kiffin and with whoever replaces him one day.

There are probably some decisions he'd like to have back, but he's managed through a lot of chaos pretty well, in my opinion. It's a ridiculously hard, demanding job. There's no way to satisfy everyone. Not that my grade matters, but I've give him a pretty strong mark. People say he gave Kiffin too much money or gave Davis too much time, but in the moment, both of those decisions made a lot of sense.

Nothing really. Guys get together, have a few drinks, swap war stories, etc. I heard about one coach just sitting in a public room slamming Jack and Coke to the point phone calls were being made, but that's about the extent of the craziness. I'm usually just asking about interviews and coaching rumors more than I am about what guys are doing in their free time.

I'm probably being emotional about the Cubs because I think they're overly cautious. The next 12 months will be critical for this administration in Chicago.

What I love about the Braves is the willingness to take some risk and lock up a young core for an extended period of time. Could some of the decisions in Atlanta backfire? Sure. In fact, one or two almost certainly will. However, getting ahead of the free agency calendar and building a nucleus of young players is just smart business. I'm just a big fan of how Alex Anthopoulos thinks outside of the box.

In the end, to answer your question, front offices are judged on winning and losing. The Cubs should behave like a big-market team and they should absolutely win.

We haven't spoken or communicated since late November. I'm certainly not upset with him. I just think the vast differences in the way we approach our jobs was severely exposed in the Kiffin-Auburn saga. I have no idea if he's upset with me on any personal level. Professionally, I think he's bothered and he may very well have a point. As I've said many times, if I'd pretend to be a fan and rave about Ole Miss and put out tweets with exclamation points and stuff every time the Rebels won a game or got a commitment, my popularity would soar. It would be fake and I'd get made fun of in some media circles and I'd kill any chance of doing something else in the field should I choose to, but it would be very popular with the Ole Miss fan base. That's a fact.

As for the show, I strongly suspect it has run its course. And here's something else: I did too many podcasts last fall. I don't want to be that busy again. It was ridiculous. I'm not in my 20s anymore. Hell, I'm three months from having two children in their 20s. No one wants or needs to hear me talk that much. My voice was gone the whole fall. I was exhausted.

As for the show, Jay likely can't promote it on his site anymore. I'm viewed, whether I like it or not (for the record, I don't like it) as nothing more than a guy who covers Ole Miss, so it's next to impossible to grow anything. Modern media desperately tries to shoehorn people, so if the only audience I can attract is the one I have now, there's really no point in adding more and more podcasts -- unless they're very different.

GPITS, if I'm honest, was sometimes kind of frustrating. Jay's very social; I'm not. He liked to make fun of me for that and -- deep down -- that criticism stung because I'm not really sure how I got to this place where I'm not comfortable in social settings and I know it's not particularly healthy and I worry about life once the house is empty.

Also, Jay didn't like my views on lockdowns, school closures, vaccines and whatnot and he was dismissive of my views to the point where there wasn't a discussion. I sometimes wanted to really fight back and I think that might have given the show a chance to grow. I don't think he agreed.

Again, I just think the show ran its course. Maybe I'm wrong. Jay's a dear, lifelong friend, and I'm certainly open to the idea of working with him. I have no idea if that's mutual.

I've got an idea ruminating in my head for another show. It's simply a matter of whether or not I have the energy to pursue it and then be consistent with it. Further, I question if there's a point. I think it would be good. I think it would be interesting. However, if I'm just pulling from the same audience I already have, it doesn't make a lot of sense.

Not really. He may be trying to put himself in position to play for Ole Miss, but per sources, he'd have a long way to go to actually do it. I doubt anyone is counting on him for the fall. That would be awfully risky.