3 comments Bill Simmons Attempts to Attain Perfection, Causes Millions of Young Adults to Become Degenerate Gamblers

I know -10% of the readers who come here to read my drivel care about college basketball, but I wanted to first say the UNC Tar Heels had no business losing a game this year and somehow they did. This should not happen, they are too good.

Jason Whitlock complimented Bill Simmons in his "Leftover Truths" column last week saying,

If you've ever wondered what makes Bill Simmons the second-best sports columnist working today, check out this column written in November about the death of NFL home-field advantage."

Simmons gets hammered by many traditional sports writers. They say he doesn't report, writes too long and cracks stale jokes. They're wrong. They're jealous.

Yeah, sure Jason. Look, I know Jason is BFF with Bill because they love The Wire, the most overhyped, yet underhyped, show in the history of television. It's Bill's attempt to contact with African American culture, I don't really know that is my guess, but what I do know is Bill Simmons thinks it is the greatest show in the history of television, yet he references 90210, White Shadow, and probably 3 or 4 other shows more often than he references The Wire. If he liked the show so much, you would think he would reference it more. This just makes sense to me. It's not as if half the people get his references to 90210 and his other dated references anyway. If he did that, then his movies and television show references would not be stale, which they are, because they are 20 years old.

The funny part about Bill's home field advantage column is that he did not even collect the information for it, he just wrote it after others helped him get the information together.

NOTE: ESPN researchers Mark Simon and Matthew Willis, as well as the Las Vegas Sports Consultants, contributed with research for this column.

I am not trying to take anything away from Bill but his jokes are very stale and he is a blatant homer douchebag. We all know it is his "thing" to write about the Boston area teams but it is pretty lame at this point. In Whitlock's compliments of Simmons he never addressed the fact Bill writes specifically about his favorite teams every single week and uses his column to whine about any perceived wrong done to his teams. That is why I don't like him. I use to like him because at one point he was revolutionary in the field of journalism, now he is a parody of himself, thinking of new Corollaries and "Faces" every single week. He has fallen into the trap of believing his own bullshit.

Let's see what he has written lately that we can all be jealous of.

With only a year remaining in this decade, we still haven't settled on a name for it.

No, we settled on calling you a homerific douchebag a few years ago. I'm hungry...

All I know is that I nailed seven of my 12 goals as a sports fan heading into the new millennium: The Red Sox, Pats and Celtics all won titles; the Sox toppled the Yankees in a playoff series, CBS sent a certain someone pack(er)ing, I caught a full-scale basebrawl in person at Fenway, and I attempted (and nearly made) a half-court shot during a break in an NBA game.

I only have one goal on my sports fan bucket list and my attorneys have told me writing it on this blog would potentially constitute a direct threat.

On a related note, how does anyone like Bill Simmons? At what point is everyone going to get tired of his constant bragging? More specifically doesn't he ever wonder why comments are not allowed on his columns?

He's like the journalistic boy in the bubble.

3. I want to watch the baseball playoffs without hearing the voice of a certain announcer. House rules prevent me from sharing the name. In other news, did you know that, if you start an inning with a home run instead of a walk, you're more likely to have a multi-run inning?

This is a bandwagon we can all get on.

Why couldn't I finish 11-0 for the playoffs? As always, we'll be leaning on my trusty Playoff Manifesto 4.0 (last updated in January '06), which should hopefully be useful during one of the single strangest Round 1s in recent NFL history.

Here is the part of the column where Bill lays out his rules for gambling that turns me into Jerry Falwell and I start screeching about how this sets a bad example for millions of people who believe that Bill actually knows what the fuck he is talking about. I would also mention at this point that there is no set way to gamble, that's why they call it gambling, and when hundreds of thousands of college students blow their Stafford Loans and Pell Grants on gambling, you can all blame Bill Simmons. Perhaps even sue him?

I don't gamble, but since I am as qualified as Bill, let me tell you what I think some good gambling rules are:

-Never bet against LSU in football, they will always cover the spread and they will win a bowl game. I have no empirical evidence of this.

-It's just safe to never bet on a rookie quarterback in a playoff game. I have no evidence of this either.

-Never bet on anything Bobby Cox is involved in. He will fuck it all up. I have plenty of evidence of this.

-USC will always cover the spread one week against a difficult opponent and then fail to cover against a more difficult opponent.

That's all I have right now. This is not a Manifesto or anything like Bill does because creating Manifestos is an obvious attempt to create yourself as a brand, rather than write a column.

That's right, it was the 2007 Giants. I will now re-enact the Helmet Catch with a live grenade.

Read carefully, Jason Whitlock, that's a stale joke right there. Also seen as:

"I will now light myself on fire," "I will now stab myself in the eye with a fork," or "I will now rip my toe nails off with pliers."

Basically just throw a Weird Al Yankovic type joke in there and you can do it.

Philly's Andy Reid will be battling former assistant Brad Childress on Sunday in a matchup Peter King described as "teacher vs. pupil." Teacher versus pupil???? That explains everything! Do you think Reid tutored Childress in classes like "Screwing Up a Two-Minute Drill," "Hanging Your QB Out to Dry," "Dumb and Possibly Damaging Field-Goal Attempts," "Idiotic Short-Yardage Calls," "Special Teams Collapses," "How To Blow Your Challenges," "Leaving Yourself With No Timeouts" and "How To Remain Calm As You're Getting Booed By Your Own Fans"?

That is so funny, I wonder if Andy Reid will be able to tell that joke to Bill Belichick on his way to New York to play the Giants in the second round of the playoffs?

Add everything up and this might be the all-time Michael Conrad Memorial "Let's Be Careful Out There" Weekend. Proceed with caution. Please. Here are my Round 1 picks...

Another stale joke for Mr. Whitlock to pay attention to. This is one from Hill Street Blues and takes place in the early 1980's. Michael Conrad died in 1983.

There was also nothing from the Sports Gal again this week. I say the odds are even now that she has completely left Bill for Rick Reilly.

One of my favorite rewatchable cable movies is "Cast Away," although one scene has recently started to bug me: After Tom Hanks' character gets rescued, he goes on a whim to see his former fiancee (Helen Hunt) late at night. They catch up for a few minutes, say their goodbyes, then she lends him one of their cars and he starts driving away. Suddenly, Hunt screams after him and runs down the driveway to catch him ... and even though it's a thunderstorm, he somehow hears her, puts the car in reverse and they make out in the pouring rain before deciding that this can't work and she needs to go back in the house. This all happens in about 90 seconds. He's nice enough to give her a lift back to the garage. She gets out and walks into her house completely drenched. And Hanks drives off, presumably closing that chapter of his life.

One problem: Are we really expected to believe that her husband never woke up during any of this?

If reading this did not feel like a complete waste of your time, then you need mental help. But Bill is not done at all...(you don't need to read, just notice how long it is)

Imagine you're married to the lady who was engaged to someone who was stranded on a deserted island for four years, dramatically escaped, became a worldwide celebrity and now was back in your town. Imagine your wife is an emotional wreck about the whole thing. Imagine your dining room is covered in maps and sketches as she spent the last few days trying to figure out exactly how Hanks escaped. Aren't you waking up every time she gets out of bed for a glass of water? Aren't you jumping at the sound of every car door slam? Wouldn't the noise of your wife screaming "Chuck!" outside your house in the wee hours send you outside wielding a shotgun? HOW THE HELL DID HE SLEEP THROUGH THIS? How? She made Hanks coffee, gave him their car, opened their garage, screamed his name, made out with him on their street ... and he was just catching some Z's the whole time? I can't handle it.

Maybe he was away on vacation, Jesus get a life. The point of this is...

Here's the point: You wouldn't notice this mistake the first time you watched the movie, or the 10th, or maybe not even the 20th. Eventually? You would notice it. And that's how I feel about this Falcons-Cards game.

Bill just wrote two solid paragraphs to set up a way to describe how he feels about the Falcons-Cards game. Why does he have to kill space with shit like this, can't he just write how he feels about something?

(Bill proposing to a woman) "You know how Tom Cruise felt at the end of Jerry Maguire when he comes in the room sweating, breaking up the party with the women where all the women look around like he is crazy and Tom sto---"

(Sound of woman a woman openning a drawer and grabbing a knife and desperately attempting to chop both of her ears off)

Rather than waste space can't he just say that his opinion of the game has changed? It's easier and that would save my time, his time, and all of his other reader's time. Quit comparing emotions and feelings to things in pop culture!

In that same podcast, Lombardi and I wondered if the Falcons might lack an extra gear for the playoffs. I called them an Ellen Barkin Team; in other words, they exacted the most out of what they had, exceeded all expectations and looked good as long as you didn't catch them from the wrong angle.

I thought she was a member of the Diane Lane All Stars or was it the Lindsay Hunter All Stars or was it the Reggie Jefferson All Stars? Just fucking say what you are talking about and quit making up things to make a brand of your name.

That is all Bill does, he makes up categories in order to create a Sports Guy brand and if you check out his Wikipedia page it is working. This is not journalism, this is trying to be an entertainer. He needs to get a top hat and try to find a dancing bear, that is more down his alley.

Two more predictions for this one: First, I see the Colts winning out and giving us a "2 Mannings, 1 Trophy" Super Bowl (Colts-Giants) that could lead to the entire country to get a temporary restraining order against Archie Manning.

This could not nearly be as bad as any hype that surrounds any Yankees-Red Sox regular season game or pretty much anything that you write in your "columns."

While we're here, the 2008 playoffs could affect Playoff Manifesto 5.0 (due in January 2010) with the following revisions and new rules (some of which I introduced last January, but they're worth mentioning again before Round 1).

Oh gosh, I hope the Playoff Manifesto 5.0 does not interfere with Bill's new Sports Czar platform or his new book that apparently takes 1.5 years to write. His book is titled "The Best Basketball Book Ever Written." Modesty is not his forte.

** We need to create The Brett Favre Corollary ("Never back an aging QB in cold weather"),

Bar Starr did win the Ice Bowl at the age of 34. That seems like a direct contradiction to this Corollary.

as well as the 2007 Giants Corollary ("Be careful betting against a team with serious 'Nobody believed in us but the guys in the locker room!' potential")

There is no way to measure this at all, so this means absolutely nothing.

and the Eugene Robinson Corollary ("Beware of any team that battled a major off-field distraction during the week leading up to the game").

Stop with the Corollary shit! You know Bill has a spreadsheet at home on his computer where he keeps track of all the stupid ass corollaries he has shit out through the years. I would bet we could prove many of them to be untrue, but I don't have the energy for that.

Struggle in short yardage, call needless timeouts, look lethargic, make dumb turnovers, panic and leave their fans punching walls and closing down bars. When you think about it, isn't this PRECISELY the type of game that the Eagles have routinely squandered during the McNabb/Reid era?

I have no idea and more importantly you have no idea if this is true or not. You should have your crack research team work on this and then Jason Whitlock can compliment you on all the wonderful research you do.

Bill used to write like he was a friend of yours and his jokes used to be more relevant as well, then his teams and he started succeeding and he changed his attitude but not his writing style/jokes. We hate it when our friends become successful. I call it the Bill Simmons Corollary.