It's Amazing That This Guy Continues to Draw a Paycheck

This is really astounding. Bill Simmons, who at one time wrote as many as three items a week for espn.com's Page 2, is now able to perpetuate the myth that he is the voice of the fan by writing not three, not two, but actually what we consider to be at best 1.5 items per week on the four letter dot com.

Consider this week's effort. Good ol' Billy Boy throws together a "links" item, which had to take all of 10 minutes, then he puts together what he calls a "Basketball Blog" post in which he makes up fake emails, and pretends to answer them. In a thinly disguised effort to counter this lack of zeal that first made him popular, Billiam posts three podcasts, which are, in actuality, phone call conversations with his buddies. The exception here, of course, is his podcast conversation with Jason Whitlock, the former Page 2 writer who was fired after writing too much of the truth. We view this episode of Simmons' podcast as a token effort to try to further his claim that he is anti-establishment. There was a golden opportunity here to discuss Whitlock's dismissal from the sports behemoth, or his feud with Scoop Jackson, or at the very least, JW's thoughts on controversial subjects such as Herm Edwards' weak leadership and submission to poor ownership in Kansas City, or Whitlock's opinions on Kelvin Sampson, or the increasingly sad state of character in the NFL.

To paraphrase Jack Black's character Barry from High Fidelity, how can a person who has no interest in writing about sports continue to write for the largest sports entity on the face of the earth?

In full disclosure, Simmons is still a regular stop for me when I'm perusing the net. However, he has continued to move down the list of sites or columns I check, and his new Sports Guy page has become my destination for items that I know I can lampoon with relative ease. All in all, I consider this a huge shame. I used to be a huge fan of Simmons, and he is part of the reason that I started this site. I can only hope that one day, he will sit back and survey his career, and realize that he willingly became a Sean Salisbury when he could have been a Ron Jaworski.