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.

How the Sports World dealing with the Death of Anna Nicole Smith?

Today, the world has lost Anna Nicole Smith. A women who popped on the scene in Playboy, then strutted across your tvs in Guess jeans commercials, and made a statement by showing the world that a 26 year old stripper can love a rich old man. A woman who showed cable veiwers everywhere that she was still around and living the good life after the passing of her husband. Then became an inspiration to everyone when she dropped the weight of a small country in Africa. After all this she faced tragedy when she lost the life of her son when giving birth to her daughter.

How can the sports world handle such a loss? I wanted to find out.

I first went to the news websites to see what was going on. CNN, Fox News, MSN, local news, etc. all had some type of breaking coverage. Even the front page of yahoo, and other online sites had coverage. So I ventured to the sports sites to see how they where handling it.

First, I went to the Cable 24hr Sport Superpower, ESPN.com, but nothing... There is something about the Cowboys and Dale Jr. wants to buy something, maybe a car or something like that. There was a banner ad of a hot girl holding a basketball, promoting the Road Warrior: Hardwood Sweet.

Then I moved over to Sports Illustrated website, SI.com, NOTHING. There is something about Prince, something from a Dr. Z about grading announcers, and a story about Wisconsin, but who cares about cheese at a time like this. But they do have something about the Swimsuit models.

CBS Sportsline only had a story about a guy named Wade and the Cowboys not confirming that he is the new coach and had a picture of another guy wearing a goofy hat. Dissappointing. Where are the reporters?

MSN Fox sports had a story about who will be number one in the NFL draft with my boy Brady Quinn. Like all the other sports pages nothing about the great loss America experienced today.

As fans of sports. We must make a stand for such of an outrage like this. It is the duty of a reporter to report what is going on. These sites should have covered how the sports world was dealing with the loss of Anna Nicole Smith.

Editor's Note: The Dom is one of the people we recruited during our week away. He will post whenever the hell he wants about whatever the hell he wants.

Surprise! Another Simmons Bashing!

As new kids on the sports blog block, we felt the best way to earn some street cred was to pile on everyone's favorite target and a guy we actually used to like, Bill Simmons. The supposed "Sports Guy" reminds us of a radio personality that was in the Atlanta area for a brief while, Scott Ferrall. Ferrall was out of Las Vegas before coming to Atlanta, and he probably should have stayed there. Once he arrived in the A, he became the afternoon drive time guy on an AM sports talk station. His act had to be watered down to fit with the, shall we say, conservative station bosses as well as the listeners that didn't give a shit about hockey, his alleged area of expertise. Fairly soon, his show consisted of people calling in and imitating him back to himself (remind you of anyone?). In many cases, the callers were as funny, if not more so, than Ferrall himself. He was cut loose with a quickness. He briefly resurfaced as the radio play by play voice of the Atlanta Thrashers. This was problematic in two ways. First, the Thrashers were new, bad, and on an FM station. Great idea. Let's put hockey on FM radio in a town where the NHL doesn't rate in the top five leagues to follow. Second, this guy's voice sounded like Harvey Firestein smoked three cartons of Marlboro Reds and ate a truckload of gravel. Ferrall didn't last two seasons. What does this have to do with Simmons, you ask? Well, his editors at ESPN tie his hands and won't let him blast idiots that need blasting. As a result, his columns are watered down retreads that give readers a creepy sense of deja vu. His reader e-mails are often funnier than his actual columns, and that's just the ones he can slip past the editors. Then there was that experiment with Billy Boy doing color for college basketball. The brass over at ESPN must have had a ton of confidence in a guy that has somewhere in the neighborhood of zero knowledge of college athletics, considering they put him on a network that approximately 14.36 people actually get. The biggest tragedy of all is that Simmons is still the only columnist on Page 2 that remains remotely readable. Maybe when he moves on, his work will be fresher and more enjoyable. For now, he's just another douche.