Wednesday, March 14, 2007
I have an obsession
I should just re-name my blog "I hate Bill Simmons."I don't care if you're tired of hearing about it, but the fact that he's the world's most popular sports columnist drives me nuts.
Today, he writes 3,538 words to preview the NCAA Tournament, and doesn't offer a single piece of reasonable analysis during the entire article. He picks teams based on comments made by players to newspapers, the way their names sound and where he went to school. Oh, and of course, there's a few e-mails from his buddies. Did you know House is a Maryland fan? Great news. I wasn't aware.
Then, after all of that, he closes his column by saying that tomorrow we can expect his wife's picks.
This is the best that ESPN has to offer, apparently.
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This is how I get by: I'm glad Bill's the most popular columnist in the world and not, say, Mariotti or somebody. As far as hugely popular columnists go, we could do a lot worse.
Also I think we hold our world-ruling columnists to too high a standard. We expect them to be eminently knowledgeable about every sport and every team out there. Perhaps they invite these expectations to some degree with their attempts to sound knowledgeable about everything (Bill shouldn't really be writing about anything other than NBA and occasionally the AL East and AFC East), but at least Bill has the good sense to poke fun at his own lack of knowledge.
It's a columnist's prerogative to sound as though he's the definitive voice on what he's writing about, even while he's demeaning his own expertise. They make assertions and frequently look like assholes. Mistaken assholes. If a columnist was 100 percent mincing Nancy about everything, he wouldn't last long.
And I know Bill's tendency to name-drop his friends, wife and pop culture faves can wear thin, but again, I prefer it to the endless douchebaggery spewed forth by the majority of American sports columnists.
I swear I'm not the president of the Bill Simmons fan club, I just think he catches a lot of heat because of how popular he's become. He's the same writer he was when he was a loser with a Boston blog, but back then, his style was fresh and endearing. Now that he's on top, the schtick doesn't play. I still click on his newest stuff first thing when I go to ESPN. But that's generally after I've gone to Deadspin, True Hoop, The Hater Nation, Free Darko and The Fanhouse and clicked through all their links.
Every time you write about an idiot, a puppy is thrown in an incinerator. Stop reading him. It worked for me. I despise Simmons.